Every brand has a community. But just a few take care of their community consulting services.
But if you have some people who are passionate about what you do, activating the marketing power of people can be very powerful for your brand. In 2022, this consultant strategy is also known as community-led growth.
Suppose you consider getting the help of an expert for your community. In that case, community consulting services usually connect the dots and show how the various parts of your business work together. Consultants analyze how businesses interact with customers, suppliers, and partners – doesn’t matter what kind of collaborative community you deal with. It is more or less the same thing!
Community-led growth is turning a product’s users into its best advocates. They share their experiences using the said product with their peers — promoting, driving engagement by sharing knowledge and adding value through providing feedback.
What’s now the magic formula for community success?
Setting goals and cadences is an excellent way to start and measure progress.
As a community consultant it is, therefore, essential to follow these or similar steps:
Step 1: Defining the four stages of the community-led growth cycle
- Awareness – the customer becomes aware of the brand
- Consideration & Sales – the brand begins nurturing the prospective customer to distinguish itself.
- Post-sales – the brand continues nurturing the customer after the sale by creating networking opportunities and demonstrating value.
- Advocacy – the customer recommends the brand to their peers, beginning the cycle again.
It does not matter which services or brand you offer, community consulting will help you.
Step 2: Analyzing the actual community, its maturity and effectiveness
The measurement of community effectiveness is usually done by comparing members to non-members. Defining what “active users” means is necessary because the measure must be based on these criteria. Identify which actions are essential for the active participation of the community member.
Step 3: Know your metrics
What you don’t measure, you can’t grow. As a community consultant, you therefore consider:
- Number of Active Users (as defined above)
- Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy. Assessing if this score is higher for customers who are active members of the community vs. customers who aren’t is a great way to see the tangible impact the community has on the success
- Member Retention: Acquiring new customers is great, but keeping your ones is equally important. Implementing a Community-Led Success team helps identify which customers have stayed or left and for what reason.
- Renewals: This is the ultimate goal regarding customer success strategy. Success teams rely on renewals to predict a product’s or entire business’s long-term stability. Adding a community layer to this metric — calculating which renewals come from active community members vs. customers who aren’t engaged in the community — will offer invaluable insights into the customer experience.
Doing this work as a community consultant, you will find an improved ROI (Return of Investment) which can broadly be separated into different areas. But let’s talk about this another time?
Get to know us, and we will help you improve your community!