What is online community marketing?
Unlike traditional methods, online community marketing is less about pushing out messages and more about stimulating and embracing conversations with your customers. This could be via a Facebook group, web forum, portal, blog or message board – any virtual space where your audience might gather and where you can offer them value beyond your product.
Done well, this approach is a great way to show your customers how much you care. It can improve the customer experience and ultimately earn their loyalty and advocacy. At the same time, by giving you a direct line to the people who know your business best, the community you create can become an indispensable source of insight.
Since the launch of her BARE Guide Facebook community, Leah Itsines, founder of the Bare food platform, has experienced these benefits first hand. Here she talks about how she’s nurtured her community and the phenomenal effect it’s had on her brand.
You already had a huge following on Instagram and an active Facebook page. What prompted you to launch a Facebook community group as well?
We sell online healthy eating programs and we always had a lot of people coming to us with questions. I couldn’t always respond, especially being a global business and dealing with time differences.
So we launched the Facebook community as a private group for our customers who’d bought the BARE guide. I wanted them to have somewhere they could go to ask questions, get motivated and be empowered by other women. I was determined to make it a fun, positive place where I could connect with members and where they would feel safe and supported.
It has very much flourished from there and we now have nearly 15,000 members.
What value-add do you offer members to attract them and keep them engaged?
Even though they’ve already purchased from us, we still nurture them with as much free value content as possible.
I’m careful not to give away the recipes etc. that people pay for, so we’ve broadened our focus to cover anything in the realm of health and wellness – for example, tips and tricks, motivational content, or exercise videos.
We also release any new products to our community first because they’re our priority. And we’ve noticed that a high percentage of them repurchase from us because they’re so engaged.
How does engagement within your community compare with other channels?
It’s very active in the group – in just the last 28 days we’ve had 55,700 comments, posts and reactions. Everyone loves to share their wins inside the group, which promotes lots of activity and motivation.
I’m in there 24/7 just chatting, responding to direct messages, commenting on photos and answering questions about our new guide, BARE Lean.
Compared to other channels, I interact with the group on a more personal level as we can talk about the guides and our experiences cooking the same meals. I share more with them because they’ve supported me, so I want to support them as much as possible.
How important is this level of openness to building a closer relationship with your customers?
I think that’s how we’ve been able to grow this really supportive community. People can actually see my face and see what I do every day and how I work – they understand the brand more than the average person would.
They can talk to me, they can hear me and we can actually have a proper conversation – they’re not getting an automated response. They feel like I’m part of their day.
It’s important that you’re making yourself look and feel attainable to the people who want to invest in you.
Anyone can do it. Even if you think you have something where you’re not sure people would care about the ‘behind the scenes’ stuff, chances are they’d love to know how you came to create that and what your thoughts and ideas are – they get inspiration from that.
Given the level of engagement, do your community members act as marketers for your brand?
Absolutely. We work with influencers to help promote our products and also ‘community leaders’ that are members who love our product and use it every day.
They already love our product and give us testimonials because they want to, not because they feel like they have to do something for us. This enables us to showcase our credibility both within our community and outside the community as well.
Do you get much in the way of valuable feedback from your community and is this something you actively encourage?
These are the people we’re trying to service so their opinion is really important.
I always ask for as much feedback as possible and our Facebook community is the most responsive. Anytime we ask questions they’re the most excited to give us answers because they want us to develop more products for them.
Our most recent product, BARE Lean, came as a direct response to member feedback. They told us they wanted a solution for healthy weight loss so we gave it to them.
It’s a 100% community-driven product and you can tell because everyone’s really excited, they’re using it and they’re very appreciative of the fact that we listened to them (and we’re appreciative of the fact they would share with us!).
It seems like your community now has a life of its own with members happily engaging amongst themselves?
Yes, it’s amazing. Someone might ask, ‘Hey guys, what’s a good swap for this bread?’ And someone else will come in and say, ‘Hey, I’m gluten intolerant as well, let’s chat.’ So it’s not just me answering questions anymore – it’s become a real community where people are helping one another.
It’s also great because our member base is quite wide. As well as Australia, we have people in the US, UK, Canada and Germany sharing tips and ideas. For example, around ingredients they can’t find. Obviously, I don’t know their supermarkets, but then they’ll talk among themselves and answer each other’s questions.
It makes my job easier and it makes them feel like they’re being supported by more people than just me – they’re being supported by 15,000 other people.
