The brand communities are such a simple idea as effective: When a furniture company creates a social space to talk about decoration, when a company of food products form a community to share recipes or as a fashion brand organizes a micro-social network to share street style looks are opening the door to a huge amount of content at a very low cost, as well as greater interaction and customer engagement.
Of course, do not confuse brand communities promotional spaces, and finally are participants (consumers and customers) who by generally initiate discussions and issues that deal with own brands. In any case, there are many advantages that such communities have for businesses. Since give visibility to the brand to get new data and information about consumers without being constrained by the restrictions of the popular general social networks. Something that explores a new study of Leader Networks and CMX Media and reveals how online brand community are gaining more and more strength among companies.
When asked about the impact that brand communities have on the results of a company, an overwhelming 86% of respondents replied that they had an impact on income and another 85% said improved customer journey and increased the trust.
What are the main objectives leading brands to bet on such initiatives?
The principal, increase retention and customer satisfaction, something that 57% of respondents are among the top three reasons. 47% also cites to collect ideas that drive new products and services and 30% reduce support costs (since in many cases the users themselves resolve questions related to the use of brand products).
When should launch a brand community?
The study also asked companies for the signals that tell them it is time to launch a brand community or that such an initiative will be well received by customers. Given that the success of these online communities depends on their use by members, it is important to ensure that there is some demand before releasing.
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For most respondents, the clearer your clientele looking for a brand community call sign is offered frequently and on its own initiative feedback or ideas on products (to 54%) or actively seek answers to doubts (to 53%). Other signs are cited confidence in the brand experience in a particular field or often help resolve complex issues that generate a lot of conversation.
In contrast, the main fear that backtracks to brands is that the community can be little vibrant or having insufficient active participants. In that sense, it is essential to have a strategy to encourage customers to join those platforms. To do this, companies are using very different approaches, but emphasize the use of social networks to publicize the existence of the community (which makes 58%) of employees, and report on the events (37%) or send invitations via email to subscribers (37%). Most also stressed that all activities undertaken to attract new members, the most effective is the promotion through social networks.
Finally, the report shows that 9 out of 10 companies with any online brand community are satisfied with the results and value the initiative as a success.
Tags: ompanies, The brand community
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