Online brand communities can often be understated in their effectiveness in keeping customers happy, loyal and engaged – and more often than not, this can spell great news for your profit margins.

With this in mind, today we’re looking at 6 reasons why a brand community can help to give you that competitive edge, increasing your sales and improving your customer retention all the while.

Brand ambassadors emerge

One important consideration to have in mind from the off is that not every customer you have is part of your brand community. Some customers will shout louder about you than others, while some customers won’t shout about you at all.

Enter brand ambassadors.

Communities spearheaded by trustworthy brand ambassadors can help organically grow a following from your customer base. These people will not only be active within the community, but also active on social media, sharing your posts, starting conversations and the likes. And because your brand ambassadors are transparent and authentic, they’re more likely to obtain the trust of others, helping build your community and, subsequently, your brand as a result.

Fuels business growth

The math is simple – successful communities attract more custom. Mature brand communities can even attract as much as 70% traffic from search engines, providing you with the ideal opportunity to reach valuable users.

To ensure you’re effectively aligning yourself with the intent of these users, ensure your brand community is a rich informational hub. This will enable users to find solutions within the community, building brand trust and awareness as a result. Of course, this all amounts in fuelling the growth of your business by expanding the potential of your organic reach.

Emphasises customer care

Brand communities champion customer care, which when done correctly, can pay dividends on your overall profit margins.

Meeting customers on their terms and having readily available answers for all queries is a sure-fire way to impress, increasing the likelihood of customer retention as a result. Of course, it’s key that customer service teams are trained on community etiquette and best practices, but resources spent on this aspect of your brand community can bring significant return in the long run.

Saves company resources

New and old members can ask questions, make connections and solve problems within a brand community – all without consulting a member of your immediate team. Why is this a competitive edge? Well, by ensuring your brand community is self-serving, it frees up company resources – whether that be through your members’ organic creation of content or through the ability to source solutions to problems and queries themselves.

Of course, the benefit here speaks for itself. More resource at your disposal means more attention spent elsewhere in the business, giving you a competitive edge by enabling you to become more proactive and reactive.

Enables customer-centric innovations

One of the biggest advantages boasted by brand communities is the ability to encourage brand-consumer conversations.

With this in mind, seeking input from community members is common ground for a lot of brand communities – and while these thoughts, opinions and inputs always hold some objective value, they can be cleverly utilised for significant gain. For example, seeking customer feedback enables you to better align your new products, processes and innovations with the wants and needs of your audience. Why is this important? Because it’s a data-driven way of ensuring your meeting the wants, needs and expectations of your audience, likely boosting your sales all the while.

Emphasises the ‘human’

It is becoming more and more common to see AI bots answering user queries online. While this is sometimes a very cost-effective way to tackle customer service, it can also be implemented so badly that customers take their business elsewhere. Delivering a community service that combines the benefits of automation with human content is therefore the winning ticket, ensuring transparent and authentic brand-customer interactions.

Leading communities are ones that are now able to combine these two elements successfully. Doing so will ensure you obtain and retain consumer trust, giving you a competitive edge over those companies stuck in older ways.

Ready to begin brand community building to find that competitive edge? Get in touch with Six Circles today and request a free demo of our community engagement platform – with our platform, establishing your brand community has never been easier!