As customer community experts, we always keep our eyes peeled for new trends where we see online communities can play a role. Demand generation is certainly a very relevant one.

Honestly, we always get a bit nervous when the marketing team gets involved with customer communities. Not because the intention and plans are not good. Not at all! It’s because the old digital marketing tactics which have been perfected for lead generation when applied directly can kill a community.

The moment community members “smell” that they are directly being sold to, and controlled, the trust and involvement erodes. When we do interviews with community members, this is what we are often told as a reason to disengage.

At the same time, the most successful communities we have seen have marketing involved! So what is the difference? We think the current Demand Generation motions are what will make the difference.

So why do we think online communities can be essential for the success of Demand Generation?

1. Showcase your understanding of your audience’s problem before they even do
2. Showcase how you interact with your customers and what they can expect when they buy
3. Source relevant topics and segments for your back-office campaigns
4. Support independent customer journey
5. Enrich your demand generation playbook

20 times bigger

The current explosion of lead generation tactics and the tools that allow the masses to make that happen has led to a visible “lead generation fatigue”. Not just with marketeers but also with the targeted lead audiences. More and more, decision-makers are committees and they do their homework preferably anonymously. They collect information by being inspired by others who have applied a solution they may also need in the future.

Most of the lead generation budgets traditionally have focused on the 5% “aware target audience” but the “unaware target audience” (the remaining 95%) that demand generation is targeting is 20 times bigger. It does require a different approach and more patience. Having a tactic for both lead generation and demand generation is now the norm. Harvesting leads from demand generation is the new game.

What does it take? What's in it for marketing? Gold Dust!

What it does take is to successfully do demand generation with an online community? Well, a community draws on the fundamental principle of “listen-respond”. This means that the topics that marketing is basing its messaging and segmenting on are inspired by actual community hotspot conversations.

This requires a new game with a new set of rules. You can’t play football on a cricket field. If played well, you will see is a positive contribution to lead generation over time. While the rest of the organization is engaging with your customers in the online community, marketeers stay invisible and are listening and viewing conversations.

Instead of marketing being as visible as possible, the new game is to be Invisible!

We say this because we have seen direct marketing tactics fail time and again in communities. Direct advertising in the community, paid content writers, direct mailing contact with new registrations about new products and forced moderation on content that does not meet the marketing-designed narrative are just a few.

However, if you have the patience and the trust, then a well-operating (online) community really delivers marketing Demand (and even Lead-) generation gold dust that we all too often see go to waste because the game, the team and the tactics are not in place.

Tactics for the new game

So, what ARE then the tactics that we see working for this new game, Demand Generation with an Online Community?

1. Listen and Respond: Marketing is good at writing narratives and crafting compelling messages. An online community will reveal where there is a need for such a message and for which audience. Use community audience insights to segment demand-generation audiences. Use community hot topics as agenda items.
2. Patience and Trust: Do not do direct lead generation via the community. Stay in the background, observe, and use your marketing channels to target the audience with the right message. Trust your community audience.
3. New Game: Inform your team that you will play a new game “Demand Generation with Online Communities”. It is a new game and it requires a different attitude towards the audience. Be invisible, listen and react, instead of pushing your message. Also, allow authentic interactions to happen.
4. Join forces with the Customer Support Team if you can. If you do not have a community yet, the most likely candidate to join forces with is Customer Support or Customer Success. Their delivery engine, focusing on case deflection and customer loyalty, is the engine that delivers the marketing ecosystem to listen and define the demand generation campaigns.

What do you think?

Running an online community is rewarding but also challenging. As a community team, you are always trying to understand how individuals and groups behave and how you can make a difference to them.

How the marketing team can best get value from and also contribute to an online community is still in its infancy. Even if the marketing sees this as a brand enhancing activity, it is teams like the customer support and customer success teams that are usually the most involved in running communities.

We’ve had the privilege to work with a lot of our customers on this journey and we are the first to admit that this is still emerging. We still want to learn and listen ourselves. Hear other perspectives. Especially from the marketing pioneers who continuously reinvent themselves.

We invite you to share your experiences and perspectives, allowing us to refine our approach further. Feel free to schedule a meeting to engage in this crucial dialogue.

Together, let's reshape the landscape of marketing and propel our organizations towards a future where customers evolve into fervent fans and fans attract new audiences. We look forward to collaborating with you on this transformative journey.

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