5 tips to transform your audience into a thriving community
Sometimes, the biggest hurdle a new online business has is getting customers to buy its products and growing an audience that supports its brand. But after gaining traction with those benchmarks, the next logical step that many businesses skip or overlook is creating a thriving community.
Taking followers and customers from transactional one-offs to community members of shared space increases brand loyalty and helps you and the community connect on a more meaningful level.
Developing a buyer persona for your brand or business is one of the first steps in creating a community.
Community brings people together, giving them purpose for a greater good, beyond themselves.
Having a community can prove highly beneficial for your business, and, no doubt, mutually beneficial to your audience because they feel they are a part of something bigger.
(Click here to jump down to the TL;DR)
How to get started with transforming your audience into a thriving community
Make a customer profile
Unlike a buyer persona that’s (nearly) completely made up by someone working the brand a customer profile is based on actual customer data.
It details the different types of customer segments, identifies and targets pain points, applies customer feedback, and prioritizes customers’ values within your value proposition. In other words, it puts you in your customers’ shoes.
Research target demographic
Getting a foundational sense of your core audience is important. That begins with identifying the basics, such as:
Age
Gender
Location
Education
Income
Occupation
Marital Status
Ethnicity
Using your demographics to refine the needs of your core customers, which informs what your product should be. Which, in turn, helps to drive action, accelerate growth, and increase revenue.
Next, observe how they interact with other brands and their buyer behavior to understand their attitudes, values, and lifestyles – that’s psychographics, which informs how you speak to your audience.
Build a buyer persona
In order to create a thriving community, you need to have a crystal clear understanding of your brand, so you can have a crystal clear description of your buyer persona.
When Elementum was creating buyer personas, these are some of the questions we asked ourselves:
What industries do our target customers/merchants work in?
Are our target merchants low or high volume stores?
Are these merchants a one-person show, small team or large operation?
What kinds of customers are they trying to appeal to?
Put the answers to those questions together, and you have yourself a buyer persona. The answers can be based on research, or simply who you, as the business owner, see or want your customers to be.
While a lot of new business owners like to proclaim their product is for everyone, and that’s true, it’s important to distinguish that that’s not who you’re talking to. Think of it this way, the buyer persona creates the vibe to attract your tribe.
Share information
You are the expert! Even if you don’t feel like one or think you are, you know enough to provide your audience with information and tidbits on your industry, how-to’s to enrich their skills or abilities, and what some call edu-tainment to keep them interested. Use that to build intrigue and thought leadership.
You can also open it up to them, and have them interact with each other, by also sharing what they know. Highlighting the skills and knowledge of your community members gets them involved and keeps them engaged.
Establish your leadership
Establish yourself as a leader or expert in your industry. It doesn’t need to feel intimidating. Focus on what you know and what you are passionate about. Share that knowledge, however big or small, with your audience.
Becoming the go-to leader on your niche attracts people naturally, creating an iron-clad community.
TL;DR
Transforming your audience into a community is key to business development and sales growth.
The 5 simple steps to building a thriving community for your business include:
Making customer profiles that inform your value proposition
Doing research to discover your target demographic and psychographic to refine your product, customer service, brand, and buyer persona
Developing a buyer persona creates the vibe that attracts your tribe
Sharing edu-tainment and asking audience to share resources help to engage and involve your audience builds stronger connections
Establishing yourself as leader for authoritative content within your niche will naturally attract an authentic community
