Strategies for Community-Driven Marketing

Take a closer look. Influencer marketing isn’t what it used to be.…… Here is what you should know: What Really Happened? We’ve seen it firsthand—what worked before doesn’t work the same way now. Here’s what changed: • Big influencers lost their grip. Brands realized that micro and niche influencers drive better engagement and trust. • One-off campaigns stopped delivering. A single post rarely moves the needle anymore—long-term ambassador programs are far more effective. • UGC and AI creators exploded. Brands found they could get high-quality content without relying solely on influencers. • The agency model got disrupted. Many brands shifted influencer marketing in-house, cutting out middlemen and unnecessary fees. • Data became non-negotiable. Engagement rates aren’t enough—brands now demand clear conversion metrics like CPV, CPA, and LTV. • And here’s the secret—community is everything. Brands that invested in building real communities, not just paying influencers, saw the biggest wins. The Secret to Long-Term Success: People-to-People Marketing Influencers come and go, but communities last. The biggest shift happening now? People trust people, not just influencers. Facebook groups, private Discord servers, patient communities, and brand-led ambassador programs are outperforming traditional influencer campaigns. If brands want to succeed, they need to stop thinking of influencer marketing as one-way promotion and start thinking about people-to-people marketing. This means: ✅ Focusing on relationships, not transactions. Long-term partnerships with engaged micro-communities will outperform quick-hit campaigns. ✅ Building brand-led communities. Own your audience—don’t rely solely on social platforms or influencers to connect with your customers. ✅ Empowering real people as advocates. Your best marketers might not be influencers—they’re the customers, employees, and brand fans already talking about you. ✅ Making content work harder. Repurpose influencer and community-driven content for paid ads, email marketing, shop and website assets. ✅ Measuring what matters. Stop guessing—track conversions, retention, and customer lifetime value (LTV). The brands that evolve and build real communities will thrive. The ones that don’t? They’ll be left chasing trends that no longer deliver. #CEGAgency #CEGHealth

Consistency in community-led Go-to-Market (GTM) doesn't mean bombarding. After observing countless product communities, here's a revelation: To 10x your community-led GTM efforts, it's sometimes more effective to... focus less on frequency and more on quality. 1. Pre-launch co-creation ↳ Involve your potential community early. Co-create the product, from features to marketing. This builds ownership and excitement. ↳ Example: Figma engaged designers early through access programs, allowing feedback that shaped development, ensuring it met user needs. 2. Gamified onboarding ↳ Replace boring tutorials with engaging, game-like experiences. Points, badges, and rewards make learning about your product fun and rewarding. ↳ Example: Grammarly boosts engagement with "daily goals" and streaks, fostering a habit of good writing practices through a fun, rewarding system. 3. Micro-influencer partnerships ↳ Leverage micro-influencers within your community. Their genuine connection with followers can authentically showcase your product's value. ↳ Example: Ahrefs partners with industry bloggers and micro-influencers for tutorials and reviews, effectively expanding brand awareness and trust within the SEO community. 4. Community-driven knowledge base ↳ Encourage users to build the knowledge base. User-generated content and peer-to-peer support enhance engagement and collective wisdom. ↳ Example: Zapier leverages its community forum for users to exchange automation workflows and solutions, enhancing the platform's value through collective wisdom. This approach doesn't require daily actions but involves strategic, meaningful engagement that fosters a strong, vibrant community around your product. Remember, quality over quantity always wins. ❤️♻️ P.S. How often do you engage with your community? I think we should aim for meaningful interactions 4-5 times a week. __ 📌 If you found this helpful, reshare this to your network and follow me Joseph Abraham for daily Go-to-market insights, frameworks, tools, and tips

Sometimes suffering needs a companion, other times it needs a solution. A community can help you get both. Bad puns aside, if you are a D2C brand focusing on niche solutions, you need to build community as a part of your offering. Let me explain why with example of a IVF clinic. We'll call it Beyond The Stork aka BTS. Let's understand the user PoV first! Imagine this - you are one half of a couple who is struggling with infertility issues. It's mentally exhausting, financially draining and definitely doesn't make up for a great tea time conversation. You are visiting doctors, trying all sorts of treatments but it's taking longer than you would want. You feel lonely and helpless and even though your inner circle is empathetic you don't have a support system because they can't relate to you. Cue: A community of people who share your pain, your struggles and have found success through the same doc/clinic/offering as the one you are being recommended now. Would you prefer BTS or rely on the ads that started showing up to you thanks to the non-stop intrusive listening of social media platforms? Quite a picture eh? Let's look at how you can utilise this behavioural insight and create communities with very specific biz objectives, without diluting the humanity of your customers!! 👉 Acquisition - Word of mouth is the most reliable source followed by user generated content (UGC) including reviews, tips and tricks to make the journey more bearable and a general support system who won't judge your users' 3am rant. 👉 Content & information distribution - A community, specially if it's a private kind is a safe space for people to open up and discuss things that matter. It also provides a venue for anyone in a fix trying to navigate the complex journey to parenthood. The same content may be utilized to create awareness on more public platforms across formats such as website articles, podcasts, social posts and success stories. 👉 Product and feature request - Building is hard, getting real insight into user behavior is harder. Communities allow you to get the pulse of users because of the pull mechanism. You can analyse data, understand patterns in the discussions and interactions. An already engaged person will have a higher motivation to share feedback than whatever controlled group study you conduct.While I have taken an example of a fertility clinic, the fundamental idea will apply to everything niche. What do you think? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi, I am Nipun - a lifelong community first founder with a successful exit to my name. If you are exploring communities for your app, want to understand the right use case or want to figure out community strategy, slide into my DMs. We can help you integrate social community features in your app in way lesser time than it takes to determine if IVF is a suitable solution for someone or not.

I often see people who misinterpret social media as a community building tool. It can be used as such, but very tough to do. (and most people who think they are doing it right are just building another distribution outlet — which is great, but different from building a community) It requires a slightly different approach than the average social strategy. Social Platforms (like X & LinkedIn) • Open networks • Content dependent • Great because people are usually spending lots of their time there • Tough to stand out since you’re competing against the algorithm, other creators, brands, and everyone else in the feed Community Platforms (like Discord, Slack, Circle) • Usually closed networks • Dependent on user engagement • Great for consolidating your core group of members • Very tough to maintain over time since you need people to come back to your specific group (even tougher if engagement is declining) Ok, so how do you use social platforms top build an online community? 1/ Define your community 2/ Share it on your social accounts, in your bio, etc. 3/ Align your content around this community and what they love 4/ When you create your content, keep this specific community in mind 5/ Share updates publicly just like you would within a Discord channel 6/ Allocate a good chunk of time per day to community management 7/ Nurture your most engaged followers by supporting their content 8/ Make introductions directly in the feed wherever possible 9/ Use your platform to elevate others in your community 10/ Introduce group language that people can use How do you know when you’re doing it right? • People will use your account to discover others with similar interests • People will use your language and phrases in their posts • People will use the comments section of your posts like a forum • People will host meetups or connect with one another IRL at events • People will often tag you in content related to your community In closing, Yes, you can use social platforms like X & LinkedIn to build an online community. But it requires much more effort than just posting content about your brand or the problem you solve. You’ve got to constantly keep the community you’re serving top of mind, put in the time to nurture your members, and be consistent over a long period of time.

Okay, real talk about startup marketing that I wish someone had told me 10 years ago. After working with dozens of early-stage companies, I’ve realized most marketing advice out there is either too basic ⟮"start a blog!"⟯ or completely unrealistic for teams with limited resources. Here are 3 most unconventional ⟮possibly controversial⟯ tips that I’ve find to work the best: 1. Your first marketing hire should rarely be a CMO – I see so many founders immediately hunting for a senior marketing leader, when what they actually need is someone scrappy who could write copy on Monday, analyze data on Tuesday, and fix the website on Wednesday. 2. The "marketing checklist" is usually a distraction – Social accounts on every platform? Check. Blog? Check. Newsletter? Check. And yet... crickets for results. Pick ONE channel that connects directly to your ideal customer and go impossibly deep on it before adding anything else. 3. Community building beats content marketing almost every time - Competing against established players with way bigger budgets & domain authority is a waste of time. Building community - not so much. The ROI on community building is exponentially higher for early-stage companies than pumping out simple blog posts nobody reads. What marketing challenges are you facing in your startup journey?  Drop a question in the comments or DM me – I’m opening up my inbox to answer your specific marketing questions this week! Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs come from the simplest conversations. Let’s chat!