Never Hire A Marketing Agency To Build Your Online Community

I want every reader who works for a brand planning to launch an online community to join Generation Benz. It’s the best example yet of how to do just about everything wrong.

Generation Benz an online community for future buyers of Mercedez Benz.

You will have to join it to see how bad it is (you have to register to see any content). Amongst it’s highlights are:

• It’s built entirely in Flash 10. Many users wont have this, iPads users can’t visit it, it’s slow and buggy. It’s also unfamiliar, big hurdle to those unused to flash.
• The registration process takes ages. Plenty of irrelevant questions are asked. It feels more like a market-research survey than a simple registration process.
• The registration process is also about five pages long.
• There is virtually nothing to do once you join. Only 3 discussions to participate in, most gaining less than 3/4 views per day.
• They have tabs such as live polls which feature no content. Most of the website is quiet and/or dead.

Feel free to enjoy their completely unreadable rules of participation too.

A lot of money has been wasted on a terrible community that breaks all the rules of what makes communities successful. If you’re going to create an online community, copy successful online communities - don't try to break the mould.

If you’re going to hire someone else to build your online community, make sure they have experience developing successful online communities. Look at the number of people participating, now the aesthetics of the website.

Comments

[Wayan]

Wow... I can't visit the site (iPhone) but I read the rules. Or tried to. They're an orgasm of legalese well beyond any reasonable need. My personal fav is the entire section saying that all content you put on the site is property of the company, to do with as they please. Makes the sign up form a privacy give-away.

[Tobeconfirmed]

Richard - thanks for this. Being able to categorically show clients how it shouldn't be done is a really helpful way of convincing them how it needs to be done.

I think your generic statement about marketing agencies is harsh though. Some of us aren't as daft as others ;-)

[Richard Millington]

It was a little harsh, that's true.

Here's the deal. I'll open it to anyone. Show me a few successful online communities created and ran by marketing agencies.

[RobIsIT]

I think that Richard (above) is right - this community was built by a marketing company that is founded in building brochure websites for car companies. It's a good example of how misunderstood online communities are for many companies.

Rather then focus purely on the negative, I like to spin things like this into the positive to figure out what they're doing right - knowing that they're doing just about everything wrong. I've found that there is a lot of value in figuring out what efforts like this stumble upon. Nothing is every *all* bad and what's good in a bad product can be revolutionary when combined with a good product.

[Richard Millington]

What's good about it?

[Josh Grossman]

Richard - I enjoyed and agree with most of the blog post. But, 2 comments:

1 - sometimes blocking a site by requiring registration is effective to communicate exclusivity, eg. RueLaLa.com

2. to your challenge of showing a great community developed by a marketing agency, I believe this one was, and is very succesful:

http://www.realwomenofphiladelphia.com/

[Alison]

I loved the qualifying questions - 'what year were you born in?' has a list up to 1975 and then a 'Before 1975'. Guess what? I'm over 35 and I didn't make the cut. But if I'd wanted to get in, those questions would have been senseless.

T&Cs are very welcoming. :D

[Julia]

Thank you so much Richard for the info. I always read your posts and am trying to use your tips. However is here any tip you can give to a "ne-Woman-Army"? lol I have a community and I would love to take it to the next level. Unfortunately I do it all alone and can always use some good advice :)

Julia
http://www.Successful-Women-Network.com

[Charlotte Beckett]

Hi Rich

Great thoughts as always. I would agree with Wayan that not all us marketers are bad! The fact this is supposed to be a community aside, it's also an incredibly badly designed site. Why Flash? Not very accessible. Where's any basic nav? (I could only find a log in, then the infamous rules - no option to register).

I agree that some form of registration is useful but needs to be put in context. What are you doing with my info? If it's only the under 35s, tell folk before they start the process. Weird cut off point too - perhaps the premise of the site could be explained.

All in all, makes me glad I've chosen the partners I've chosen to develop www.wearecamden.org Gives me more time to concentrate on the hard part: establishing the community. That's where the marketing skills should come in.

Charlotte

[SoniaC]

Hi again Richard, could not resist commenting on this one...

This is a prime example of objectives getting muddied with "bingo, let's build a community". This is the classical "wrapper" I was referring to in my post.

There is no instant gratification, the brand's intentions are a complete yard sale on the registration and all of this for what?? I'm assuming the end goal here would have been to get some crowd sourcing. Much easier to accomplish without the use of a community all together. Leveraging existing channels and communities may have been one of many smarter tactics.

It's not always the agency's fault, it's the assumption that a community is the panacea to all marketing challenges.

The worst part is that this initiative will probably keep hemorrhaging as they analyze the low engagement to throw more resources into "fixing it".

This, by the way is not an attack on communities, it's a commentary on the misuse of them.

[Will England]

Copy-pasta'd in its entirety (with linkback) so our marketing folks get to see your post!

We've had this happen before - community 'micro-sites' with flash driven odd-interface stuff. We've seen it fail to work. We've also seen low-end basic interfaces take off like rockets with huge participation and collaboration.

http://community.sprint.com/baw/community/buzzaboutwireless/general/meta/blog/2010/10/08/how-not-to-build-a-community