Too many community strategies are built on hunches and outdated assumptions about what people really want from brand/product communities.
This leads to too many organisations spending too much time trying to provide members with things they don’t want.
….and far too little time giving members precisely what they want from communities.
This raises the question: what do members really want?
What If We’re Very Wrong About What Members Want?
Last week, I spoke with an organisation that had spent over a year trying to get its off-topic section of the community going so that members could feel a sense of belonging.
Imagine spending a year of your life ignoring daily data points that told you members weren’t interested in what you wanted them to do.
If you need a more extensive dataset, look no further than our Modern Member Report – a 1400+ study comprising a representative sample of adult Americans.
Here’s a critical data point.
You can see that feeling a sense of belonging is at the bottom of the table, and accessing quality information is at the top.
Now think about how much time we spend (waste?) trying to get members to feel a sense of belonging in brand communities – when that’s literally the last thing they want.
But we haven’t gotten to the most fascinating part yet.
Do you notice how finding deals and promotions and discovering products and services rank remarkably highly?
In short, your members say they want to be marketed to in a community—but they want it done right.
The FeverBee Hierarchy of Community Needs
We can use this data to build a new community hierarchy of needs based on real data from members telling us what they want.
Foundation Need – Resolve Frustration (information needs)
By far, the core need of community members is access to high-quality information. For most members, finding answers to previous questions is more important than being able to ask new questions (in fact, most people don’t have to ask new questions because they’ve found answers to past questions).
It’s hard to overstate how important it is to satisfy this need successfully. There are several practical steps to doing this well. These include:
- Easy navigation. Ensure the community sections have great navigation and a clear taxonomy. Content should be properly tagged/categorised. Related questions appearing next to help articles and similar questions appearing alongside current questions are also great additions here.
- A great search experience. Cognitive search hasn’t entirely lived up to its hype – but it’s still better than the search experiences of most communities. Retrieving and correctly prioritising relevant sections of the community remains a critical asset. The right content needs to be given priority.
- Quick, quality answers to pre- and post-purchase questions are essential. This requires a good registration and onboarding experience (people should be able to ask questions in 3 minutes max), a good user experience (good signposting and instructions), a strong superuser program, escalation processes, and a quality check of past responses. Removing or archiving outdated questions is also useful.
This is the foundation level. If you just get this right – you’re doing better than most.
Tier Two – Be Seen and Heard (Feedback and Responses)
Members want to feel listened to, know they matter, and have had an impact.
Once you’ve resolved the member’s need for information (and absolved frustration), it’s time to work on your ability to accept feedback and respond to members.
The community manager can’t do this alone – especially if they can only offer sympathy and warm thoughts.
Ultimately, members want to hear from brand representatives who can engage with them deeply about the topic.
This might include:
- Direct training from brand representatives. Training brand reps to engage directly in the community (something the community architect or consultants should be doing).
- Providing members with open-clinic hours to ask questions and address issues. This should be done by product managers and people with deep expertise in the products.
- Engaging product managers to talk openly about the product is good here. Blog posts, updates, taking questions from members, and responding to requests and complaints in the open are good here.
- Respond and listen to customer feedback. Provide input and proactively engage when members suggest ideas and submit complaints.
The key here is to ensure members don’t feel they’re talking to the void or getting responses which seem patronising or placating.
Tier Three – Be Excited (deals and promotions)
This level is almost entirely absent from official brand communities but very often present in unofficial communities.
This is where customers can identify deals and promotions from which they benefit.
These might include any combination of:
- Short-term, limited offers and promotions only available to community members. These might include discounts, upgrades, or community-specific tiers and coupons.
- Offer from partners. Who can the organisation team up with to offer special deals to community members? Is it possible to work with event organisers, implementation partners, consultants, or related products to create special offers for members?
- Links to products and services which are mentioned in community posts. Some news organisations are leading the way in linking content mentioned in articles/questions to affiliate links/discounts to purchase the product.
- Resale opportunities where members can sell second-hand products to one another. Why not offer members the means to sell second-hand products/gear to one another?
Tier Four – Be Inspired
The final level is discovery. This is where people look for (or stumble upon) new, interesting products and information they didn’t know (or had forgotten) existed.
This can be created through a combination of member content and organisation-created content. This might include:
- Members sharing their technology/recommendations stack. It’s remarkable how popular it is for members to share which tools they use in almost every community—except those owned/run by organisations that sell community tools. Why not create a place for members to share their stack (even if it’s just a discussion post)?
- Recommended partners. Provide a list of recommended partners and consultants with whom people can work to implement the solution or achieve their goals. This may be an exciting way to generate revenue from the community.
- Showcases and examples of how companies are using products. Create a showcase of successful examples people can learn from and be inspired by. This is one of the things worth gamifying and directly incentivising. A great showcase directly drives more sales and revenue.
- Videos and breakdowns of excellent examples. Deconstruct some great examples, highlighting how and why they are great examples. It is even better if you are motivating members to create this content.
- Lists of member ratings, reviews, and recommendations. Provide the means and encourage members to leave their ratings, reviews, and recommendations of the products they use.
Treat this as a set of options rather than a comprehensive list.
The goal is to encourage those of us managing and supporting brand/product communities to support a broader set of needs that aligns well with the needs and goals of both our members and marketing professionals.
Summary
Information is still the critical thing members want from a community, but it’s not the only thing.
Members don’t want to feel a sense of belonging; they want to engage in exciting places – and this presents opportunities.
Here’s a summary:
- Community strategies often rely on outdated or incorrect assumptions: Many organisations focus on providing things their members don’t want, ignoring data that shows what members actually desire.
- Data shows members prioritise information: The top priority for community members is accessing high-quality information, while creating a sense of belonging ranks much lower. Too much energy is spent on events that only engage a small fraction of the audience.
- Members want marketing, done right: Surprisingly, members want to be marketed to, with a higher emphasis on discovering deals and products over events.
- The FeverBee Hierarchy of Community Needs: This new model identifies four levels:
- Tier one: Relieve Frustration (Information needs) Members want easy access to quality answers and information.
- Tier Two: Be seen and Heard (Feedback and Responses): They want to feel heard by the brand.
- Tier Three: Feel excited (Deals and Promotions): Exclusive offers excite members.
- Tier Four: Be Inspiration (new products/information). Members appreciate discovering new products and content through the community.
- Focus on broader needs: Communities should address a wider range of needs that align with marketing goals to engage members better.
Aside – I strongly suggest having someone (ourselves or another consultancy) evaluate your audience and their needs to develop a customized set of requirements your community can satisfy.
Good luck!
