Businesses are now seeing community as business critical

58% of world's top SaaS brands are using dedicated brand communities to create high value engagement with customers and partners (PeerSignal). Why? Done the right way, community turns customers into essential participants and co-creators, where data and feedback defines the foundation of successful products, services and brand experiences. 

Forward thinking brands recognize community is no longer a nice-to-have. With low value engagement creating a 23% loss in potential revenue - outdated, one-to-many customer communications and marketing no longer cuts through the noise. Connecting customers to their peers to learn, share and grow can transform customer lifetime value. 

For any business focused on a traditional product-led or sales-led growth strategy, developing a community-led growth strategy may feel like a shift in direction. In reality, community acts as a force multiplier to any existing growth strategy. Community elevates a sales-led approach with authentic evidence of customer satisfaction and proactive support. Community elevates a product-led approach by improving self-service and stimulating valuable feedback.

Whether you need to build a brand community from a cold start or bring existing activities under a single strategy, knowing what steps to follow makes all the difference.

The playbook - 6 Weeks of pre-launch, 8 Weeks of launch

By adopting our tried-and-test community building approach, you'll gain a structured launch plan, broken down into manageable phases, a sample timeline, and comprehensive insights at every stage. In a matter of weeks, you'll have your plan, people, content and technology in place to start driving impact. And the best part? You can tailor everything to suit the unique needs of your business and community members. 

Pre-Launch

• Strategy

Start by defining a clear vision for your community, create clear goals to focus your time and energy on impact and map realistic project milestones

• Backing

Bring everyone in your business onboard with your vision to maximize the opportunity for your community to create efficiencies across the customer lifecycle

• Platform selection

Choose technology that aligns with your strategy, deliverables, budget, and technical skills; making sure you have all the tools to build and adapt over time

Launch

• Planning

Make comprehensive and decisive preparations for a successful community launch, in collaboration with key stakeholders across your organization

• Build

Execute the technical and operational aspects of creating your community, including content creation and configuring your platform.

• Soft Launch

Release of your community to a select group of users to test and refine your community before opening it up to a wider audience.

• Full Launch

Onboard a wider range of users to your customer community to the broader public and maximize adoption and engagement through clear and compelling promotion

Post launch

• Post Launch

Continue to monitor and optimize your community experience and business impact based on user feedback and community metrics.

This is part 1 of Zapnito's "The Complete Community Launch Playbook". Please follow the links below for the whole series:

• Pre Launch
• Launch
• Post Launch

Check The Complete Community Launch Deck, with a week-by-week guide.