Community marketing is a strategy to engage an audience in an active, non-intrusive prospect and customer conversation. Whereas marketing communication strategies such as advertising, promotion, PR, and sales all focus on attaining customers, Community Marketing focuses on the needs of existing customers. This accomplishes four things for a business: * Connects existing customers with prospects * Connects prospects with each other * Connects a company with customers/prospects to solidify loyalty * Connects customers with customers to improve product adoption, satisfaction, etc. There are two types of community marketing: * Organic (created by users with no company intervention) * Sponsored (fostered and hosted by a company) Recent skepticism building among consumers as a result of blatant advertising and other unethical communications has affected the success of the sponsored form of Community Marketing. Continuing success in community marketing strategies has been found in engaging and cultivating the natural communities that form around their product/service.

Benefits

* ''Bi-directional communication with customers'' - Resulting in increased feedback, identification of customer needs, and a customer-focused product development * ''Reduced Communication Barriers'' - Easily introduce messaging to customer audience regarding new products,

Public relations Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. Pu ...

strategies, or

Damage control (news) Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. Pu ...

* ''Identify, engage, and leverage Advocates'' - Allow enthused and loyal customers to benefit your overall marketing through

Word of mouth Word of mouth is the passing of information from person to person using oral communication, which could be as simple as telling someone the time of day. Storytelling is a common form of word-of-mouth communication where one person tells others a ...

and

Knowledge Management Knowledge management (KM) is the set of procedures for producing, disseminating, utilizing, and overseeing an organization's knowledge and data. It alludes to a multidisciplinary strategy that maximizes knowledge utilization to accomplish organ ...

that reduces the load on your internal support mechanisms (particularly for tech products). * ''Gaining Trusted Advisor Status'' - Reduced skepticism towards your marketing message as a result of a demonstrated openness, transparency, and commitment to customer focus through Community Marketing involvement. Results in an "ownership" of the discussion surrounding a product/service that reduces negativity and positions the providing company as a resource, rather than simply a vendor.

Tools used in community marketing

* ''Online Social Networking'' - The chief medium for Community Marketing revolves around

Web 2.0 Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture, and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, a ...

interactivity such as Internet forums,

Wiki A wiki ( ) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or l ...

's,

Social network A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

Blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

s, and related syndication (

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many ...

). * ''Community-Specific Tools & Features'' - To encourage community participation, many companies offer tools and features exclusively to "members" of the community. These include

Webcast A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand. Essentially, webca ...

Podcast A podcast is a Radio program, program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Typically, a podcast is an Episode, episodic series of digital audio Computer file, files that users can download to a personal device or str ...

s, and email bulletins. The key factor, however, in using these tools is the value of the message. Communities revolve around user-valuable messages (information, support, tips & tricks, etc.) and NOT promotional messages. * ''Community Infrastructure and Governance'' - Some communities engage the participation of their customers in the role of elected officials, advisory board members, and volunteer "guru" status in order to exemplify key customers in their communities. * ''Partnerships'' - Although this is often a purely

strategy, some people view partnerships with non-profit consumer advocacy organizations to be a Community Marketing effort.

References

* Community Oriented Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Enlightened Business Development by Ian Bryan (February 2004 - ISBN 0-595-30881-3) {{DEFAULTSORT:Community Marketing Types of marketing