Community-led Growth: Groundbreaking Growth Strategy For Startups

What if we told you that there is a way beyond spending big money on traditional marketing and advertising to drive growth?

What if there was a group of people associated with your business who felt a sense of belonging to your products or your company?

What if dissemination of information was made as simple as passing it on to just an individual?

Yes, we are talking about a thriving community for your business.

Community — The buzzword in startup culture

Community is a very broad concept. However, there are certain universal characteristics associated with all communities, although the cause for which the members of the community have come together might vary.

To put it in basic terms, a community is a group of people who share a common purpose, and it is this shared purpose that has brought them together.

Building a community for your startup should not be misunderstood as building an audience. When building an audience, your focus is on a single individual. In the case of a community, it is a whole group that you focus on.

The value that a community brings to your business is way more than what an audience does.

Well, building a community with its members connected to a broad cause — let’s say your company’s mission — is certainly something that you can’t let go. Apart from this, you should also focus on building narrower communities, with a diversity of causes. You can have a student community, a mothers community, a musicians community — just whatever suits your business model.

Why build a community

Human beings are social animals, and they crave a sense of connectedness, belonging, mission and meaning.

Information spreads like wildfire

Instead of spending extensive resources and time on marketing, why not focus on building a community. We are not completely ruling out the role of marketing here, but with a thriving community comes the benefit of an intangible marketing tool — word-of-mouth.

Brand awareness is what you need to work on to propel you from a startup to a household name. You can spend hefty sums on advertising, but to earn the special distinction of being a household name, word-of-mouth is integral, and so is a community.

In touch with ground reality

You may have ticked all the boxes required for growth, but staying relevant and updated with the consumers’ demands is something that will never leave your back.

A community can help shape your products and services for the good. A trustworthy feedback loop is a natural offshoot of a community. By actively listening to the members of your community and making necessary changes, you will churn out products and services that are consumer-centric.

Building everlasting personal bonds

There is so much talk about the need for startups to engage with people and build personal bonds. This is where a community becomes all the more important. Your company’s community comprises people who know what you are as a company. There is a natural personal bond that emanates from this.

Having people who identify with your purpose helps create intrinsic bonds that are everlasting.

The focus for any startup should be to build a family around its business, which comprises its employees, customers, and the broader community. This is only possible when all these people are woven together by a common purpose.

Nothing beats sustainable and qualitative growth — the most significant characteristic of community-led growth. The process of community building might take some time for your startup, but once you have it, get ready for exponential growth.