Did you know that brand communities pull nearly seventy percent of traffic from search engines? In other words, communities due to SEO attract larger audiences from the search engines as they have the power to reach more customers and provide more value than other resources.
As time goes on and you share more content or encourage your members to interact, developing user-generated content, you increase the keywords or data you need for search engines to find you and your business.
Not only that, but people also thrive in communities—people like feeling connected to others. Even self-professed introverts are online and participating in online communities. When you have a wider reach and get more members, you are also more likely to easily sell more products with the generated social proof — which is exactly what online or brand communities provide. So, the wider your reach, the more engaged your communities, the more you can grow.
Here are five ways online or brand communities promote lead generation:
Superior Quality Content
The content generated in your communities will naturally be more relevant than anything you can produce on your own. Even if you are a member of your own ideal customer base, there will always be things that you’re just not going to know to ask. Having a community will reveal inside information from your group members about what type of content they want to consume. Hint: Once you have this information, you can use it to generate content outside of your community too.
Word-Of-Mouth Marketing
We keep mentioning word-of-mouth marketing because it’s imperative that you understand how important this is. It’s a big deal to know that you can speak to your customer directly, and they are essentially holding you in the palm of their hand.
They may even read your group content while taking care of their personal business, waiting on kids, or even while drinking coffee. As a result, they feel relaxed and can engage when they want to on their time which makes them feel good about you, so good they tell others about you.
Insights and Analytics
You know that everything is about data today. All the choices you make in your business, and your life, are affected by the information you collect and the data you generate. Just reading this, you are generating data because your IP address is almost always recorded when you go to someone’s website to read it. Likewise, you will know when your audience members read your content and even where they go next, and if they leave a comment, you will learn even more.
This information can help you develop sales material, new products, more services and give you ideas about problems and solutions that your audience needs.
Feedback and Reviews
For some reason, group members are much more likely to provide feedback and product reviews than people who buy the same thing but never interact with the community. If you want more feedback and reviews, hosting a community is a sure-fire way to make it happen. When you get this feedback and the reviews, it’s on you to use them to improve.
Member-To-Member Engagement and Interaction
Watching your members interact and engage with each other is also a really big deal. In the old days, you might have to form a focus group, but in these modern times, all you need is to create a vibrant and active community to find out what your members think of your products and services.
As you can see, communities are attractive to consumers. They provide the social proof and trust they need to join your community and potentially increase your revenue. In other words, the larger and more engaged the community is, the easier it will be to find people to market to. So, if you want the potential of endless leads, starting a brand community should be at the top of your priority list.