5 Reasons On Why Community Is The Future of Marketing

Today I'm going to give you 5 reasons why community is the future of marketing. So my name is Eric Siu and I'm here to help level up the world. So let us get into it. So community is the future of marketing because we are going into the world of Web3, meaning that a lot of the stuff that we are doing in the Web2 world right now, which is running Facebook or Meta ads or Alphabet or Google ads, whatever you want to call them, that is going to slowly die down over time. It's not to say that these platforms aren't effective. It's not to say that they didn't do a good job, but the world of Web3 is going to be really based on the people creating and the people profiting, right? So a lot of the profits right now are going to these big platforms and they play the game well, more power to them. I don't have any ill will against them, but the game is going to change. So it's time to think about how you can play with the new rules, right? And so the future of marketing, I mean, When you think about community, community is really not just a retention mechanism, but it's also an acquisition machine as well. So when you think about throwing an amazing conference, so when I think about going to, in the past, going to the TED conferences where you hang out with amazing people, great conversations, great dinners, great speakers, you come out of it with a lot of motivation, you come out of it smarter, you come out of it with life-changing relationships. Those go a long way. And then really what happens at the end of the day, my friend Jason Gegner likes to say, You come for the event, but you, you stay for the community. And it's really hard to cultivate great community, which is why most people don't know how to do it. And I would venture to say that a lot of us have gotten lazy and fat by just using Facebook and Google Ads, right? And to me, that's kind of table stakes now. But when you think about how 45% of venture capital money goes towards these platforms, well, I just think there's probably a better way to do marketing for the long term. And the ones that do it well, those are the ones that are going to stand out. So what I would say is, I mean, let's just take a look at my screen for those of you that can see it right now. But I wrote a thread here and I just want to kind of outline and maybe elaborate on some of the points I made, right? So I put here, the best marketers don't just add value for prospects and customers, they make them feel like they are part of something. The future of marketing is not just providing value, it's community. So number 1, Web3 winners are building community first, then launching their products and services. So before the Bored Ape Yacht Club had its 2,000-person warehouse parties or partnered with Adidas, It focused on delivering an exceptional experience. They've traded over $1 billion in volume to date. So it's kind of a reverse approach where people build a business first, then a community. Now it's you build a community first and then you figure out the business model afterwards. I don't know if that's the best thing for the long term, but I do think we're going to see a lot of people level up their community game. And I think net-net, that's going to be a positive for people because people have gotten so used to doing marketing a certain way where they've kind of neglected— neglected community. All right. So number 2, great marketing is a long-term investment. So when you think about the best investors in the world, they are very long-term thinkers. When I think about my early in the career, early in my career, when I would try to go for anything short-term, I would always, I would always get burned. So when I tried to do, when I was 22, 23 years old, I would try gray hat SEO and the site might work for a couple of days and it would get burned. And so I've just learned over time that whenever I try to make short-term money, it just doesn't work out. You got to be patient for the long term. You got to make good investments. And community is actually a forcing function to make you think long term because you have to build your community one person at a time. But you can't just say, I'm going to go buy a community because that's a lot of work. You have to continue to cultivate that community, right? Because it's people doing business with people. Number 3, communities are built on relationships, which makes them difficult to copy. So David Spinks wrote a book called The Business of Belonging, and he was actually on the Leveling Up podcast as well. So you should check that one out. But he argues that the community is a competitive advantage because you can't replicate relationships with people. Relationships are non-fungible. So when you think about NFTs, well, NFTs can't be cut up, duplicated, right? Neither can relationships. You have a unique relationship with every other person out there. It's because your relationship is based on the impressions, the interactions that they've had with you, and they're unique, right? And I venture to say that you actually have, you know, if you have 100 friends, you probably have, you know, they have 100 different impressions of you, right? You're not the same to every single person. There's that. And number 4, community improves customer retention. So community adds an emotional layer to your product. And if someone wants to churn from your product, that means they are leaving their people, which makes it harder for them to leave, right? So you got to think about that. So it's much harder to leave something when it's like you have a bunch of friends that are tied to it. You're learning so much from it. You're getting a lot of value from the product or service as well. And that's why over the years I've constantly stayed in groups, you know, such as the TED community or stayed engaged with Singularity University or EO or YPO. These are all different groups groups of communities of like-minded people that just want to get better so they can give back to the world in a higher capacity, right? And number 5, last but not least, community raises the bar of marketing. So you can't half-ass community. You have to go all in for the long term. You have to now focus on relationship building, which takes time and effort. Every touchpoint can't be transactional. You have to give, give, give, give, then ask. So basically for every 4 asks, For every 1 ask, actually, you would have 4 gives, okay? So it's about making deposits into the relationship bank so people will be happy to give back to you. I mean, when you think about walking on the street, when someone comes up to you and asks you for money, what's your reaction to them? You're generally not going to give much to them because they haven't really built any relationship with you and you don't really know them well. You don't know, like, or trust them, right? And so building a community forces you to do it. in a slow, methodical way. I think a lot of the marketing that we've done over the years has really been, it's kind of go, go, go, go, go, grow at all costs, grow at all costs. And I've been in situations like that. But what I've just learned over the years is that when I take a slower approach to things, when I take a long-term approach to things, it just works a lot better. And so that's what I think about community. That's why I think community is the future of marketing. It might've been something in the past, there hasn't been much of a focus on it, but it's gonna become much more of a focus for the near future. Let me know what you think in the comments, if you agree or disagree with me. And don't forget to hit the like and the subscribe button because we need to level up the world. So it would be very helpful if you did that. So that is it for today, and we'll catch you in the next one. Bye.