MBA1976 Should You Have an Online Community for Your Customers?

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Foreign. Welcome to the $100 RMBA show because when you grow, so does your business. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute.

Business lessons for the real world.

I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company. I started my co founder back in 2014 and in today's lesson you will learn should you have an online for your customers. Several businesses online build out full on communities with thousands of members interacting, asking questions, even having a little bit of a rant. Why? Why do businesses do this? Is it worth the hassle? Does it actually help you generate more revenue, increase retention and bring in new customers? Is this a good idea for any kind of business? What's the cost of all this in terms of time and resources and software? But most of all, what's the return on investment? That's what we get into in today's lesson. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Gas, snacks, tolls.

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I want to begin with the basics. Why would anybody start a community around their business for their customers? Whether they're building it on a Facebook group or an online forum or something they custom made or Even like a WhatsApp channel or a Slack group or Discord. There's so many different tools you can use, but at the end of the day it's a place where everybody that works with your business, with your product, with your service can come together, ask questions, network with other like minded people and be a part of you. Guess it, a community. Why? What is the driver here? Well, I want to separate the motive or the reason why in kind of two different categories. The first category is big picture and the second category is small little goals. Okay, think about like two buckets. One bucket's about accomplishing a big goal and the second bucket is all about trying to accomplish small little goals. And we're going to get into that. Let's talk about the big picture, the big hairy goal. Why do businesses do this? Well, it's very simple. Communities leverage human behavior and psychology. And by having a community around your business and brand, you become more than just a product, become a movement, really. Companies like Peloton, like Peloton Bikes, they built a community around their product because they know that people will use their product more, will be more engaged with it. They will obviously have good feelings towards the brand if it went beyond the physical product, if actually they brought people together, made them feel good. Now if I look at the second bucket, the smaller goals, there are kind of metrics that are tied to communities. So if you're running a community, you'd probably say, hey, how is the community doing? What are some key metrics I can follow? And some of them are new customers. Churn rates, retention rates, activation, engagement. These are all kind of metrics that you would follow anyway in your business. But you tie them back to the community because they could help you reach those goals. Because you guessed it, the nature of human interaction. When people interact with each other, when they work together, they get a lot more done. People often need accountability, they need other people cheering them on. They need to feel like they're not alone. I can speak from my own experiences when I first started in entrepreneurship. Some of the online forums that I was a part of really helped me as a solopreneur, as an entrepreneur, a new entrepreneur, kind of feeling lonely. I didn't even have any entrepreneurial friends except for those in those forums. So I kind of identified with them and felt a little less weird. I also got to ask questions, I got to meet people, I get to network, I got to partner up with them, I got to learn from them. And in fact, many of those types of groups I was a part of were attached to products and I continued to pay for the subscription of the product purely to be part of the community forum. I'm not using the product anymore, but the forum is valuable in itself, so sort of a value add for many of your customers. Now, before we get into the nitty gritty of like what does this cost you and what are the options and should you do this for all your customers or non customers, let's talk about is this right for every business? First of all, if you're not a volume business, meaning that maybe you take on three or four clients a year and you fulfill a service and it's maybe a high ticket service, this is probably not something you're going to see an ROI on. It's going to be worth your time to invest because you actually need some momentum. You need a lot of people in a community. I would say a minimum of 100 people, so you can get some interaction, you can get some engagement. We've got to remember, not all 100 are going to be engaged all the time. You'll probably have about 10 to 15% of them, kind of your rock stars that are always commenting and helping and the rest kind of watching and maybe chiming in here and there. So if you have a small client base, probably not the right fit. Also if your clients are not in the same type of community or type of niche. For example, I used to run a business consulting firm where I built websites for different businesses. But I built websites for mommy bloggers, for models, for financial advisors, for pizzerias. So these people, other than being, you know, business owners, but some of them are just so different from physical businesses to services, to professional services to online businesses. The point here is that, you know, would be hard to bring these people together and have them all get a win from the community. I could be wrong, but it's much easier when your product is much more niche. For example, the email marketing service ConvertKit, they are catered to online creators, author speakers, so they have an online community. I'm A part of this community. So for the most part, most of the people in the community are running a similar business, are trying to do the same things, are having the same challenges. Now creating an online community can be very, very simple. You don't have to over complicate it. The most simplest option is to create a Facebook group. Now for many years Facebook groups are probably like the go to way to create an online community. But now a lot of people have chosen other platforms because they found that Facebook really hasn't given groups a lot of love and there's a lot of distractions on Facebook. So people have moved their groups off Facebook to like forums like Tribe or Circle or using tools like Discord. Some even use something like SL Slack to run an online community. The software or the platform doesn't really matter. Just choose one that seems one that you'd like to manage and start inviting your customers. Start inviting your members. Now should you have customers, non customers, everybody in this group? Well, that's up to you. Some people like to invite only people that are members or customers to the actual group, making a value add and a retention tool. Some people actually have two different groups. They have a group for non members, like people that are just thinking about whatever you do in your business and then they have one for members and they use the non member one as kind of a marketing tool, giving them great value, educating them. I've seen people in different niches run groups of 20, 30, 40,000 of free members and they use it as a way to bring in customers, invite them to webinars and to invite them to events. The only issue is that running a group with, you know, 20, 30, 100,000 people for free is a lot of time spent. So you got to make sure you're actually converting customers. Now if you have thousands of members in your community, you're going to want somebody to manage that community for you, help answer questions, answer comments, cheerlead people, start initiatives, comments, all that kind of stuff. You might be wondering how do I know all this and what is my experience in this? Well, I run a lot of communities online, whether on Facebook or off Facebook. And we're actually launching our own online community for webinar ninja for our members. So this information is kind of fresh in my head and I wanted to share it with you. And I gotta say it's a lot of work to set up and kind of maintain, maintain, but I've seen nothing but positive things come out of it. Yes, you might have some people that are all troll or spam and you'll have to regulate that. But that's a small price to pay or a small inconvenience that you can easily manage with some sort of operating procedure to give incredible value and community to your customers. Gas, snacks, tolls.

This trip is draining my wallet.

Yeah, but we'll be with family.

You're in a good mood.

What's your deal?

What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fe and I got one line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top.

Tuxt and data detour to Metro.

Get that more for your money feeling only at Metro by T Mobile just.

Bring your number $30 first month and $25 after with autopay not available. If with Metro or T Mobile in the past 180 days.

To wrap up.

Today'S lesson, having a community for your customers can be an incredible an incredible way to add incredible value to your customers, to your audience, to your users. It could be the reason why they stay with you. It could be the reason why they grow with you. It could be the reason why they upgrade. Many people need more than just a piece of software or a piece of content. They need a way to bridge that gap. How do I go from A to Z? How do I take what I bought and implement it? And this is where the community comes in. Not only do you help, but the whole community helps. Other rockets stars in your community step up and help each other out. It's a great way to create something even bigger than your actual product. You create a movement. You create a community of supportive people. You create incredible momentum. Thanks so much for listening. If you love what you hear, hit, subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss an episode. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. You're not going to have everything figured out in your community from day one. Just set up some basic rules, a code of conduct, some channels or some discussions and start. Just start. And as you go, you'll start to refine it, set some rules in place to some protocols, add some challenges and some topics. But the point here is that you're not going to know what you need until you get started. So just get the ball rolling. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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