9 benefits of online communities for brands

An online community is a virtual environment where people with a common goal or interest can interact and support each other. Branded communities allow these individuals to connect under a shared affiliation to their company, giving customers exclusive access to official information, content, and resources.

Unlike public social media groups and other mass engagement platforms, online communities are private, managed environments facilitated by community managers or company hosts. This private setup allows brands to leverage the advantages of online communities, such as tailored interactions and greater control over content and user experience, which are often absent in more open social media settings.

Understanding the importance of an online community for your brand involves recognizing its numerous benefits. Here are the top nine ways an online community can enhance, support, and expand your brand:

According to Deloitte Insights, some industries spend an average of 2-7% of annual revenue on IT costs, while outsourcing customer service can cost $2,600-$3,400 per agent each month, according to Working Solutions. However, both IT and general customer support costs can be reduced using online communities.

Online communities streamline support by providing a centralized hub where members can easily search for answers, access a resource center, and find information. If users can't find what they need, they can post questions in the community and receive answers from peers or community moderators. This self-service approach empowers users and also reduces the volume of direct support requests to customer service teams. By leveraging these spaces, brands can effectively decrease support costs while improving the overall efficiency and quality of customer service.

Online communities play a crucial role in building brand loyalty and enhancing brand awareness. By providing a dedicated space for engagement, these communities keep your brand at the forefront of members’ minds, fostering a deeper connection and encouraging customer retention.

Furthermore, online communities can help re-engage customers who have previously lost interest. When a member receives a response to a past question or sees another user address an issue they can relate to, it can reignite their interest and sense of belonging. This renewed interaction strengthens loyalty and prevents customer churn, ensuring your brand remains a valued part of their experience.

One of the most compelling online community benefits is the opportunity to forge deeper connections with your customers. By creating a space where like-minded individuals can come together, you foster meaningful relationships and a sense of belonging that might otherwise miss.

In these communities, members connect through shared interests and identities, which enhances engagement and loyalty. Gamification elements, such as reward systems, can further deepen this connection by recognizing and incentivizing active participation. Exclusive content and special rewards make members feel valued and special. Additionally, hosting live streams or events for active members strengthens these bonds, turning them into passionate advocates for your brand. These loyal supporters contribute ideas, create content, and actively promote your services, amplifying your brand’s reach and impact.

An online community provides invaluable insights into your customers' needs and preferences by leveraging data and feedback from active members. This rich source of information helps your brand gain a comprehensive understanding of the customer journey and market trends.

Brands can enhance this insight by utilizing surveys, polls, and other tools to gather detailed feedback. This approach allows you to collect high-quality, crowd-sourced opinions and product suggestions. For instance, FitBit's community engages members across various product-specific groups, enabling the brand to track popular suggestions and emerging trends. By analyzing these interactions, your brand can make informed decisions and tailor offerings to better meet customer expectations.

A successful online community enables your brand to set and achieve long-term goals based on valuable insights. Beyond learning about customers’ desires and ideas, you can adapt these insights into strategic, informed decisions. Thus, choosing a platform like Khoros that collects real-time analytics when you build an online community is important. By tracking user behavior, you can stay ahead of the competition by being the first to anticipate trends and changes in your customer base.

Driving revenue is one of the most important reasons why your brand should have a virtual community. By fostering brand advocates and reducing sales friction, your company can increase customer lifetime value (CLV) and generate more direct sales.

In other words, since online communities offer easy access to answers, troubleshooting, and support, they can also increase the probability of a first-time customer making an initial purchase. Return customers are also more likely to make a secondary purchase or learn about an accessory that would benefit them in their current predicament.

While social media is a key component of any marketing strategy, a branded online community can take your efforts even further. In these communities, users organically create content that your brand can collect, repurpose, and leverage for marketing. This practice, known as community syndication, is when a brand places specific content from the community on your company’s website. You might spotlight reviews, customer stories, or top questions asked by both potential and existing customers. By integrating this authentic, user-generated content into your marketing plan, you can build trust, engage your audience, and significantly boost your brand’s visibility.

In an online community, activity is concentrated within a controlled environment, providing a unique opportunity for your brand to quickly identify and correct misleading information (unlike on social media platforms). This allows your community management team to proactively educate customers about upcoming changes, helping to prevent confusion and frustration. This foresight is particularly valuable during price increases or significant product updates.

Brands can also use online communities to analyze customer interactions to detect changes in sentiment toward the brand and use these insights to refine strategies. To do this, it’s essential to use a community platform with AI moderation tools and automation capabilities, like Khoros Communities, that can pick up on discussion intent and sentiment and then filter, tag, prioritize, route, and even remove offensive content.

A branded online community can serve as a powerful knowledge base, centralizing information and making it easily accessible to your customers. Unlike public platforms, where content can be scattered and difficult to manage, your community allows you to fully own and control the content and data generated. This ownership ensures valuable insights and knowledge stay within your brand's ecosystem, rather than being lost or diluted across other platforms.

By positioning your community as a hub for data aggregation and knowledge management, you create a single source of truth that customer interactions can continuously enrich. This not only empowers your customers with reliable information but also provides your brand with a wealth of data to use to refine strategies, enhance products, and drive future growth.

Khoros Communities can help you take advantage of all the benefits online communities offer. Our digital-first platform is built to help your brand scale, increase CLV, reduce service and support costs, and drive growth and innovation. You’ll be able to measure the community’s performance easily, integrate it with existing platforms, and personalize it using low to no-code tools.

With Khoros, you won’t have to navigate the process of building and scaling your community alone — we’re here every step of the way. If you’re ready to take the next step in building your online community, request a demo today.