Community marketing: How to use it to drive customer advocacy and reduce CAC

"Community marketing is a strategy that brings customers, partners, and advocates together around shared interests or challenges to drive ongoing engagement, loyalty, and long-term advocacy. In practice, community marketing improves retention rates, generates referrals, and reduces support costs by enabling peer-to-peer problem-solving and authentic advocacy."

"40.1% of consumers say they're more likely to stay loyal to a brand after engaging with it in an online brand community. 67% of consumers say they feel more connected to brands through community than through social media. This shift moves brands away from broadcasting messages and toward facilitating conversation and collaboration."

"Community marketing also differs from generic 'community building.' While community building emphasizes belonging, community marketing ties that sense of belonging back to measurable business outcomes such as retention, referrals, product adoption, and support efficiency."

Community marketing is a participation-based growth strategy that brings customers, partners, and advocates together around shared interests to drive engagement, loyalty, and advocacy. Unlike social media management focused on content distribution, community marketing emphasizes participation and collaboration. Research shows 40.1% of consumers remain loyal after engaging in online brand communities, and 67% feel more connected to brands through community than social media. Community marketing differs from general community building by tying belonging to measurable business outcomes including retention, referrals, product adoption, and support efficiency. When intentionally built and connected to CRM and lifecycle data, community programs shorten sales cycles, reduce support costs, and transform customers into credible advocates.

Read at Hubspot