After having enjoyed steady growth of your brand and earning a reputation over the years, are you now noticing a troubling trend?
Your sales, customer acquisition, and profits have plateaued !? 🙁
And now, all you can think of is:
How to keep growing when everyone already knows who you are and will probably consider your brand, regardless of your marketing?
While this is extremely frustrating and confusing, know that you’re not alone in this.
Most large enterprise bands and even well-known startups are unfortunately going through the same fate and having a hard time grappling with it.
The good news is there are ways to break through this growth barrier and rekindle your brand’s success.
(Hint: By focusing on organic brand building! )
In this article, we’ve talked about the seven foolproof strategies (with examples of top brands) that will help you reignite your brand’s growth.
There’s one fundamental around which each of these strategies navigate and that is:
Focus on forging personal relationships with customers, building a ‘cult’ following telling your brand story and being a part of your customers’ lives.
With that said, let’s get down to the brass tacks and understand the seven different levers of building your brand organically.
1. Education-Led Growth: Educate your audience with high-quality, SEO powered content
Creating high-quality content is the foundational element of any successful growth strategy.
By producing valuable and informative content like blogs, guides, whitepapers, and case studies, that speak to your target audience’s needs and interests, you can establish your brand as an authority and a trusted source of information and build a loyal following.
To put this in practice, start by developing a Content Marketing strategy and creating content (including thought leadership pieces) that provides massive value and insights to your audience.
Next, focus on leveraging SEO best practices to make your content search-engine friendly, which would further help drive organic traffic to your website and generate leads.
Remember, unlike performance marketing, SEO is a slow-burning process that initially takes some time to set up. However, once that’s done, you’ll start seeing the results and will be able to experience its magic!
Zapier, the powerful automation platform that helps businesses streamline their workflows, is an excellent example of a brand that has successfully leveraged the power of Content Marketing.
“Write great stuff, and people will come.” This has been the basic yet most effective strategy at Zapier. They started by creating software tutorials and roundups that were sometimes 8,000 words long, followed by short-form blogs, and finally, Ebooks to republish content and rank in searches beyond Google.
“We wrote hundreds of software roundup articles on Zapier—with 171 “best of” posts live on Zapier’s blog today. Together, they bring in an estimated 1.1 million organic visits each month, years after many of them were originally researched and published,” tells Melanie Pinola, the Managing Editor at Zapier.
2. Engagement-Led Growth: Use the power of Storytelling to engage with your customers
Humans are narrative beings, and they crave stories. Hence, the best way to hook them and keep them engaged is to tell different stories – stories that evoke emotions, stories that they resonate with, and stories that convince them to do something.
Storytelling can take many forms, including written content, videos, images, and social media posts. Brands should experiment with different mediums to see which ones work best for their audience and use a variety of mediums to keep their storytelling fresh and engaging.
Masterclass, one of the most successful online learning platforms, is an absolute powerhouse when it comes to storytelling.
They create compelling stories to connect with their audience on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. No wonder they prefer video content over anything else!
If you look at their Instagram profile (which boasts 2.8M followers), you’ll be amazed at how they’re beautifully alternating IGTV and video posts.
(On a platform where you’d generally expect a mashup of photos, carousels, reels etc.)
These videos are primarily interviews with their instructors, announcement videos, and sneak peeks into new courses. The instructors are the stars of their videos, providing massive value to the viewers and simultaneously demonstrating their expertise, skills and knowledge.
Talk about how well this works out – well, Masterclass’ average views on Instagram are 70K, with around 100 comments on every post.
YouTube, their central video platform, attracts more than 176 M views and has over 800,000 subscribers.
On Facebook, Masterclass has over 3M followers, and they regularly churn out video content along with blogs or a link to a course with a direct call to action.
3. Referral-Based Growth: Inspire users that love your brand drive Word-of-Mouth advocacy
There’s no more powerful way than word-of-mouth marketing to acquire new customers.
According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family above all forms of marketing, and 77% of consumers are more likely to buy a new product when learning about it from friends and family.
Treating your existing customers exceptionally well, so much that they recommend you to others, not only creates a snowball effect and boosts your growth but also ensures their loyalty to your brand.
Hence, making it a part of your marketing strategy is an absolute no-brainer.
Especially because certain businesses base their entire marketing strategy around it.
Let’s take the example of Uber. The ride-sharing platform relied heavily on word-of-mouth marketing to grow. It encouraged existing customers to refer their friends and family to the app as riders or drivers in exchange for generous rewards for every successful referral.
Another brand for which word-of-mouth marketing is critical to growth is Airbnb. They started a referral program encouraging travellers to promote Airbnb by offering travel credits to both the referrer and the recipient.
Since this was a part of their global strategy, Airbnb customized it to fit specific markets. As for East Asia, they made sure the referral program was available on mobile devices as people tend to browse through mobile more. They also integrated it with the messaging apps popular in the region.
They partnered with influencers to drive maximum impact, and in fact, an influencer single-handedly managed to generate thousands of signups.
4. Community-Powered Growth: Identify Offline & Online Communities where your TG resides
Today most brands (especially D2C brands) are under the impression that they know their audience and its demographics inside out, owing to the massive chunk of data they have.
However, more is needed. You must clearly understand all the category buyers – those who love your product, those who are light users and non-users.
And for that, you need to have a clear understanding of where your audience is at.
In its initial days, Tinder targeted offline communities, aka their most preferred group of users, who brought in more users.
FYI – Less than a year after its launch, Tinder had over 1M MAU (Monthly Active Users).
Tinder organized exclusive frat parties at different colleges in the US. And only those who had downloaded the Tinder app on their mobiles could be a part of them.
This exclusivity worked like a charm, and Tinder exploded like anything in the demographic cohort of 18-25.
Furthermore, they targeted sorority girls (a social club for females at a college or a university) as its early adopters by reaching out to sorority chapters, telling them about Tinder, getting them interested and having them install the app.
Similarly, they would also go to the brother’s fraternity (a social club for males) and have them download the app.
In no time, it led to a chain reaction, and we all know how popular the name Tinder is today!
These communities exist online too. Today, more than 2 Bn people are discussing their interests and pain points and seeking product recommendations across Facebook, WhatsApp, Reddit, and Discord.
Look at this user conversation where a member suggests a liquid baby soap.
While this is just one example, think of the massive number of such conversations happening in online communities.
Now think if your brand can analyze millions of such real user conversations and the impact you’d be able to create.
WithConvosight, you can:
- Tap into millions of user conversations relevant to your brand and category
- Derive actionable insights from these conversations
- Market in these communities and create awareness, drive consideration, influence purchase intent, and drive word-of-mouth advocacy for your brand and product, among other things.
Veet, one of the top names in the hair depilation category, recently launched Veet Pure and sought to build consideration by highlighting the USPs and building brand RTBs at scale.
To achieve this, they collaborated with Convosight and leveraged the power of Community Marketing.
With the help of Convosight, Veet partnered with 400+ online communities on Facebook across parenting, women, beauty and lifestyle categories with over 15M members, aka decision makers.
Upon analyzing consumer insights from real conversations happening in these communities, Veet successfully launched a four-phased share-of-voice program led by brand evangelists.
The campaign was a huge success, and Veet was able to generate 332K+ UGCs (350% over and above the target), 380K+ brand mentions and a 99% share of voice.
If you’d like to learn more about how Veet achieved this feat, please check this 👉 CASE STUDY 👈
5. Community-Led Growth: Build your own Community and scale
By now, you must have realized that it’s all about connecting with your customers.
People who feel connected to your brand become your best advocates and loyal supporters.
To provide your customers with that sense of community, you must build your brand community at a platform where your customers are most active.
Your brand community will help customers connect with like-minded individuals, foster meaningful relationships with them, and attract potential customers.
For any brand, the advantages of having a community are ample. Some of them are highlighted below:
- Form a deeper connection with your customers beyond selling just products and services
- Get valuable insights into your customers’ needs, preferences and behaviours
- Increase brand loyalty among customers
- Rally your audience around a purpose or a mission
- Encourage new ideas through customers feedback
Peloton, the digital fitness brand, certainly disrupted the fitness industry with its tech-driven solution, but that was not the only reason for its success.
The brand has always had community at its core. Ever since they realized that a community motivates people to work out, they focused on bringing the communal aspect of a fitness class at the convenience of home while building a “cult” following of devoted riders through a tight-knit support group.
Peloton’s members-only private group on Facebook today boasts over 482,000 members who constantly share their achievements, discuss their favourite trainers, seek solutions to their problems, and encourage one another.
Likewise, Sephora has become a household name today because of the community they’ve built over the last few years.
Their Beauty Insider Community is an online space that connects beauty enthusiasts and beginners from different walks of life. They can ask questions, seek recommendations, review products, share their looks in a gallery, and connect on a social level with one another.
Sephora’s Beauty Insider Community has five main aspects.
- Community Home where members can connect and discuss beauty and makeup.
- Groups that allow you to filter the forum and see conversations happening around only specific topics that interest you.
- Gallery where you can share photos of your skincare, makeup, hairstyles, and more.
- Ratings and Reviews where anyone can share reviews and ratings around certain products that help others decide while buying stuff.
- Questions & Answers where members can ask questions and get answers.
Sephora’s community has fostered connection and trust amongst the members, becoming a powerful marketing tool. So much so that Sephora created a mobile app named – Beauty Talk to make community building easier and more accessible.
6. Drive Marketing campaigns powered by strong Consumer Insights
This approach combines data-driven marketing tactics with a deep understanding of consumer behaviour and preferences.
It means deriving actionable insights from user conversations and using those insights to inform your marketing campaigns.
To proceed with this, first, you must thoroughly clarify your target audience.
Next, analyze their behaviour and understand their preferences. And the best way to do this is by listening to them.
As mentioned above, over 2 Bn people are talking about their pain points and passion in digital communities.
With Convosight, you can scour through millions of user conversations happening in these online communities across Fb groups, Reddit, Telegram, and Discord, to name a few.
Samsung, which recently launched its Galaxy Watch 4, leveraged insight-based community marketing to create a buzz around the watch, drive consideration and position it as the fitness watch that knows you the best.
With the help of Convosight, Samsung partnered with 3.8M+ fitness and lifestyle enthusiasts across 75 communities on Facebook across health & fitness, lifestyle and technology categories.
They analyzed user conversations happening in these communities and concluded that members wish to know more about making the most of a smartwatch.
Based on this insight, in collaboration with Convosight, Samsung planned a community marketing campaign that focused on educating on the features and usage of the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4.
The campaign was executed in three phases, each led by Community Admins and focused on creating buzz and awareness for Galaxy Watch 4 while creating a strong association for the brand among the members.
Upon its successful execution, Samsung achieved 95% positive sentiment and managed to increase its share of voice from 54% to 69.5%. The campaign’s highlight was feature-dominated conversations that helped strengthen the brand association with words like features, healthy, awesome, fitness, track, to name a few.
If you’d like to learn more about Samsung’s insights-driven community marketing campaign, refer to this
👉 CASE STUDY 👈
7. Understand how users are interacting with your Product & build a Product-Led Growth engine
Think of the go-to-market strategy for any B2B brand, and it would either be Product-led or Sales-led.
While Sales-led is pretty simple and self-explanatory, here’s breaking it down for you nevertheless- the product onboards people with the help of sales representatives. This would mean you generally try the product only after a sales executive reaches out to you.
Product-led approach, on the other hand, refers to people discovering your product through SEO, paid advertising, or referrals, using it themselves, and then becoming loyal customers.
This approach is usually self-serve, meaning there’s a freemium model or a free trial available for the product that entices users to sign up in the first place.
In product-led growth, your “product” powers every stage of the marketing funnel.
From attracting customers to getting them to sign up and retention, your product does it all.
Notion, the “all–in–one workspace”, has leaned into product-led growth as its core growth strategy, alongside building a sales-assisted model for large enterprises to which their community actively contributes to.
The collaborative workspace started targeting B2C and B2B brands (with <100 employees) and opted for a bottom-up and community-led approach. And then got them to be users and customers through product-led growth.
Here’s how Notion has managed to multiply its user base, YOY, with the product-led approach:
- Feature-packed product offering maximum product utility
Notion is an excellent tool – you’d agree to this if you’ve been using it.
So, here’s how the story usually goes. Users are fascinated by seeing the tool and sign up to give it a go. It offers them what they opt for and lets them invest in learning how to use the platform. As is, the more you know how to use the software, the more utility you can extract from it.
The platform offers its users multiple levels of utility based on whether you are using it as an individual, with your team or company, or using it as lego blocks for creating productivity applications.
- Comparative positioning
Notion calls out its competitors that it’s replacing every use case it is offering without any shame. It’s a simple yet effective strategy to help people understand what they do. These competitors are deeply positioned in customers’ minds, and it’s way too brave of Notion to say they’re replacing them.
- Single-player strategy
It is a highly valuable strategy that involves products bundling their use cases for single users. Notion coupled multiple use cases that would prove helpful for a single user who would use it without needing other people on the team to work on it.
This satisfied user would tell about Notion to their teammate, who would further ask them to their teammates, setting Notion’s product-led flywheel in motion.
This single-player strategy makes it very convenient for B2B businesses to follow a bottom-up approach and boost their growth.
- Personalizing the product experience
While a user is signing up, Notion nudges them to take a quick onboarding quiz to help them understand their goals with the platform.
This ensures people see what they wish to see and get on the most relevant and useful path on the product, considering there are multiple paths, and each path has its own specific messaging and activation steps.
This way people are not ‘overwhelmed’ with information and are introduced to new information at the right pace.
In case you’re curious to learn more about Notion’s entire growth strategy, you can refer to this Case Study.
Parting Words
While Performance Marketing can be incredibly effective in the short term, it’s important to remember its limitations.
By focusing solely on short-term results, you risk hitting a plateau and becoming overly reliant on paid advertising. As is, there’s only so much you can do with performance marketing; sooner or later, you’d be maxed on growth.
Speaking of, having a solid growth strategy that focuses on organically building the brand combined with performance marketing is ideal in the long run.
Doing this will create a strong foundation for your brand that will be difficult for competitors to replicate, and you’ll be less vulnerable to changes in ad algorithms or rising ad costs.
Remember, it’s all about balancing the two approaches that are best for your brand.
You can take inspiration from any of the aforementioned brands and use any of the seven levers we’ve talked about in this article for your brand’s organic growth.
Get started with your brand’s organic growth today! If you’re looking to build a community or tap into existing communities across Fb groups, Reddit, or Discord, we can help.
Creating value in the lives of others with my content, little by little.✨
Working at Convosight, I do more than just wrangle commas. I’m passionate about innovating new ways to create super valuable and actionable content about Communities and Community Marketing at large, and sharing it with the right audience.
I also happen to manage a global community of power admins on Facebook, and that’s where most of my learnings come from.
Do check out my latest blogs and feel free to share them! 💛