Convincing leadership to invest in an online community

Convincing leadership to invest in an online community can be challenging. 

You’ve done the research and know its potential — from deeper connections to improved loyalty — but getting your leadership team to see the value of community is often easier said than done. 

They might be concerned about the time and resources it will take to build and maintain a successful community. Or maybe they’ve expressed doubts about how a community aligns with the company’s goals. 

One of the biggest challenges most people face is that leadership often sees community as a nice-to-have rather than a must-have. 

The good news is there are three key strategies that can help you frame your community proposal in a way that resonates with their priorities and tackles their concerns. 

Let’s get into it!

Identify what matters to leadership

The first step is to understand what truly matters to your leadership team. 

Reviewing your brand's mission and manifesto can be a great place to start. In fact, 82% of community leaders said that community is critical to their company’s mission. 

The mission statement will help you understand the company’s long-term goals, while the manifesto will show how your company expects to achieve these goals. Once you understand the mission and manifesto, you can begin outlining how your online community will support these goals. 

Establishing a strong connection to your brand’s mission also prevents leadership from treating your online community as an isolated entity down the line. When you have brand-community synergy, it becomes easier to:

• Encourage cross-functional collaboration

• Obtain a unified view of customer data

• Ensure that community members experience a seamless journey between the brand and the community

Remember, to secure investment from leadership, your community's purpose must work toward achieving the brand’s mission and goals!

What are the key metrics?

Every decision-maker will have specific performance areas they’re focused on, whether that’s revenue or retention rates. 

To build a strong case for your community, you need to demonstrate the potential impact and effectiveness of your community in advancing these goals. 

Ask yourself: 

• What is leadership’s main objective? 

• What metrics are they being measured on?

• How can a community impact these metrics positively? 

If leadership’s aim is to improve customer retention, explain how an online community will encourage brand loyalty and, with the right engagement strategy, can create brand advocates. 

Community members at the top of the participation ladder become advocates who promote your brand organically to other like-minded people. This not only improves your customer retention rates but reduces the need to spend on expensive campaigns for customer acquisition. 

In fact, community pros are increasingly seeing the benefit of community for their business, with 50% reporting their communities are very or extremely successful at impacting business goals, up 7% on the year before! 

Don't forget the pain points

To accomplish any company goals or missions, you must first address the challenges or obstacles that stand in the way. If your online community can contribute to solving any of these pain points, it makes it a lot easier to show why your community is needed. 

For instance, one of the common struggles for brands is excessive customer support demands. If that’s the case for your company, you can demonstrate how an online community can alleviate this pressure by introducing peer-to-peer support.

Make the most of data

Now you understand how your online community is going to support your company mission and help to overcome its challenges, it’s time to back it up. 

There are loads of facts and figures out there that highlight how an online community can improve or elevate your brand’s success, so make the most of them! 

Some of our favourites include:

• The CMX Reports are a great resource when looking at the benefits of introducing an online community. CMX’s latest report found 80% of respondents believe community has had a positive impact on their business in the last 12 months. 

• We might be slightly biassed, but The Digital Community Leaders Report has fantastic stats that speak to why an online community is an investment for organisations. For instance, the report tells us that 57% of companies use community member contributions for insights or feedback, 42% use it to spark new initiatives, and 32% use member content to solve problems and improve their organisation.

Target audience

Recent data can make the case for why a community is important for today’s digitally-savvy consumers. More than half of Gen-Z consumers ensure a brand’s values align with their own before making a purchase, and communities are a great way to strengthen this relationship and humanise your brand.

An online community space also plays its part in driving certain consumer behaviours, with 72% of Gen-Z saying they’re influenced by their online communities when making buying decisions.

Since this generation is highly resistant to traditional advertising, a well-managed community can be one of the best ways to engage with this demographic.

Showing your leadership team data like this can help you prove that community is an investment with tangible returns.

Speak their language

Once you’ve gathered your data, it’s time to present it in a way that resonates with your leadership team. Don’t overwhelm them with a stack of reports or a long list of articles. 

Instead, create a concise and targeted document that clearly outlines: 

• How the community initiative will impact the key metrics they care about

• What their role will be in supporting the initiative 

• A realistic timeline, including a 12-24 month roadmap that explains the long-term nature of community building and the expected milestones

Emphasise that a community is a long-term strategy, not a quick fix. Be clear about the time and resources required to make your online community work, and align them with the company mission. Your proposal should help leadership see the long game.

Start your online community

At Steadfast Collective, we help companies build community-focused websites and applications that encourage member engagement and growth. If you’re reading to start building your online community, let’s have a chat!