Leaders Letter 177 - Community As The Sixth Business Moat

How Community Is Going To Actually Work For Businesses & Customers To Mutually Benefit

Dear leaders, are you prepared for a sixth business moat? 

Here is the list of the traditional economic moats - including network effects that we all rushed towards over the last decade

Community. 

The chances are you haven’t heard a definition of community that has even got you thinking about how you can turn your business into a community-driven ecosystem. 

Let’s change that. Here’s a quick teaser on why community has to be included:

I recently spoke at the Love Inbound Conference. It was a great conference and organised really well and had a number of brilliant speakers, one of whom Luke Staton you will hear from in a couple of weeks (below is a short video to give you a teaser). 

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Here’s me presenting the risks and benefits of community and why it’s not going to be everyone!

My concept and talk were centred around you guessed it… community, it is doing business differently (you can decide whether it is worth the long-term work and if you can make it effective in your space) and why connecting at a deeper level (community done right) is more important and actually scaleable. 

Community is how the smartest brands are going to be building "connected customers" not just a broadcast channel on WhatsApp or Instagram (move over Facebook Groups, Circle and Telegram groups) but a fully engaging community platform for existing customers (aka members) and new customers can feel safe, share their insights, tips and give feedback directly to the brand, while saving other community members money (think about sharing discount codes/coupons and being rewarded for it) and having a direct 1-2-1 relationship with their brand of choice.

Sound too good to be true? 

NO!

Not with hard work following the rules and cheat codes provided you will win.  I have broken down the full presentation into an exec summary below or you can download the full community presentation by hitting download

Community Is The Next Business Moat Love Inbound 23 Final Pdf

79.9MB ∙ PDF file

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The Exec Summary Of ‘Community As A Moat?’:

• Network Effects Table Stakes Now: Moving on and building on top of network effects, 

• Trust: Customers and potential customers don’t trust brands - more trust = more business and more recommendations to friends, family and colleagues  

• Improved Acquisition: the only way to kill one-and-done customers is to build deeper connections with your customers and provide better service (quicker payback period, lower CAC, better LTV) 

• Less Reliance On Platforms: Remove your business reliance on algorithmic updates and zero-click results

• Closed To Competitors: We can see every competitor's Marketing moves, from their emails, to their push notifications to seeing every one of their ads 

• Better Retention: Retention comes from trust and offering great products we need (and sometimes want) - retention will be higher, it will engage customers who are advocates and those who want long-term trusted relationships 

• Brands have created ask fatigue: Always asking for more (this can be removed)

• Whether you’re a startup, challenger brand or have aspirations to become a super brand, community will be hard work but will build a moat around your products, your people (yes builds connection deeper than CS tickets and complaints) and its performance  

• Everyone craves PLG (aka product-led growth) and referrals (and move away from SLG) but these are extremely hard. Why not grow with community-led growth think of a bigger & better flywheel, more feedback, and shared results  

• Superfans & Superspending: Be inspired by Taylor Swift’s lead, from her deep connections to building a community flywheel

• Reddit is a precautionary tale of community but that’s a whole different community culture & that Reddit brought it on themselves

Or you can enjoy the full deck with commentary here and add to your Google Drive.

If you would like to chat through community and implement true community by hitting reply and emailing me directly danny@focus.business.

This week’s focus action is to deeply consider community and whether you can build a new moat in a true community.

Thanks and have a great week ahead.

Danny Denhard » coach, consultant, advisor

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