Community building as a brand marketing strategy with Mark Schaefer

Speaker 1:

It doesn’t matter what kind of an agency you run, traditional, digital, media-buying, web dev, PR, whatever your focus, you still need to run a profitable business. The Build A Better Agency Podcast, presented by White Label IQ, will show you how to make more money and keep more of what you make. Let us help you build an agency that is sustainable, scalable, and if you want down the road, sellable. Bringing his 25+ years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Drew McLellan:

Hey, everybody. Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute. I know, no big surprise. I am back with another episode of Build a Better Agency and you’re going to love this one. So, many of you are familiar with my guest and I’m going to tell you a little bit more about him and why I’m so excited to have him on the show in just a second. But first, I want to tell you about one of the other great speakers that we’re going to have at the Build a Better Agency Summit, May 16th and 17th in Chicago. Kris Kelso is an expert on many things around leadership, but where he really shines and he’s written a great book is a topic of imposter syndrome. He wrote a book called Overcoming the Imposter: Silence Your Inner Critic and Lead With Confidence.

It’s a great book and Kris has a really great handle on why we all and every one of us does, why we all suffer from imposter syndrome sometimes and how we can overcome it and get it out of our way. So, we can be the best version of ourselves that we can possibly be and we can stop questioning ourself. He’s going to be one of the breakout speakers at the summit. You’re going to enjoy him very much, and I think what you’re going to find is some really practical advice on how to tackle imposter syndrome. Maybe that’s not your thing. Maybe you don’t have that as an issue, but I bet you have an employee that does. So, even if that’s not your thing, learning from Kris so you can mentor and coach your team better probably would be a very handy knowledge base and skill to have. So, we would love to see you at the summit, again, May 16th and 17th in Chicago.

Go to the Agency Management Institute website. In the upper left corner, it’s BABA Summit. Click on that and you’re going to see a button on the left that says Register. You can grab your ticket now before prices go up or before we sell out. While you’re there, make sure you grab your hotel so that we can make sure that we have a place for you to stay because we always sell out of the room block and then people have to find another place to stay, which I hate. So, I want you to stay in the hotel with us so you can soak up all of the connecting and talking and chit-chatting in the hallways in between sessions and you’re not running back and forth to a different hotel. Okay? All right. So, let me tell you a little bit about our guest. I suspect you’re familiar with him.

Mark Schaefer is a prolific author in the marketing space. You probably have recognized some of his titles, Cumulative Advantage, the ROI of Influence or Return on Influence, back in the day, Born to Blog when that was a new topic. One of his more recent books was Marketing Rebellion, The Most Human Company Wins, which was a great one. Known is talking about personal branding, but his brand new book that just came out is called Belonging to the Brand: Why Community is the Last Great Marketing Strategy. As you might imagine what you know about the AMI community, I loved this book. I love the message of it. I love the practicality of the way Mark approaches it.

So, he gives you the research about why building a community around a brand is so important. He gives you case studies so you can see the ROI that other businesses have enjoyed, including an agency in the book. Then he gives you the nuts and bolts of how to do it. So, it is a fantastic read, but more than that, I think it’s an inspiring read. So, I think this is twofold for us. I think it’s creating a community around your agency and then I think it’s about helping clients create community, which is a huge opportunity for us in terms of new business and growing our current clients’ business.

So, I can’t wait to have this conversation and hear more from Mark about what precipitated the book and where he thinks this is all going. So, without further ado, let’s get him on and let’s get going. Mark, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here.

Mark Schaefer:

Drew, I’m delighted to be here with you. I’m excited for our conversation.

Drew McLellan:

Me too. I love the idea of your latest book, so your latest book, Belonging to the Brand, all about creating community. Help me understand what prompted you to write the book. I mean, you’ve written a lot of great books, but this is the latest in them, but I think this may be my favorite, I have to say.

Mark Schaefer:

Well, Drew, it’s so rewarding that as an author, you have a big idea. You’re desperate to get your ideas into the world, but you never really know until you get it out there. They really do love this book. I think it’s a big idea and a timely idea. It’s something I’ve been really stewing on since about 2018. In 2018, I wrote a book and published it in 2019 called Marketing Rebellion. This was a wakeup call. I think you see it certainly in your world that marketers and businesses tend to get into a trench. You have your processes. You do a little bit better on your ads. You do a little bit better on the SEO.

But what I was seeing happening in the world is that we have consumers now that have the accumulated knowledge of the human race in the palm of their hands, and they expect something more from our marketing. They don’t want to be manipulated and interrupted. So, one of the chapters in that book was about belonging and community. So, the book was a wakeup call to say, “Get out of the trench and look up, see what’s happening, and see what customers really need now.”

Drew McLellan:

Then COVID happened.

Mark Schaefer:

Then COVID happened, and a lot of people were saying, “Hey, the ideas in this book are coming true.” So, I thought that chapter could be its own book. That chapter is really the future. There was one headline in the newspaper that was the charge that said, “Now is the time. This is the right time.” There was a headline in the New York Times that said The Loneliest Generation, and it talked about our children. It talked about Gen Z, teenagers, and how there’s an epidemic of loneliness and isolation and depression. Even growing rates of suicide, 40% of millennials say they have no friends, so they’re longing to belong. Gen Z, these aren’t babies. I mean, we just had a Gen Z person elected to Congress.

They’re buying stuff. They’re going to be leading our businesses in the next five years. So, we’ve got this profound chronic health problem. Now, I want to emphasize this is a business book. It looks at community, which is nothing new. But what’s new about this book is it looks through the lens of brand marketing, which is almost entirely overlooked by agencies and marketers and then there’s like this side benefit. This is a new way to look at marketing’s maybe a new tool for a toolbox, but it’s also marketing that really helps people as far as this is the only marketing that our customers will say, “Yeah, I love this. I want to belong to this.”

Drew McLellan:

I want more of this, right?

Mark Schaefer:

Yeah, I want more.

Drew McLellan:

The brand benefits from that affection and affinity.

Mark Schaefer:

I’m proud of the job that I did spelling out the business case for this. I mean, I go logically, here are the trends coming together that point to this as being the time we need to look at community as a brand marketing strategy. Here are the business benefits. Here are case studies to show how this works in this new way of thinking. So, I think anybody who reads the first three chapters of this book, it’s an unassailable business case and it’s got to be something that we think about.

Drew McLellan:

Agreed. So, let’s talk about the trends. What were the trends that you think came to a head and brought this new environment that was rich and ready for community? Not a community from the broader sense, but from a business’s perspective?

Mark Schaefer:

Yeah. Well, we’ve hinted at two of those and the first is the issues a lot of your listeners are facing is that we are in a streaming economy. I’ve watched more TV than I’ve ever watched. At the end of the day, I’m so tired. My wife and I just stream shows and watch. We’ll watch something on Netflix or we watch something on Amazon Prime or we watch something on Disney+. We don’t see ads. I’ll be driving in the car for hours. I’ll listen to music the whole time, but it’s on Spotify. I don’t hear ads or I’ll listen to an audiobook. I don’t hear ads. I even subscribe to special podcasts and don’t hear ads. So, I think that’s number one is that it’s time for marketing to look at new options. We need new options. Number two is this healthcare issue, this mental health issue.

Here’s another thing, Drew, that propelled me into thinking this is the time. This is already showing up in marketing. Last year during March Madness, Powerade had a whole ad campaign called Pause. This is a sports drink saying, “Go, go, go, go be your best athletic self.” Their whole campaign was Stop and their spokesperson was Simone Biles, because they’re saying, “Hey, this is a time in the world we got to get our heads right.” So that’s number two. Number three is that I’ve been in this world of Web 3.0 and Metaverse and NFTs and nobody really knows what all this is. I mean, nobody can really describe what Web 3.0 is. I’m not sure anybody can really describe what the Metaverse is. But when you cut through all this jargon, there’s millions and millions of dollars being spent on new ways to connect, on new ways to belong.

Young people are surging into these spaces. So, we have to understand that. We have to understand this opportunity and also know that all these smart companies are spending millions and millions of dollars helping us enable these communities. So, these are the trends I saw coming together, and I have a good track record in my career of predicting what’s going to be next. I’m usually two years ahead of my time and I’m not a bragging person, but I’ll do one little mic drop moment with you. The day I wrote the last words of the book, McKinsey came out with a major research paper and said, “Community is the next big thing in marketing.” So, I knew my book was on the right track.

Drew McLellan:

So, you beat McKinsey. I love that.

Mark Schaefer:

Well, they beat me because the book hadn’t been published yet.

Drew McLellan:

But you wrote it.

Mark Schaefer:

So in my head, I bear McKinsey.

Drew McLellan:

That’s right. Yeah, I like it. We’re going to give you a credit for that.

Mark Schaefer:

The most important thing is get ahead of the curve. This is where the world is going to be. I wrote the first book on influence marketing 2012 before anybody was even calling that. I said, “In two years, this is going to be a mainstream marketing activity.” I was right. Yeah, I wrote about content and content shop, 2015, boom. I was right. I think this is going to be the same thing, Drew. I think in a couple years we’re going to look back and say, “Thank goodness we’ve got this new opportunity to make connections with our customers in a really meaningful way.”

What I love about the idea too is unlike traditional marketing. This is something that the longer you do it and the better you do it, the deeper the connection, the deeper the loyalty, the deeper the affiliation. Humans are always going to need to connect. So, even though we’re doing it through technology is probably not going to age out like some of the other marketing tactics that we have done throughout our careers.

Well, that’s why I have this provocative subtitle, which is Why Community is the Last Great Marketing Strategy. The theory behind that is that first of all, it was the first marketing strategy. It’s something that’s always worked is when you go to a place and they know you and you have this emotional connection, you’re never going to go anywhere else. So, this is embedded in our DNA as human beings. There’s research in the book that shows the deep psychological benefits, sociological benefits, even physical benefits of community. I think when a lot of these other marketing tactics fade away and we evolve to the next thing, the last thing that’s going to be left is community. We’ve always had it. We always need it. If you can create that community and sustain that community, it’ll always be there.

Drew McLellan:

Agreed. So, for agents in agencies, we’ve talked about audience and understanding the client’s audience, building personas around that audience. From your perspective, how is audience different than community?

Mark Schaefer:

Well, what I love to think about is this continuum of emotional connection. I mean, that’s our goal, right? As a great advertiser or a great marketer, when people think of our brand, we want them to feel something. It means that there’s got to be a meaning there, an expectation of what we’re going to get when we interact with this brand. So, where do we start? Where’s everybody these days? Every small company, big company, social media. Social media is great because we can connect with new people, but it’s a weak relational link, right? The great strategy is if we can move the social media connections to an audience, which would be a subscriber to our blog, our video series, our TikTok channel, our podcast.

That would be great because now we’ve got a stronger emotional connection. If I go on a social media and say, “Hey, everybody, buy my new book,” I’m not going to sell any books. If I go on my podcast and say, “Hey, everybody. I have a new book,” I’m going to sell hundreds of books. Now, an audience is great. When people are in your audience in a virtual way, they’re raising their hand and saying, “I opt into you.” It’s okay to tell me what you’re doing because I believe in you and I love you and your brand, but that’s where most businesses stop.

What I’m suggesting is we now move that audience to a community. What makes it different? Number one, in a community, there’s communion. People connect. They know each other. There’s a guy the other day that said, “Oh, yeah, I have this community. We get together. I give them content. I give them lessons.” I said, “That’s an audience. That’s not a community.” Do people know each other?

Drew McLellan:

Do they give each other things?

Mark Schaefer:

Yeah. So, that’s number one. Number two, there has to be some purpose that unites them. So, for the business, this is where the role of an agency can really be strong, because the purpose is not a mission statement. It’s not a point of differentiation. A point of differentiation might be we’ve got the lowest prices in the tri-state area. That’s not a reason to gather. A reason to gather might be we are automobile fanatics and we want to learn everything about every new innovation coming out in automotive. Well, you’re going to track some really intense, passionate people.

So, you’ve got to think about, “What is the purpose or beliefs that drive a business? How can you have a bigger impact on the world? How can you achieve your goals in a better, faster, bigger way if your customers come alongside you?” I think that’s a new way for advertisers and marketers to think. I think that could be a key role for agencies in this new world. It’s almost like a new competency to help our customers think through these fundamental basics of community.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, it’s interesting. I’ll send you a link. So, I did a keynote two years ago at the very first Build a Better Agency Summit. What I talked about was the reason why AMI exists and why the conference was there, which is I fully believe that we can all get smarter and better when we do it together and we teach each other. So, that’s why I want to build this community is around that, but to your point, that’s a reason to gather is because we do some great teaching, but honestly, our members, our community learns as much from each other. I watch them in Facebook groups and at meetings and things like that, and they’re sharing files. Hey, do you want to see what a proposal looks like? Here’s what mine looks like. They’re just going out of their way to share with each other because they have this common goal of being better and smarter together.

Mark Schaefer:

Drew, I couldn’t agree more. Now here’s the thing I want your listeners and fans of your show to think about. The same thing is happening in my community.

Drew McLellan:

I bet.

Mark Schaefer:

Every blog post I write, every podcast, every speech I give, there are ideas and inspirations coming out of my community. I am a better, smarter, more relevant professional because of this community. Now, think about scaling that for a brand, creating better products, better services, better ideas, being connected every day to the needs and the questions of your customers. There’s people in my community from all over the world. They’re seeing things and experiencing things in their communities and countries all around the world I’ll never see as helping me be a more well-rounded, better person, and a better company.

Drew McLellan:

Which then just again, allows you to serve the community better. So, this exponential growth and learning and sharing just makes what the brand is creating better for the people in the community and the brand.

Mark Schaefer:

Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. All right. So, purpose is critical. They want to gather. What else makes a community different from an audience?

Mark Schaefer:

Well, so we talked about, “Do people know each other?” We talked about this reason to gather. There’s this intersection of the purpose of the business and the customers. The third one is that it changes, that it’s flexible, that it’s relevant. So, that’s another way that it’s different than a mission statement, which is the guiding principles of your business for maybe years or decades, but a community shifts with the needs and the interests of the audience. So, the beauty of this, it can take the business with it.

What’s happening in my community? We started studying. We’re dedicated to the future of marketing. Well, look what happens. ChatGPT, AI, AI creating images, content. Well, look, we flexed over there. We started whole new discussions, whole new projects to explore all these ideas and that keeps us relevant. So, you’ve got to have the flexibility to let the community flow where it needs to go to make it active and vital and relevant.

Drew McLellan:

So that suggests to me that part of the necessity from the brand’s perspective is how they view and respect and care for the community, because if I’m just creating this community to sell them more stuff, then I think it’s going to break. So, I want to ask you about that. We’re going to take a quick break then I want to talk about, “How does a brand care for a community and what role could or should an agency play in helping their clients create and nurture a community?” So, we’ll dig into that in a second.

Hey, everybody, I promise I would keep you more than a minute, but I want to make sure you know that at AMI, one of the things that we offer are virtual peer groups. So, think of it as a Vistage group or an EO group. Only everybody around the table, figuratively in this case, is an agency owner. So, you have to be an agency owner to belong. The virtual peer groups meet every month for 90 minutes on Zoom. This was not a COVID creation, it was pre-COVID. You see the same people in your cohort every time. So, you get to create relationships with them. It is facilitated by AMI staff Craig Barnes, who has owned his own agency for 25 or 30 years. So, plenty of great experience, both from Craig and each other throughout the workshop. So, we get rave reviews and it’s a great way for your AEs to really level up and become a leader inside your organization. So, again, June 16th and 17th for the Advanced AE Bootcamp.

All right. We are back with Mark Shaffer and we are talking about the idea of community and his new book, which I’m telling you, you guys all need to go and read this book. It’s a great read. It’s intellectually really interesting, but I promise you, your neurons are going to be firing in terms of what you can do for your clients and for your own agency. So, before the break, I was saying that it seems that the brand’s attitude about the community has to be very community first and there’s a care and feeding of the community aspect of this that’s important. My secondary question to that is what role do you think an agency can play in helping a brand create and nurture and build a community?

Mark Schaefer:

Yeah, it’s a very, very important question, because building and nurturing a brand community is quite different than traditional marketing mindset and marketing leadership. I spent quite a bit of time in the book talking about… For example, you mentioned right before the break that we’re going to be in trouble if we have a community that just sells stuff. So, if the culture of your client is always closing, this is probably not going to work. So, you’ve got to really look, “Is this a culture that can sustain a long-lasting effort like this?” It’s not just a marketing program. It really becomes part of the DNA where everybody in your company from the top to the bottom understands that this community now becomes almost like a new body part for the corporation.

So, there’s a lot of cultural preparation that needs to take place. Now, if I was an agency, I’d take a look at the book and I’d say, “Wow, what an opportunity.” It’s almost like someone said, “Guess what everyone, there’s a whole new way to advertise.” If you’re an advertising agency or a marketing agency, you have got to know that right now. You’ve got to build a competency at that right now. Look, the reason why this is such a new idea is because having this competency is really very rare. Most communities, most business communities fail, and the reason they fail is because a company said, “We’ve got to make our quarterly sales goals. Let’s do it in a community.” That is not going to work. What else do you need in community?

You need some face of the brand, you need a personality, you need resources, you need content. Here’s the most interesting, exciting part about this. Your listeners know the greatest success we can have as an advertiser, as a marketer is if we do something so interesting, so compelling, so unmissable that our customers start talking to each other about it. This is organic advocacy. This is the greatest success we can have in marketing. So, that’s really the measurement here. If you do something in this community where people say, “I love this. This is so interesting. I’m going to bring my friends. I want more people to come in this community,” and they start talking about this at the pub, they start talking about this at brunch.

I’m in this community about cars or art or whatever it can be. That is absolutely magical. I think there is a creative element of this to connect all the dots between the culture of the community, the leadership of the community, the strategy, and then most important, the creative element of the community that’s going to make people want to gather and then share what’s going on there.

Drew McLellan:

Are you envisioning that most of these communities happen in digital space? Do you think that there’s a place for physical gatherings of these communities? You talked about the technology that makes it much easier to create and connect, which is no doubt about it, but is there a place in all of this new marketing idea, the old school idea of FaceTime?

Mark Schaefer:

Oh, 100%. In fact, this is quite remarkable that every online community, even the biggest communities in the world, have a real life component. I would say I studied communities. There’s communities in this book with 75 million people in it and 30. So, there’s lots of diverse case studies in this book, but the biggest community is probably Twitch. People go in there and there’s communities within communities.

Drew McLellan:

That’s right.

Mark Schaefer:

That even Twitch has annual conferences. So, people can come together, meet their Twitch streaming heroes, meet each other, meet their friends. Because when you see somebody face to face, it takes that relationship to a whole another level. Now, when I wrote this book, Drew, I went down some deep dark rabbit holes of psychology and sociology. There’s things in this book you won’t see or read anywhere else. One of the ideas that I think is particularly profound is that there’s research that suggests that the connections in the community that don’t happen in an audience, the relationships and friendships in a community spill over to the brand.

It creates a layer of emotional switching costs because you don’t want to leave this community and this brand, because you got to leave your friends. Literally, you belong to the brand. It suggests that enabling those relationships, this is where the offline in real life component comes in, enabling those friendships and connections. That’s more important than the emotional connection to the brand. So, I think a real life component is very important.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, I think so too. I think the depth of the connection just gets much richer for folks. So, a lot of this is going to come out of the brand itself, brand leadership, all of that. I mean, somebody has to take care of this community. Somebody has to nurture it, somebody has to be the liaison. Can an agency serve that role, or does a brand have to do that? Back in the day, we had a lot of conversations about, “Could an agency be the social media community brand manager, and could they be the voice of the brand?” There’s all kinds of opinions about that. But in your mind, for this community, can an agency serve that role?

Mark Schaefer:

Before you push the record button, we were having a little discussion about that. I complimented you because I’ve never been asked that question before. I think it’s a very interesting one. If you think about what has to happen in that community in terms of continuity and there’s an element of events and there’s an element of content and engagement, I do absolutely think that there’s a role for a community. I mean, in many cases, agency representatives are already the face of the brand.

So, why couldn’t that happen in a community as well? I also think, “Why do you hire an agency?” Because they have specialized competencies that you’re just not going to spend money in your company. You don’t want that. You want the diversity and the creativity and the special talents that reside in an agency. There’s no reason that an agency couldn’t build a competency building communities. I mean my book is a framework-

Drew McLellan:

Absolutely.

Mark Schaefer:

… to do that. I mean, it gives you step one, step two, step three, this is what you need to do. It doesn’t get into the dirty details of how do you hire a community manager or something like that, but it talks about the foundational principles. So, I do absolutely think it’s a business opportunity. It’s going to be a new marketing channel really. So, why wouldn’t you build a competency? I think I am a couple years ahead of the curve. I mean, now the same thing is happening with some of my other books where people take this book and it starts a movement, says, “This is where we need to go. Let’s go. Let’s get going.” So, I think it is going to happen.

Drew McLellan:

One of the things I’ve been thinking about is we’ve talking a lot about agency’s clients, but what are your thoughts around an agency being able to create a community of prospects and clients? I mean, is it as applicable to them as it would be to any other business or brand?

Mark Schaefer:

Yeah, it’s a fascinating question because one of the things in my philosophy, when I write a book or I give a speech, I never tell people what to do because I honor their expertise. I honor that they know more about whatever they’re doing than I do. What I try to do in my books and my speeches is put out a new roadmap.

Say, “Look, you’re going down this road. Great. The road’s working, awesome. Here’s another road maybe you didn’t think about. Let’s open your eyes and maybe try going down this road. So, could anybody go down that road?” Here’s the response I have. It’s a one-word response, Yeti. Now, Yeti. Seven, eight years ago, I started people seeing people wearing t-shirts and hats that said Yeti. I thought, “Wait a minute. Isn’t that an ice cooler? Do I have this right that people are wearing merchandise for an ice cooler?

Now, I studied them very carefully for the first five years. In their first five years, they did no paid advertising. It was 100% word of mouth and community, and they got people to buy in to what they stood for, what it meant that this is all about the ultimate outdoor gear. People love to think of themselves that way. I want to fish or I want to hike and I want to hunt. I want the gear that represents that. So, it’s a wonderful, amazing case study that I actually have that in the Marketing Rebellion book. So, here’s what I think about. If you can build a passionate community that builds a movement around an ice cooler, you can do it for an agency. I’m not going to tell you what to do.

Drew McLellan:

But you’re saying it’s possible.

Mark Schaefer:

I think if you could do it for an ice cooler, you can do it for almost anything. Yeah. So, I think it’s certainly possible.

Drew McLellan:

As we enter into this new idea of marketing, what are the mistakes? What are the dangers that lurk around the corners of doing something new that you think, “You know what? I’ve either seen it in my case studies or I’ve heard about it. Here are some pitfalls to avoid”?

Mark Schaefer:

I think the number one hurdle, if a company can overcome this hurdle, they’re almost assured of success. It gets down to measurement. If you’re working with a company that says, marketing is coin operated, we need coins in and we need more coins out, boy, that’s going to be tough.

But if you are working with a company that really recognizes the importance of brand and the case study you have in the book is Gatorade versus Powerade. Gatorade has 80% market share of the 30 billion sports drink market. Now, where do you see Gatorade? They sponsor stadiums. They sponsor athletes. You have the Gatorade Bath in America. Someone wins a game, they have that, and they poured over the head of the coach. Now, here’s something interesting, Drew, in the college playoffs a few weeks ago, one of the games was actually sponsored by Powerade. They had this big vat of Powerade, and here they come behind the coach, and here’s what the announcer said. Here comes the Gatorade bath.

Oops. Gatorade is connected to cultural relevance. They don’t give coupons. They don’t have deals. They don’t have two for one. They are connected to meaning and relevance. Gatorade is cool, Gatorade is beloved, and the cost of Gatorade is twice as much as Powerade. They have 80% market share. Now, here’s what you got to think about. Does the iconic image of the Gatorade Bath, which has become part of our culture, does that sell more Gatorade? Obviously, it does. They have 80% market share. Can you measure it? No. Does it work, right? Yes. Can you measure it? No. There might be ways to measure it if you say people are taking pictures of it and tweeting it, maybe, but you’ve got to make the hurdle.

What’s distinctive about this book and idea, community isn’t new. Looking at community through the lens of brand marketing is new. If you look at, “Look, here’s this opportunity to build loyalty,” to have co-creation, collaboration, brand advocacy, new ideas from our customers, collecting personal information from our customers, spreading information about our company and our products at the speed of instantaneous. If you are only looking at community as a way to sell more stuff or as a way to do customer self-service, you’re missing the biggest opportunity in the history of overlooked marketing opportunities.

It’s staring us right in the face, but just we have this idea, “What community is this?” The best run companies in the world are surging into community. Nike, Ikea, Lego, look at Sephora. Sephora has brick and mortar stores in every moderate sized city in the world. They have brick and mortar stores. They sell cosmetics and skincare. 80% of their revenue comes from their community. Here is the metric in their community, engagement. Now, people in your audience are rolling their eyes. Engagement, we’re way past engagement.

Drew McLellan:

Well, in fact, we’ve told clients not to measure that anymore.

Mark Schaefer:

That’s right. Look, I wrote a 2,000-word blog post against engagement, but engagement and community is different. Engagement and community is a sign of relevance, of vitality. In the book, there’s a case study of Sephora. The woman who runs the community said, “We look at engagement rates, because it shows we are relevant to our community. We’re creating ideas and projects and products that they want to talk about. It shows we are on track.” This is a leading indicator to sales. So, I mean, there’s a lot of things that are different about the marketing mindset of community. For an agency looking to get into this, there might be an educational component.

Drew McLellan:

No doubt.

Mark Schaefer:

Some customers are going to dive right into this. It’s going to be obvious. They’re going to say, “Wow.” Again, anybody that reads the first three chapters or maybe four chapters of the book, they’re going to be sold. It’s going to be, “Wow, why haven’t I thought about this before?” So, if you’re working with leaders who know that this is a fast changing world and we got to keep moving with this world, they’re going to be open to this idea. Now it’s just going to be a matter of an educational process of, “How do we do this right? How do we measure this right? What are the signposts of progress we need to be looking for?”

Drew McLellan:

Probably how do we avoid old habits? I think there’s a lot of breaking of old habits with this.

Mark Schaefer:

Yeah. I think one of the most profound statements in the book, there’s a case study about a guy… Well, this answers your question about community. This guy had a marketing and advertising agency outside of London. His business was bumping along and he was doing okay. He had monthly lunch meetings with a bunch of friends where they were talking about, “How do we sustain our businesses and how do we move ahead?” Well, people love these conversations so much, they started bringing their friends. Soon they had a whole table. Then they had a whole room, and he said, “Let’s formalize this. Let’s make this into a community.”

Long story short, the community is now bigger than the business. He’s getting more revenue from his agency community than his agency. Here’s what he said. He said, “Every day, I’m humbled because the marketing mindset of community is so different than what we learned at the university. It’s about giving up power. It’s about giving up leadership. It’s about elevating volunteers into leadership roles. It’s about creating a safe and healthy culture. It’s about dispensing status and acknowledging people.”

People are going to be active in the community if they feel like they can be heard, they feel like they can be acknowledged. I mean, that’s a whole different way of thinking about marketing. It’s about moving the emotional connection to the members instead of to us. So, it is humbling. In my community, I’m learning every day, but it’s also a tremendous amount of fun.

Drew McLellan:

As you were talking, I was thinking too, the R&D aspect of this, which we talked a little bit about, but when brands want to know if a product’s going to be popular, a service is going to be popular, plugging into that community and here’s something we haven’t really dug into, but the community also has a vested interest in the brand being successful. It’s why they do the word of mouth, but they’re going to be very likely to give very candid feedback on new products, new services, new iterations of products, because they have a vested interest. They have an affection for the brand that is different than how a customer feels about a brand.

Mark Schaefer:

Here’s one of the reasons why I know this is the future. 85% of young tech startups are leading with community as their marketing strategy, just for the reasons you said, Drew, because if you’re creating some new product, you’ve got to have those beta testers. You’ve got to have people that are involved in the product and will eventually become advocates of the product.

So, I think the young people today are saying, “We can’t hire an agency. We’ve got to do something else. We’re going to do a grassroots thing here to get us off the ground, and those are going to be our new business leaders.” They love the community. They long for community. The communities they’re building now in these startups, that’s going to be the foundation of their growth and success going into the future.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. I love this topic. I personally love this marketing trend. I am all about creating and building community. So, the book just resonated with me because I just was not only nodding, but cheering, because this is a marketing strategy you can cheer for, right? This is not anything more than doing good for good people that benefits everybody in the mix.

Mark Schaefer:

Yeah. I think there’s a statement at the end of the book. I got to interview the famous author, Tom Peters. He wrote the bestselling business book ever, In Search of Excellence. When I interviewed him, he was ready to retire. I said, “What would be your last words of advice to marketing and advertising professionals that listen to my podcast?” He paused for a moment and he said, “Are you proud of what you do? When you go home at night, are you proud to tell your family what you did that day?” I just thought that was so poignant, what wonderful idea.

Think about, “What if you created the most belonging company? If you had the most belonging agency, if you worked and created the most belonging university or symphony orchestra, wouldn’t that be just a legacy you would be so proud of that people want to be there?” They belong to the brand, not just like the brand or love the brand. They belong to the brand. I think this is a marketing idea, it’s a marketing trend, it’s a marketing book, but it’s not only marketing that works. It’s marketing that heals. I think that’s something every agency owner, every person who loves advertising and marketing could be really excited about.

Drew McLellan:

You’re right, proud of. This has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your thinking. I’m grateful that you made the time to be with us. Thank you.

Mark Schaefer:

Yeah, thank you so much, Drew. It’s been an honor.

Drew McLellan:

Obviously, they can buy the book anywhere and everywhere, but if they want to learn more about your work, they want to subscribe to the blog, they want to read about all your other great books, what’s the best way for folks to connect to you and with you?

Mark Schaefer:

Super easy. You don’t even have to remember my name. All you have to remember is Businesses Grow. That is my website. If you go to businessesgrow.com, you can find my blog, my podcast, my books, my social media connections. I follow everybody back on LinkedIn, so we can be LinkedIn friends for sure. I’d love to hear feedback from your audience. I’d love to hear their ideas because I’m still learning about this too.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, this is great. This is a movement that I think is long overdue and I think worthy of our profession, for sure. I think you’re right. I was thinking as you were saying, would you be proud? So, would you be proud if your business did this? But imagine if your business helped a lot of other businesses do this.

Mark Schaefer:

It changes lives. It really does.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Yeah. It’s awesome. Thank you, my friend. Thank you for being with us. I appreciate it.

Mark Schaefer:

Yeah, my pleasure, Drew.

Drew McLellan:

All right, guys. You know I love episodes that get you thinking and get you fired up. I think you could hear in both marks in my voices. If you’re watching the video, if you see a little clip of the video, I don’t know if Mark’s Italian or not, but he talks like I do, a lot of big hand gestures. There’s a lot of enthusiasm around this idea from both of us, and I hope for you as well. I think this is not only smart for us as business owners, both for what you can do inside your own agency, but this is a marketing idea that is really sticky and has great legs with it that you can take to your client.

So, read the book, listen to this a couple times, share it with your leadership team, but begin to explore how you can be a community builder. I love that idea for us and for our profession. So, take it, put your own spin on it, think about it for a while, but I would love like Mark to hear how you brought some of these ideas to life. All right.

Quick shout out and thank you to our friends at White Label IQ. As you know, they’re the presenting sponsor of the podcast. They do white label PPC, dev and design. They are born of an agency. So, they get that when you are a partner to an agency, you have to price accordingly. So, the agency can make money as well. But I’ll tell you what they really understand is they understand agency clients and they understand how to help you navigate your clients so that you have a successful outcome for them. They are lovely people. Head over to whitelabeliq.com/ami to read more about them. I will be back next week.

I promise you, I will bring you another guest who’s going to get you thinking differently about your business, get you excited about some aspect of the work we do, and as always bringing us together in a community. So, again, this is a great tee up to remind you that we have an active ongoing conversation in Facebook and that Build a Better Agency Podcast community. We’re answering questions for agency owners every day, but even better, all of you are answering each other’s questions. You’re sharing resources, you’re connecting with each other. So, head over and if you’re not a member, join it. It’s free. If you are a member, come on back. We miss you.

Okay, I’ll see you next week. Thanks for spending some time with us. Visit our website to learn about our workshops, owner peer groups, and download our salary and benefit survey. Be sure you also sign up for our free podcast [email protected]/podcast giveaway.