Community Isn’t a Marketing Strategy Anymore. It’s the Business Model

Key Summary

• Beyond Marketing: Community-building is not just a marketing tactic; entrepreneurs can leverage communities to launch, scale, and drive the operational success of their businesses.
• Two Growth Strategies: Startups can benefit from community by joining existing, selective groups (like mastermind networks for guidance and motivation) or by forming strategic business partnerships and collaborations to tap into new markets.
• Meeting Consumer Demand: Today’s consumers expect genuine engagement in exchange for brand loyalty, making community-focused strategies a powerful and reliable driver for modern business success.

Building a community is a good marketing strategy that can also be useful as a way to launch, scale, and maintain a business.

Marketers have become exceptionally good at leveraging digital marketing practices to build audience-based communities for their brands. Now, it’s time for entrepreneurs to take a similar approach when it comes to launching and scaling their companies by considering the different ways custom-created communities can help them achieve their goals. Once a community is established, the business can start selling to and through those individuals. When done well, the model produces reliable returns.

Lululemon Athletica is an example of a company with a devoted branded community. In 2024, the brand highlighted 10 of its top influencers as part of an Instagram campaign. It’s easy to see in the videos that the company has been highly strategic when it comes to fostering a group of champions who will earnestly rave about their apparel.

However, too few leaders think about using the same basic principles of community-building to establish businesses. Many don’t realize that the importance and influence of community extend beyond the marketing department and into operations.

Community as a Driver of Business Startups

There are two specific ways a community can bolster the growth of a startup.

The first way involves leveraging existing communities, such as thoughtfully curated and well-organized mastermind groups. 

BrainTrust focuses on empowering women entrepreneurs to help them reach financial independence through wise corporate decisions. When a member joins, she’s placed into a selective group of like-minded peers. Each group meets at purposefully strict intervals and carries out a predefined agenda aimed at progressing the members toward their wealth and business goals.

Within this type of a mastermind experience, a member has the opportunity to realize her full potential as a business leader by tapping into the experiences and advice of her peers and those of the broader organizational community. The community serves as both a lift and a resource.

Rather than focusing on direct transactions, this type of community creates a space where business leaders can explore, test, and invest in their next big idea. At the same time, it cultivates a sizable amount of founder motivation to keep evolving. Essentially, the founder benefits from joining an established community. 

Take Advantage of Your Community

What steps can you take first to take advantage of a community that’s already available? Start looking for opportunities to join nonprofits or thought leadership organizations that align with your business aspirations. One word of caution: be selective when deciding which ones to join. You want to have a visible role in the community, which isn’t possible if you’re stretched too thin.

The second way community can become an asset to an entrepreneur is through the development of business partnerships and collaborations. When companies join forces, they double their power and create a branded community that’s a mix of both entities. This can expand a business into an untapped consumer market.

Although it might seem strange to think that a flip phone could have any correlation with a major fashion designer, the Samsung and Thom Browne collaboration worked. Both entities received recognition and exposure by bringing the world a designer-level phone. I suspect that part of their vision was to grow an authentic new community of individuals who wanted a luxury phone experience beyond what was available.

In the future, this type of collaboration could end with the creation of a completely new business, too. As long as the partnership drove the development of a real community, a startup could easily follow.

The simplest way for you to work this type of community-focused strategy is to be open to partnerships with a variety of other brands. They don’t have to be within your field, either. They just have to make sense in terms of bringing exposure to both your companies.

Community Gives Consumers What They Want

Right now, consumers are making it clear that what they want is genuine engagement in exchange for their loyalty. Accordingly, all business leaders should take that desire seriously since it can become the impetus for the founding and success of a startup.

This isn’t to suggest that you shouldn’t also work toward growing some marketing-driven communities for your company. It is. However, it’s a good time to consider all the ways you can use communities to assist with your scaling dreams. And it’s equally important to remember that community comes in a variety of internal and external forms. Knowing when to use each kind as a lever for success can be a game changer for any founder.

Connect with an Old National small business banker for more insights to help your business grow.

This article was written by Shama Hyder from Inc. and was legally licensed through the DiveMarketplace by Industry Dive. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.