Community performance marketing for web3 growth

Transcript

GM GM welcome back to another episode of web3 Academy where together we explore what business models are winning in blockchain crypto nfts and web 3 because we want to keep you on the Forefront of Technology I'm Jaybird and I'm here today to Deep dive with you all about community and I know what you're thinking oh not another episode about Community we talk about community so much and I'll be straight with you it is a buzzword that is way overused in our space right now but at the same time in every call I have as an advisor with an nft project with a blockchain project

even with web 2 projects a any digital project [ __ ] any business period I am always pushing people to think more about community and not just think more about Community but prioritize Community more make it a bigger part of your business and it'll tell you why because Community is a foundation that can lead to results that you can't even imagine bigger results than you could ever imagine because Community it's like building the strongest foundation for your house you don't know what's going to happen five years from now 10 years from now if you build a really strong

Foundation that can lead to many many better and more impactful results and also it could even just hold up your hopes through an earthquake it could hold up your house through a disaster if something goes wrong in your business your community could actually be the thing that helps you survive through that so there is so much value community and in order to bring you one of the best perspectives on community in web3 we've teamed up with our friend t-pad who is an expert on growth marketing and Community Development in the space and he wrote an awesome article that I'm going to be reading to you today so

let's Jump Right In but before we do we're just going to take a minute to hear from our sponsor the future of social media is here and that future lives in web 3 on top of lens protocol web 2 social platforms are broken and right for disruption you see the epicenter of social media is the creators and yet they are the most neglected web 2 platforms like Facebook Tick Tock and Instagram are all essentially robbing creators of their worth creators are a new type of entrepreneur forming new types of businesses yet with web 2 platforms creators don't own their content to the profiles and that's their product in business instead they are tied to the platforms they choose to create on well just like how crypto is freeing us from Banks web3 is freeing us from these centralized platforms on lens protocol

creators own their content own their profile and even their social graphing followers in the form of nfts this allows you to move freely from one social application to another with your content profile and followers moving along with you lens protocol enables self-sovereignty for your social graph and interoperability across the internet at Webster Academy we believe this is the future of Social and that's why we've partnered with lens to ensure that the path of social media is heading in the right direction visit lens.xyz to learn more today all right welcome back today we're talking about Community Performance Marketing we're doing that with our good friend t-pan here's what we're going to break down we're going to break down the

current state of community and web 3 we're going to talk about how to think about and prepare your team for Community growth marketing we're talking about how Community can become a business function this section is really good and then we're also going to talk about arguments against Community initiatives because we need to look at both sides of the coin so first up let's talk about Community Performance Marketing so despite all the attention and Fanfare and Linkedin posts highlighting the importance of building and fostering a community most people haven't unlocked the true flywheel growth that can come from community and it shows it shows in the current market State now t-pan doesn't have all the answers and neither do we at web3

Academy but I'll tell you what we do believe we believe that the strongest businesses will lean into community lead growth or CLG for short on top of this the backdrop of the current recession is providing a fertile ground for Community as a business function to rise in prominence during the next Market cycle of investment growth and opportunities so as we all know let's be honest where is Community at now it's a buzzword and when we look at community in comparison to other business functions it's way down the ladder way down the ladder and a lot of cases Community isn't even its own business function you've got sales marketing design

customer support Finance legal Talent all of these things are business functions sometimes in a business Community is its own business function but often it's maybe a piece of one of those or maybe it doesn't exist at all but there are exceptions to this we've heard some of the top Community Talent making 100K plus a year as experience Discord moderators you can certainly imagine that the community team at Yuga Labs is compensated very well and they're very skilled at what they do that said currently the vast majority of community roles are either treated as elevated customer support roles often sit within that function not empowered to make meaningful decisions and they're

not provided the resources to to level up and provide more value to the business and Community itself but let's think about the future or where we see the best community leaders leaning into is here's the future of what we see three predictions first more growth and performance marketers will shift into Community related roles and skilled Community managers will level up into growth and Performance Marketing roles and identifying who's the best fit for these roles in either direction will be key to success next Community functions will start building best-in-class Frameworks and playbooks to show impact and demand a budget and if done

correctly the signal will be clear as day and the best organizations will create budgets for Community to scale I completely agree with this I can't wait for these Best in Class Frameworks to be shared in the playbooks to exist and for Community to get the budget it deserves and what is this going to lead to the final prediction it's going to lead to community becoming a business function that will rise in prominence community may become a subset of a broader function like marketing or growth or it may become a function of its own with full stack support creative engineering product Etc and I think the best businesses the ones that really win are going to be the

ones that make Community its own function so let's look at Community growth and upskilling Community roles how many Community managers currently understand the concepts of let's say Roi K Factor LTV CAC user cohorting or attribution and how many are comfortable having conversations with product managers data scientists analysts or performance marketers probably the number is not that high it's growing I'm sure but it's probably still low additionally understanding a concept is different than implementing it in practice on the other hand how many growth professionals understand the concepts above nearly all or at least

there's an expectation that they will understand them over time and there's likely opportunities for them to grow into understanding these through upskilling and training now as Community Building becomes a strategy that all companies and Brands employ cross-training and upscaling Community teams is going to be instrumental in growing the community and as a result the business so what does growing a community mean for t-pan means three things first focusing beyond the vanity metrics of top line numbers Top Line Community membership is the usual number most people are looking at what that should lead to is engaged

membership engaged membership should lead to types of Engagement by member that should lead to understanding user personas and identifying the actions that lead to the highest value members second thing focusing beyond the channels where the community lives the community has a presence on Discord Twitter Etc should lead to understanding the content that the community engages with which should lead to understanding why the community engages with specific content which should lead to creating content that provides value and results in specific actions which has increased results and outcomes for the business third thing redefining what it means to

build a community building a community of customers and users should lead to building a community of customers that care about each other and are providing value to each other this should lead to events and activations led by the community team for the community and this should lead to partnering internally and externally to create activations that benefit the community while moving the needle for the business in a measurable way now this is where growth folks help their Community colleagues better understand how their role and impact can be more effective for the community themselves and the overall business tpan imagines that if he were to share this with his growth

peers he'd get a version that looked something like this somebody on their own saying hey we should help Community managers understand growth Concepts and the growth professionals over in their little Clique would be like you know oh yeah yeah we should do that cool thumbs up and then nothing changes and this is where a shift in perspective in alignment of incentives is critical to find the right individuals that are willing to collaborate humility and openness are needed in a bi-directional manner who are the people in growth functions that are willing to invest partner and educate their Community colleagues to supercharge aligned goals our goals even aligned who are the

growth Pros that enjoy interacting with the community community isn't just about numbers either they're softer more qualitative aspects to this like spending time with the community and just saying hello and goodbye GM good night whatever it might be those are the things that matter can you measure the direct impact of every hand the president shakes no but that shouldn't stop you from shaking those hands and kissing those babies on the other hand who are the people in community functions that are hungry to learn how to apply growth Concepts and Frameworks to supercharge the impacts of their efforts for the community it's

important to note that this isn't a cross-functional relationship that is a weekly one-to-one check-in and provide ideas there needs to be an investment on both sides to truly understand each other until then Community as a growth strategy will be limited as an additional incentive for growth professionals to better understand Community is that the organic channel has generally been elusive what's an organic user or organic Channel an organic channel is a marketing channel that's responsible herbal for generating organic traffic organic in this case means natural just as with all inbound marketing the user comes to you and natural traffic is generated via things

like search engines or via community now as Community rises in prominence we believe these definitions will become outdated organic traffic will never be fully measurable but Community can play a much larger role in helping us understand the catch-all definition if we think about Community times growth we can get three different teams we can have cross-trading Community teams we can have cross-training growth teams and then we can have creating aligned incentives with that what can Community growth as a practice look like Best in Class Community growth through

measurement and playbooks so let's take a look at a couple of hypothetical examples of how Community can shake hands with growth Ford what the f word yes Ford the car company tpan's been seeing a lot of car commercials as the NBA and NFL seasons are in full swing so why not how much does Ford spend a year on Advertising 3.1 billion dollars billion with a B but what if as a test Ford took one percent of that budget 31 million to run a pilot program to Kickstart Community Building screw that even if they spend 0.1 percent of the marketing budget which

would be 3.1 million that'd be plenty what could this community pilot look like choose five dealerships per Global region and test different types of community building initiatives such as event-driven Community Building every month one random prospective Ford buyer gets their vehicle for free right before they sign on the dotted line no questions asked every other week one random prospective forward buyer gets their vehicle at the base model price with all add-ons for free right before they sign on the dotted line no questions asked every week one random prospective foreign buyer gets free services for X number of years right before they to sign up again no

questions asked second how about education driven Community Building every month host an education day around a car related theme how to change your engine oil how to determine if you're paying the right price for a used car Etc free food bring your kids if they love cars make a whole event out of it or host Ford office hours if you have questions about your car and want an expert opinion come right in you can take this further by inviting owners of other brands as well hire part-time Specialists if needed and finally you could highlight and reward community members for service to their local community create a communal space for community events this is going to drive

value to the community another option would be long-term community building which would provide both virality and value and you could incorporate both of these strategies above now how would the success of this effort be measured incremental sales in the short and long term incremental sales and surrounding dealerships see the halo effect media exposure and social listening particularly with the viral Community Building strategy and the amount of new customer info gains such as emails collected referrals and if they don't drive a Ford you can gather their info via the education Community Building strategy now assuming this works build a Playbook to scale this across regions

and globally then hire full-time Community managers that are responsible for growing a Ford customer Community but make sure the playbooks are complementary to cultural nuances and what the community cares about if success continues a portion of the 3.1 billion marketing budget shifts from Paid marketing to community marketing and all of a sudden you're standing there saying whoa we can use the marketing budget and it build community hell yeah wow huge unlock okay let's talk about another example let's talk about doodle putt Doodles are holding an event or they've actually done this now they've held an

event at Art basil called doodle putt this was a nine hole mini golf course and is absolutely on brand for Doodles knowing them in their history of activations it was an absolute Banger and this example how did Doodles bring together community and growth First Community impact how many holders attended the event how does this event impact social media and Discord Community activity how does this event impact the quality of the community activity what is the feedback of the event think in-person feedback feedback forms and on social Discord that was the community impact what about the business impact how much Doodles merch was sold at the event and online are there

attributable moments causing a spike in sales what was the average order value for Activation attendees greater than online purchases do people who attended the activation purchased multiple times how does the event impact secondary sales on nft marketplaces like open C how about the brand impact our news outlets covering the event what is the sentiment what is the reach how many non-holders participated in the activation what brought them there now Doodles have a couple of notches under the belt with these types of activations and they've built a community since Inception so we imagine the team has a more focused framework with how they measure success and how they can use these insights to continue fostering a

healthy Community while growing the business but if they don't this is where they can start now let's talk about tools to help with Automation and measurement as web3 is showing early signs of maturity community management tools have arrived on the scene and here's a few to mention first up Blaze which is a campaign management and user segmentation and wallet insights or how about dots which allows automation flows and Community insights or how about Landing party which gives you support Bots support ticketing and help centers and there's plenty more tools like these help with creating the community Playbook as well as provide a common ground for community and growth to shake

hands and work together another tool that we talk Lots about is Chasm which provides Community insights Automation and almost a CRM to manage all of your community members all in one place are you building a community around your brand well listen to this at web3 Academy our motto is Community First profit second why because engaged communities tell you exactly how to improve your your product and ultimately Drive growth they act as team members recruiting new customers and providing crucial feedback and they become brand super fans sticking by you through thick and thin but to engage your community you must first understand them that's

where Chasm comes in Chasm is our go-to web3 tool for managing and understanding our community members it combines both on-chain and web 2 metrics all in one user-friendly dashboard with Chasm you'll know things like which other communities your members are part of and which of your campaigns are truly driving results that's why at web3 Academy we use Chasm to launch campaigns optimize growth engage our community members and automate workflows with this all-in-one tool if your community is already on chain get to know them better with Chasm head to chasm.xyz using the link in the description and discover why top brands like a mutable Nifty labs and

collab land are using chasm now let's talk last about Community as a business function and this is so important and a step that I really hope more businesses take as companies and brand scale Community can turn into a business function of its own here's what this might look like from 0 to 100 phase one minimum viable community community LED with support from various functions focus on digital channels to build community and understand the 1 000 true fans and what they engage with and why test learn rinse repeat phase two scaling Community build out a community team expand the digital footprint and

consider physical footprint where appropriate cross-functional Partnerships to measure impact build Frameworks and playbooks phase three Community as a business function scale Community team Community managers community relations Community ambassadors omnipresence across channels and the ecosystem establish an independent budget for community building and scaling efforts and build cross-functional playbooks to create one plus one equals three impact now we're not strictly defining what small medium and large looks like intentionally a large Company still needs to start small and then scale up also certain pieces may come in earlier

phases some companies may be able to create a budget at an earlier Point than others but if we think about it as minimum viable Community phase one scaling Community phase two and Community as a business function phase three that is a simple framework or model that any business can follow another source of inspiration is B2B companies and how they build community with existing and prospective clients it's arguably easier to do than b2c because there is a smaller community base Bessemer Venture Partners recently wrote a piece about community-led growth featuring several portfolio companies and their strategies you don't have to start with zero when you're thinking

about how to create a community there are plenty of examples out there and they might not be called community in the traditional sense a great example of this is the role of developer relations teams the typical role is developer evangelists and developer Advocate developer experience and developer marketing so how do developer relations teams Foster strong communities how do they measure success how do they balance a digital and physical presence now what happens when you replace developer with Community boom now let's look at the other side of the coin what are the arguments against Community growth if t-pan is making a case for something it's only fair to Think Through

arguments against it Community as a strategy isn't right for everyone I want to repeat that Community as a strategy is not right for everyone now while tpan May generally disagree with this if we were to pull back the layers of the statement there are two questions that lead to this argument when is the right time to build community and what kind of community should be built if you're an Amazon drop shipper you don't need to build community because Amazon does that for you all you have to do is focus on getting more products and optimizing them to show up as the first result I hope we don't have more Amazon drop

shippers in the world though we don't need them however once you get to a certain scale you could incorporate community building by creating a YouTube channel that reviews various Amazon products including your own Community doesn't drive business results it's fairly clear that communities Drive business impact the missing piece is having the resources and knowledge for Community professionals to show that which goes back to the first prediction endpoint in fact tpan believes strong communities combined with Creative Marketing strategies will create outsized results just look at any top tier nft brand getting too close to community is a business risk now this is

a valid point but empowering and engaging your community is not the same as giving the community the authority to make business decisions the key to this is to draw healthy boundaries between your community and Company Community does not equal employee this is why starting small and scaling up especially for large companies is important understanding the motivations and personas of your community are key to success if the goal is just financial gain things can quickly get ugly and so you must know what motivations you're dealing with Community isn't proven for blank this is another Fair Point

especially when communities are web3 enabled with an ownership component we're still in the early Innings of that similar to how blockchain games have been largely unsuccessful so far every major gaming studio is attempting to be the first to figure it out after all the reward for doing so will be substantial it's also easier to lead with authenticity back to blockchain gaming the game needs to be fun first if it isn't fun no one will care about the nfts in the game or how much you might be able to earn why play a boring game when you can just ape into D5 protocols what if a company has a strong Community management team but the CEO begrudgingly

engages with the Discord server or Twitter spaces the situation is the same in a world where everything is increasingly turning into an advertisement and people question if something is real authenticity wins and communities Thrive off it now t-pan wants to re-emphasize that Community growth is an evolving discipline he believes that there will be more and better Frameworks and examples than what he's provided maybe Ford has already tested this local community concept and he's not aware regardless tpan hopes and we at web3 Academy hope that these ideas and Concepts will provide a spark of how to think about building a

community and push you into the tremendous potential that community building can enable thanks so much for listening everybody hope you're all having a fantastic week if you're part of any communities out there go say hey to them go give them some love go spread that good Community Juju and you know how you do that you just show up you just say hi you just say goodbye you just be an active participant and if you're a leader within a community I hope you found this useful because there is huge potential as community begins to grow and becomes more of a key part of all businesses

that's a wrap folks have a great day jay Birdo thank you for listening to web3 Academy we hope this helps you along your web 3 Journey if it does please share this episode And subscribe so you don't miss the next one nothing in this podcast was Financial advice crypto and web 3 can be risky you can literally lose it all in fact if you invest on account of what we say you probably will lose it all so don't do that in all honesty the point of this podcast is to remove the noise of markets and price and focus on utility implementation anyway so you should not take any of this as Financial advice thank you friends and see you in the next one