Business to Community Marketing – B2C2
Engagement at Community level means that we can identify relevant key stakeholder groups and address them directly. Test strategies can be developed and refined before rolling out to broader audiences.
We can work at a local, national or international level; we can work ‘online’ and ‘offline’ and we can profile community members using socio-geodemographic techniques for message refinement and relevance.
We believe this represents a whole new future of sustainable commercial engagement with society. It moves us on from the age of B2C and CSR to the new era of B2C2 – Business to Community
Dynamic Communities
Our successful track record has given us word-class skills in engaging communities – in their many forms – and their members. We understand the dynamics of communities – their governance, the connections within them, their needs and wants.
When a community loves a brand, there is no higher level of engagement. But when they feel betrayed by a brand, there is no greater loss of reputation. Community engagement isn’t just about selling but also about protecting your brand.
We identify opportunities for businesses to meet these needs through community engagement initiatives, where actions speaking much more powerfully than words. We know how to generate and network stories for our clients that answer the question of what they offer to the community and society as a whole, not just to the individual customer.
Community Engagement builds trust
Almost every large business or organisation faces issues of trust with their stakeholders – from end-user customers through to influencers and shareholders. After all, it’s almost human nature to distrust large organisations and institutions.
‘Society’ is too big a subject to tackle in one go; breaking society down into its constituent elements of communities means we can understand and address relevant concerns and motivations at a personal level and bridge the ‘trust gap’ using community connection and engagement programmes.
“Brands that have the trust of society are more successful, by every measurement”.
Individual communities are the building blocks of society. Connecting with them builds trust for brands, companies and organisations.
Community Engagement demonstrates corporate purpose
Most businesses are good at addressing the customer question ‘What’s in it for me?
Conventional marketing has been built on successful identification of benefits to the individual. But in today’s highly connected world, we need to ask a new question “What’s in it for us – the community?”
CONNECT2 doesn’t seek to replace successful customer propositions – we build on them to create relevance beyond the transaction. It’s all about demonstrating the broader role of business in society.
Community Engagement drives sustainable growth
Communities are trusted reference points for your customers, both existing and future. Successful community engagement comes from knowing how to harness community networks and use them to spread positive word-of-mouth and social media. Well-executed community programmes will drive sustainable growth, using the techniques of business to community marketing (the new B2C2).
CONNECT2 works with experts both from within and beyond the business world to maximise the impact of our community engagement programmes. We use this approach to map the influence of communities on buying behaviour. For example – whose words within the community carry the most weight; how the word is spread; how people go looking for advice; and how they act on it.
We find the influence points within communities – the needs that exist within the community and the opportunities they present for engagement and sales.
