Building community: the new growth playbook

Over the last decade, businesses large and small have increasingly relied on paid digital marketing channels to drive consumer awareness, engagement and acquisition. However, today, this playbook is showing signs of fatigue. Faced with the rising costs of digital ads and shifting algorithms, business owners have experienced diminishing returns on investing in these channels.

At the same time, consumers have grown more desensitized to—and skeptical—of digital ads. They’re demanding more from the businesses they purchase from, as the products they use and wear have become an inextricable part of their identity. They showcase people’s values and affiliations while also allowing them to feel like they’re a part of something larger than themselves.

The problem: paid social isn’t cutting it anymore

At first, digital marketing was a boon for small businesses, solopreneurs and startups alike. It empowered them to reach mass audiences at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing channels—think television and print—and to compete more effectively with corporate behemoths who wielded outsized marketing budgets.

But as the market has become more saturated, digital marketing tactics have become less effective. This in turn causes costs to increase and overall impact to decrease. The data supports this. Customer acquisition costs (CAC) have increased across paid media channels. At Facebook (now Meta), the average cost per mille (CPM) rose from $4.26 in 2014 (Adweek, 2014) to $8.01 in 2024 (Gupta Media, 2025).

Other platforms show similar trends. Google search cost per click (CPC) rose from $1.02 in 2014 to $3.85 in 2024 (Statista, 2024) and the average cost per view (CPV) on YouTube rose from $0.026 in 2016 to $0.071 in 2023 (Marketing Charts, 2023).

Rising costs have been met with decreasing efficacy, as consumers have grown wary and less trusting of paid digital tactics. Additionally, algorithms have evolved to prioritize personal content more, making it harder (and more expensive) for brands to gain visibility. This is reflected in the changes in conversion: in 2015 the average conversion across paid social channels was around 1.95%. By 2024, this fell to 0.71%.

Despite these shifts, the core drivers of effective marketing have remained remarkably the same.

They rely on creating a compelling value proposition that drives consumers to purchase, a deep understanding of consumer needs and desires and facilitating an authentic connection with consumers.

The new growth engine that capitalizes on all of these, while taking stock in shifting consumer behaviors and technology is community.

The solution: community as the new growth engine

Why should businesses and entrepreneurs leverage community development as a core component of their marketing strategy?

First, community-driven growth tactics can be implemented without digital marketing spend, reducing CAC in the process. Data demonstrates that word-of-mouth referrals and user-generated content (UGC) convert at higher rates and cost less.

Second, building community prioritizes long-term loyalty over one-time transactions. Communities foster brand advocates who buy repeatedly and promote organically; there’s no cost to the business. Businesses that prioritize CLV over one-time purchases are more sustainable and perform better in the long run.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, humans are wired for connection and communities fulfill this need. This need has become more pronounced in recent years as affiliations to traditional communities have decreased.

Build your own community-first strategy

The challenge with building a community is that it must be authentic; the best communities are organic and grassroots-driven. So much of community building depends on—you got it—the community.

Community formation may seem beyond a business’s control, but there are some key strategies to help entrepreneurs and businesses foster it.

To build your own community you can take the five-pronged approach outlined below:

• Define your purpose and values
• Identify your "super fan" customer
• Engage with your super fans
• Empower your super fans

Define your purpose and values

Effective communities form around shared values, beliefs or interests that serve as the super glue that binds community members together. Modern consumers are looking for more than just the products and services companies provide. So successful community builders will understand their customers’ needs beyond the sale.

The first step to building community is taking an inside look at what makes your brand or company. This will serve as the core motivating factor for community members rallying around you. Just remember that your brand values and purpose should be authentic and connect to what you’re producing and selling. This ensures message consistency and helps you build trust with customers.

For instance, fitness apparel company Lululemon understood that their customers were excited about fitness. They in turn started hosting fitness classes in their stores. Their customers then had a place to connect and meet one another over their shared interest in working out.

Identify your "super fan" customer

Once you define your purpose and values, it’s time to identify who they’ll resonate with. Be specific, because this will become your super fan—a loyal customer and brand evangelist who brings others into the community. This community member is key because, on average, each brand evangelist will bring in three new customers. It comes down to consumers favoring recommendations from peers over other sources like ads.

To take advantage of this, create a super fan profile, commonly referred to as a customer persona. This profile is a fictional representation of your super fan and will guide downstream strategy for your community-making. Make sure to include demographic data like age, location, socioeconomic background as well as psychographic data like values, beliefs, interests, attitudes and lifestyles.

Other important components include goals and motivations and behaviors, such as purchasing habits, media consumption and the channels they use to interact with others online and offline. Build this profile using actual customer data. This will ensure that you are creating a value proposition that truly resonates with your fanbase. Collect data by analyzing purchase history, surveying customers and conducting interviews.

Engage your super fans

You can use the profiles you created to develop engagement strategies that best fit your super fan. Community strategies should be authentic and facilitate trust with your targeted customer base, so be sure to align with the needs, desires and behaviors you’ve identified.

Choose channels and formats that would most excite them and meet them where they are. For instance, if your super fan is a “soccer mom” who frequents her children’s games and parent Facebook groups, it’s best to start in the Facebook group or by creating a fun experience at a sporting event.

Empower your super fans

The next step marks the difference between good communities and great ones. Not only do these successful companies facilitate connection and camaraderie among their customers, they also enable them to participate and build the community—and sometimes even the products.

Identify ways for your super fans to create the content and experiences that bring people to your platform. The primary tactics include encouraging user-generated content, facilitating peer-to-peer interactions and shared experiences and allowing customers to build your products and services or help support using your products.

Salesforce is a great example of a company doing this well. They launched forums where users submitted questions about using the platform, and users responded and collaborated on solutions. The company recognized the activity and took it to the next level when they launched an official community: the Salesforce Trailblazers.

The Trailblazer Community became a cornerstone of Salesforce’s strategy, offering forums, user groups and events where members could collaborate on solutions and learn from each other. By fostering community, Salesforce successfully bolstered customer retention and use of the platform via this peer-to-peer support system while dramatically reducing support costs, as users helped one another to solve problems.

Measure what matters

As with any good strategy, you should be taking stock of the impact so you can learn from and improve upon the tactics you’ve implemented. While arguably not as easy as tracking click-through rates for digital ads, there are still metrics that can provide insight into the efficacy of community building tactics. These include metrics tracking engagement, new users or customers (referral rates), how customers feel about your brand, the net promoter score (NPS) and the change in customer spend over time, or customer lifetime value (CLV).

Community isn’t just another marketing buzzword or a supplementary tactic; it’s a cornerstone of modern marketing. By nurturing authentic relationships and supporting purpose-driven engagement, businesses large and small can drive sustainable growth while creating loyal advocates who champion their brand and product. The most successful companies of tomorrow won’t just have customers—they’ll have communities. And those communities will be their biggest competitive advantage.