Mastering Brand Communities: 11 Success Stories to Inspire Your Strategy
There are many types of brand communities — ranging from communities built by software products companies for customer support and customer success to those that bring consumers closer to their favorite brands.
Yet all these communities have one thing in common: they strengthen the relationship between the brand and its customers.
This has many benefits, including increasing customer lifetime value, building brand loyalty, lowering churn, and encouraging repeat purchases.
In this article, we’ll look at 11 different brand community examples.
We’ve selected a variety of community types. We’ll explain what each one does and how it benefits both the brand and its members.
We hope this will provide all the inspiration needed to create your own thriving community.
Quick Recap: What is a Brand Community 👇
A brand community is a group of people who are passionate about a brand. The group may form organically, or the brand may create it. Typically it will use dedicated online community platforms, but they can also form offline or on social media.
Successful brand communities provide tangible benefits to both members and the companies they are built around. Both parties need to value the relationship for the community to work.
11 great brand community examples
Runna
Runna is an app that offers personalized training plans to help people meet their running goals. Its plans cover everything from starting running to marathon training.
The Runna Community
Runners use the Runna Community to discuss their training, share updates, and access extra help from coaches and experienced athletes.
How members benefit
Community members benefit from fast access to expert help from coaches and more experienced runners.
Joining the community also provides a sense of accountability. This helps members stay motivated and increases the likelihood of meeting their fitness goals.
Members also get access to exclusive events, races, and discounts from apparel and nutrition brands.
How Runna benefits
The brand benefits because the sense of community encourages users to stick around. As Runna is a subscription service, this can have a huge impact on the lifetime value of customers.
Additionally, each answered question adds to a huge library of searchable fitness knowledge. This creates a moat that makes it harder for new businesses to compete.
Runna community is powered by Bettermode and the Runna team has deeply integrated the community into the mobile app using Bettermode's embed tools. This helps Runna offer a delightful social experience to the users directly inside the mobile app. Learn more about Runna's community story here.
Salesforce
Salesforce is an enterprise software powerhouse that has solutions for everything from Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to e-commerce.
Salesforce Trailblazer Community
The Salesforce Trailblazer Community is a brand community for Salesforce customers.
The community is split into various groups depending on the topic (e.g. B2B commerce, Financial Services) or region.
How members benefit
Salesforce customers get access to product support through the community. This comes from other members, the library of answered questions, and Salesforce-created resources.
Members can also access events and conferences which provide educational and networking opportunities.
How Salesforce benefits
Salesforce benefits because users learn how to use the product without support team input. This reduces customer support costs and makes scaling help easier.
Meanwhile, community events and conferences build the Salesforce brand. And members may promote the product to other people in their network.
Condo Control
Condo Control is software that helps property managers stay organized. It offers a suite of tools including communication, record keeping, and security. It also has resident-facing tools such as amenity booking, online payments, and virtual meetings.
The Condo Control Community
The Condo Control community is a space where Condo Control users access expert help from staff. They can also discuss condo management with other managers or owners.
How members benefit
Condo managers benefit from easy access to software help resources such as webinars and product guides. This helps them get more value from the software.
Community members can network with other property managers and discuss common issues.
How Condo Control benefits
Condo Control gets a robust channel to provide community-led support. And solving queries in a public community means everyone can benefit from the answer, not just the person who asked the question.
The team also shares support resources. By making these easy to access, the team makes it more likely that customers will solve issues independently.
The community also gives Condo Control deep insight into the challenges facing its customers. It can use this to influence product updates.
Condo Control community is powered by Bettermode and the team has structured the community to centralize resources and offer support so it can be scaled to a large number of customers. Learn more about Condo Control's community story here.
Shopify
Shopify is an e-commerce software that simplifies online store creation. It does everything from building a storefront to managing payments, shipping, and inventory.
The Shopify Community
The Shopify Community provides support to customers. It’s split into multiple groups based on discussion topics and store types.
How members benefit
Shopify users can access technical product help. This makes it easier for them to set up their ecommerce store.
Joining groups with people at a similar stage of business growth provides members with access to a valuable network. Members can share ideas and strategies for business growth.
Users can also access on and offline events, meetups, and courses. This improves opportunities for learning and networking.
How Shopify benefits
The community lets Shopify provide support at scale without having to increase the number of agents it hires.
Better access to help also means customers are more likely to build successful stores. This improves retention and ensures customers stay with the brand for longer.
Sephora
Sephora is a make-up and beauty brand with both online and offline stores. It sells products from a huge range of different brands.
The Sephora Beauty Insider Community
The Sephora community connects individuals with an interest in beauty products.
The online forum is the community focus. When members sign up they create a profile and sign up for relevant groups. The community has spaces on pretty much any beauty topic imaginable including beauty talk and shopping.
There is also an ambassador program that provides brand advocates with further benefits such as product collaborations.
How members benefit
Members can learn makeup and beauty techniques from experts and experienced community members. There are also opportunities to build social connections with people who share their interests.
Community members also get access to talks, pop-up stores, and classes on topics related to makeup and beauty. And they can take advantage of promotions from Sephora brands.
How Sephora benefits
Sephora gets access to a huge pool of loyal customers to whom it can promote its brand values and products.
Figma
Figma is a design tool that helps teams collaborate on designs for websites and apps. It has tools for the whole design process: from brainstorming to creating prototypes.
The Figma Community
The Figma Community allows users to create and share files. These are usually design or graphics packs, but they can also be plugins, workflow templates, or even presentations.
How members benefit
Members benefit from access to the extra functionality these files provide. Using graphics packs made by others makes it easier to create high-quality designs.
Meanwhile, top Figma creators can generate likes and share links to their social profiles. This helps them build authority in the design space.
How Figma benefits
Figma benefits from being able to offer all this extra functionality without having to create anything.
The community experience adds significant value to its offering and makes it much harder for other companies to enter the space.
GeneratePress
GeneratePress is a WordPress theme that makes it easy for anyone to create a website. There’s a free version that anyone can use, as well as a paid one that offers advanced functionality.
The GeneratePress community
The GeneratePress forum is a support community. Paid members can ask questions and someone from the team will respond in real-time. Free members can browse the support library.
The community is indexed on Google. The library of answers is so large that it shows up for almost any GeneratePress-related Google query. You can see an example of this in the image above.
How Members Benefit
The community is an easy way for paid customers to access support. When they ask a question, they get a fast answer from the support team.
And because all queries are answered in public, anyone can access the information once the problem has been solved.
This means all users can easily find answers to pretty much any question by searching on Google.
How GeneratePress Benefits
Having a huge support library means people are more likely to build successful websites. If they build successful websites, they will keep paying for the product.
Gaining the ability to ask support questions is also a powerful motivator to convince people to switch from the free to the paid plan.
Generating traffic from Google may also build brand awareness and result in more people using the tool.
Lego
Lego is a popular block-based building toy brand. The company sells sets that people can buy to create different models.
The Lego Ideas Community
The Lego Ideas community is an online community for people who love the brand. The community has two main parts: ideas and activities.
The ideas section is where the lego fan base can submit ideas for Lego packs.
If a new product idea gets 10,000 supporters, the Lego design team will review it and maybe turn it into a product people can buy.
The activities section is where the Lego team posts build ideas. Members can then submit designs that are based on the ideas.
For example, the Lego team recently made a post to celebrate the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 soccer tournament. Many people uploaded images of soccer-related designs.
How members benefit
Members get building inspiration and the ability to share their designs. If they submit an idea that is chosen by Lego, the company will create and sell a Lego pack based on their design.
How Lego benefits
The community helps Lego connect with its customers. This can improve customer loyalty. It may result in outcomes like more word-of-mouth referrals.
The community also receives significant insight into the types of designs that people are likely to buy.
Bettermode Platform
Bettermode is a customizable community platform that helps brands build customer communities and engage customers under a unified social space.
Key features include discussions, customization options, embed tools, Spaces, activity feed, member profiles, and a rich app store to add new functionalities to the community. It's everything you need to create a successful community.
The Bettermode Community
The Bettermode Campfire is a space for community builders and people who want to learn more about community building as well as get the best out of the Bettermode Platform. Members can discuss the Bettermode platform, access help from the team and more experienced community builders, and get insights on community building.
How members benefit
Members get access to direct support from the Bettermode team. They can also access a huge library of questions and answers which provide solutions for almost any problem customers are likely to face.
Members can also learn general tips and strategies for building and growing communities. This comes from both user-generated content and resources built by the Bettermode team.
How Bettermode benefits
Better support and customer education mean customers are more likely to build successful communities.
The community is also a great place to promote online events. This helps increase brand awareness and builds authority in the community space.
Harley-Davidson
Harley-Davidson is a motorbike brand with a dedicated community of riders.
The Harley Owners Group
The Harley Owners Group (HOG) is a successful example of an omnichannel community (presence on both real-life and online media). Harley-Davidson owners get access to group rides and events, roadside assistance coverage, magazines, and newsletters.
How members benefit
Members get access to a group of like-minded people who share their hobby. The community also helps riders get the most from their bike.
How Harley-Davidson benefits
The community builds a bond between customers and the brand. In the long term, these people may spend more with the brand and introduce others to the product.
There’s also a membership level for people who are interested in the brand but don’t own their own bike. Nurturing this target audience could result in sales from new customers.
Are you ready to build your online brand community?
We hope the communities on this list have provided the inspiration you need to start a strong brand community of your own.
You’ll have seen that they can be useful for sales, customer retention, support, and even your marketing strategy.
To take your next steps towards starting a community, why not check out our guide on building a brand comunity.
It contains everything you need to know to begin -- from picking a platform to community management and implementing community engagement initiatives.
