If you ask any business if they have a go-to-market strategy, the answer will definitely be a resounding yes. However, there is a new form of strategy in business that is rapidly rising that may be just as important: go-to-community strategy.
What exactly is a go-to-community strategy? Let’s compare and contrast it with a go-to-market strategy.
A go-to-market strategy is a linear process of pushing people towards a binary endpoint of buying a product or service. You can think about the classic sales funnel and the steps in that funnel as the essence of a go-to-market strategy from advertising to store/website to purchase.
Go-to-market strategy is all about value capturing and the inputs for this process reflect this overarching goal. The output of go-to-market strategy is likely measured by more tangible figures such as sales, profits, or contracts signed.
Let’s contrast this with a go-to-community strategy. First, It is important to note that go-to-community strategy is not simply another way of saying marketing. Go-to-community strategy would reflect more of a value creation methodology for the members themselves. The output for go-to-community strategy is measured by the growth of the community, the strength of the connections, the actions and activities of the community members, and retention of the community members. Members of a community may be current or future customers but not necessarily. In the world of software developers, there are community members that contribute to the betterment of open source projects with the need to be compensated for their work monetarily or being customers themselves. This is the distinction of note and gives rise to the need for community experience management.
Why do you need both? When these two different approaches to business are coupled together is where true impact and influence is created. The best way to think about this is to put a go-to-community strategy on top of a go-to-market strategy. The folks at Orbit (https://orbit.love), who support community experience with their software tools have championed just that. They envision go-to-community on top of go-to-market like an ice cream cone. Community members orbit in the sweet “ice cream” of the community on top and some of the community members may drip into the “waffle cone” of the sales funnel should they have a need for the product or service that the community supports. The more ice cream on top as in the bigger the community the more of it will melt into the funnel to the eventual end goal of a sale.
That’s where industry members state the two sacred equations: Go-To-Community = Value Creation and Go-To-Market = Market Capture. The synergy between these two different business strategies is essential.
This new way of thinking should and is currently revolutionizing the way we think about business. Go-to-community strategy should be as important to a company as their go-to-market strategy is. This means having team members and tools focused on it and a budget to support community growth and maintenance. In the past few years there has been a rapid increase in companies building community support tools. We love the team at Orbit (Memphians know why). But beyond our bias, the marketing leading Orbit Model that they originated dominates the community experience management tool arena and is being copied by their competitors. And now Orbit announced they have a startup program so that new businesses can get free and discounted access to their powerful tools (see links below for more information).
Business is ever changing, but we are excited for the business transformation brought by go-to-community strategies and the new tools launching to grow and manage all sorts of communities. A lot of businesses are going to be using this new strategy shortly to not only enhance their business growth but also their impact.
Learn more about Go-To-Community Strategy, Community Management, and Orbit you can visit these links:
Orbit Community: https://orbit.love/blog-category/community
Orbit Knowledge Base: https://orbit.love/blog-category/community
Orbit for Startups: https://orbit.love/startups
Orbit CEO Video Presentation on Community Strategy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuW6B9757FY
Article on Community Strategy: https://future.a16z.com/community-%e2%89%a0-marketing-why-we-need-go-to-community-not-just-go-to-market/