Fiona Killackey is a podcaster, business coach, consultant, founder of My Daily Business Coach, and the author of Passion. Purpose. Profit.. Fiona lives with her two young sons and husband in North Warrandyte, Victoria. You can connect with her over on Instagram @mydailybusinesscoach where she offers valuable tips, tools and tactics for small business owners.
Today, Fiona Killackey is on the blog to share five ways that small business owners can cultivate a community that creates connection, cut-through and conversion.
Fiona Killackey
It’s been more than fifty years since John Lennon penned the lyrics for what would become one of the most recognised tunes of the 1960s, “With a Little Help from My Friends”. While its subject matter has been debated by everyone from primary school students to presidents, the first line of the chorus continues to strike a note with people all over the world, half a century on. If 2020 has taught us nothing else, it’s that we all need friends—to help us get by, to understand us, to care for us, check in on us, drop around homemade sourdough, share a laugh over FaceTime and, ultimately, offer us heartfelt friendship.
For those of us running a small business, this need has never been greater both for our own wellbeing and that of our customers and clients. The brands that will continue to succeed, well past the point of COVID-19 challenges, will be those that were able to form genuine relationships with the people they serve; brands that have built a community around them of loyal customers who truly feel seen, heard, valued and appreciated.
But how, in an era where there is an abundance of groups to join, pages to follow and businesses to buy from, can you carve out a community for your business? How can you begin to strengthen bonds without going overboard utilising precious time or financial resources?
After working with thousands of small business owners over the last five years, and having worked previously in senior content and marketing roles for close to two decades, I believe there are five surefire ways that brands can begin to cultivate communities around them. What’s more, most of these ideas can be actioned quickly, without a huge team around you and in relatively cost-effective ways. If you’re looking to strengthen the community that already exists for your brand, or begin to create a new one entirely, consider working through the five steps below.
1. Understand them
The foundation for every business success starts with understanding who your customer is and how you can best serve them. Community can only result when you get to know their needs and wants and are able to meet (or exceed) these. Just starting out? Talk to those in your own networks first, act on their feedback and ask them to help you spread the word. Utilising industry-specific Facebook groups as search engines can also help you uncover real-life customer needs, as can surveying an existing audience using Typeform, Google Forms or even utilising polls and questions in Instagram Stories.
2. Validate your assumptions
We all do it. We make assumptions about people, places and products without a huge amount of evidence to back these up. When it comes to cultivating a community you want to validate any assumptions as quickly as you can. What assumptions do you currently have about your audience? Perhaps you think they’re interested in learning about X, when really Y is more to their taste. One of the best ways to work through this point is to create a list of everything you think to be true about your audience, then test your theories. This could be via content, events, interviews with key customers or clients or even via social media posts. Reviewing your analytics regularly will enable you to see what you think should work versus what actually does.
3. Meet them where they are
An activity I like to ask my clients to do when it comes to building their communities is to map out a day in the life for their customers/clients. You can download a weekly planner here or find one online. Consider your ideal customer (that you should now know from Step 1) then map out a week in their life. When might they be checking social media and which channels would attract them most? Which platforms might they be using for work and which for leisure? This will help you create content and marketing that a) is seen where they already are, rather than you expecting them to come to you, and b) fits in with their lifestyle. For example, if you are in the furniture business, are you utilising Pinterest which may be where much of your audience (home owners, stylists, interior designers) already are? Or, if you cater to busy parents, perhaps audio (either added to a website page or a podcast) is better for communicating rather than long blog posts they may/may not have time to read.
4. Provide value
When someone does something that’s helpful for you, you remember it. The same goes for small business. How might you not only share your brand story, your origins and the reason why you sell what you sell, but also provide value to your audience as well? What would help them right now? If you sell appliances, perhaps it’s a go-to resource for recipes. If you sell graphic design services, perhaps it’s a free checklist for creating a cohesive brand or a breakdown of the top apps for taking quality photos with your phone. Both of these examples still lead back to the product/service being offered, but also provide value. How might you do more of this?
5. Stand for something
If 2020 has taught us nothing else, it’s that community matters and standing up for what we feel is right is important. From racism through to climate change, people are looking to brands, more than ever before, to be an example of where we want the world to be in years to come. If you haven’t worked on your brand values and mission before, revisit these and then consider how you are truly showing up and aligning to these in your content, marketing and communications.
–Fiona Killackey
Passion. Purpose. Profit. by Fiona Killackey (Hardie Grant Books RRP $29.99) is out now.
Passion. Purpose. Profit.
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