B2B communities offer much more than it looks at first glance. Communities bring values and benefits in different departments of a company through sharing valuable experiences. Benefits like product innovation, time to market, sharing best practices, and brand loyalty. Yet, what benefits we can really expect from B2B communities? Let’s take a closer look at what benefits communities may bring to B2B organizations:
Community-Based Product Development and Open Innovation
According to potion.social: “More than 85 percent of Fortune 500 companies rely on their communities to identify customer needs.”
Communities actually provide a company with authentic customer feedback. Absolutely this is not limited to few industries like high-tech, mobile apps, or industries of this kind. Definitely not. Mycustomer.com has conducted a survey within Fortune 500, retailers, food and beverage companies and sporting goods. As a result of this product development and open innovation approach, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty increased. Thanks to valuable information back to the company from real customers.
Better Time to Market
In the same way by having authentic customers’ feedback companies would have better time to market. Companies with their own community will provide products and services sooner than their competitors without a community. So this comparative advantage will make a huge difference in long term.
Sharing Use Cases and Best Practices with Other Partners
On the other hand, in a B2B context all markets are not necessarily in the same phases. Some markets are more advanced and some will deploy or use the same concepts with a delay. Consequently, communities are the best place to share use cases and best practices of other partners in the ecosystem to use their knowledge and insights.
Brand Loyalty with Connected Partners
When your colleagues are in touch with your partner’s colleagues they are connected beyond organizational rules. So they are truly connected. Just like friends. This easily cultivates brand loyalty among partners. Connected partners are more likely to be your advocates.
Needless to say, these are just a few benefits from communities for B2B businesses. For sure there are more advantages such as enhancing marketing efforts, reducing support cost, and bringing new customers. In future we will cover more about community benefits in B2B.
Related post: Why Communities are Critical for B2B Marketing?