Branded communities

A place to gather, a place you own

Every other channel rents you attention one visit at a time. A community is the one asset where your customers turn up for each other, and keep turning up after the campaign stops. We build them on your own domain, and we tell you honestly whether you have enough to say to keep one alive.

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Give them a reason

A community needs a purpose beyond your marketing calendar. Peers, answers or access they cannot get anywhere else.

Make it easy to belong

Own the whole thing

Your domain, your data, your members. Nobody can throttle it, reprice it or change the rules overnight.

Where it goes wrong

Most communities die in the first month.

The platform is almost never the problem. The problem is an empty room. Somebody launches a forum, a members area or a group, announces it once, and then waits. Nobody wants to be the first person to post into silence, so nobody does, and within a month the only activity left is the occasional spam registration.

The fix is unglamorous and it is mostly human. Somebody has to run the room for the first stretch: asking the questions, answering them, introducing members to each other and giving people a reason to come back on a Tuesday. That is a commitment measured in months rather than a launch, and it is the part most proposals quietly leave out. If nobody in your business has that time, the honest answer is to build a newsletter first and revisit this later.

There is also a question of where it lives. A group on a social platform is quick to start and belongs to somebody else, which means the members, the reach and the rules are all on loan. Building on your own domain is slower and it is the only version that becomes an asset. It also feeds everything else you do, because a community produces the questions worth writing about, the members worth quoting and the email list nobody can take away from you.

Two places to put a community the same members, a very different asset

Rented

Lives on somebody else's platform
The members are theirs, not yours
Reach can be throttled at will
Rules change without notice
Nothing can be exported

Owned

Lives on your own domain
The members are on your list
Everyone sees what you publish
You set the rules
It shows up in what the business is worth

Quick to start is not the same as yours to keep

Capability

Four parts, and the first month decides it.

Platform and access

Where it lives and how people get in. Built on your own site rather than beside it, so the community, the content and the commercial pages are one thing rather than three. We keep the feature list short at launch on purpose.

Membership sitesDirectoriesEvents and calendarsForums and groupsSingle sign onRoles and permissions

Running the room

The part that decides whether it survives. House rules written before they are needed, a launch programme that gives people something to reply to, and moderation cover so a bad Saturday does not become a reputation.

Launch programmeHouse rulesModerationMember onboardingPrompts and seedingEscalation cover

Membership and revenue

Communities can pay for themselves, and the ones that do tend to last longer because somebody is accountable for them. Paid tiers, listings, sponsorship or ticketed events, chosen to fit what members actually value.

Tiers and pricingSubscriptionsPaid listingsSponsorshipTicketingRenewals

Growth and measurement

Getting the right people in and knowing whether it is working. The list and the community feed each other, which is why this sits alongside lead generation and content marketing rather than apart from them.

Email and the listLocal and organic searchMember referralEngagement reportingRetentionRevenue reporting

How it runs

Prove the room first, then build it.

Test

Before anything is built. A list, a newsletter or one event tells you whether these people want to gather at all.

Define

Who it is for, what it is for, and what is deliberately not welcome in it. Short beats broad.

Build

The platform, access and the few features that matter. Everything else waits until a member asks for it.

Seed

The first weeks are run by you and by us. Invitations, prompts and conversations somebody starts on purpose.

Hand over

To your team, with moderation cover, a monthly look at what is actually being used, and permission to stop.

Straight answers

Things we will probably talk you out of.

A community is the most expensive thing in marketing to run badly, because the failure is public. Here is where we will disagree with the plan.

A community because a competitor has one
It is the wrong reason and members can tell. If you cannot name the thing people will get from each other, the answer is a newsletter and a good reason to open it.
Launching to an empty room
Announce it to a list you already have, or seed it with people you already know. A public launch to nobody is very hard to come back from.
A social group as the whole strategy
Useful as a front door and terrible as a foundation. The members are not yours, the reach is not yours, and none of it is exportable when the rules change.
Every feature at launch
Forums, badges, messaging, events and a directory on day one gives a small group of members a very empty building. Ship the room, add the rest when it is asked for.

Insights

Technology moves fast. We write down what actually matters.

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