6 Brands That Have Perfected Community Building (& How)

June 15, 2022

6 Brands That Have Perfected Community Building (& How)

Apple Store shop front

Community building works – and when you get it right, it really works. 

From improved customer retention to greater brand recognition, there’s a whole host of ways that successful community building can superpower your brand’s growth. 

Don’t believe us? Feast your eyes on these 6 examples of much-loved brands renowned for their top-class community building and super-invested customer communities.

Oh, and we’ll also spill the beans on how and why the approaches work to inspire ideas for your own community-building strategies.

Apple 

There’s no better example of the power of community building than Apple’s unprecedented success.

Over the years, the brand has strategically built a global community of devoted Apple lovers who proudly identify as owners of its latest and greatest products. 

In fact, Apple has been so successful in building a community identity around its brand and products that we no longer bat an eyelid at long overnight queues outside our local phone shop when the latest iPhone is released.

It’s these scenes that demonstrate just how valuable fostering this level of customer engagement and loyalty can be to a brand’s growth. But how did Apple do it?

Well, the core of Apple’s community-building strategy is its unwavering commitment to customer service and support.

You only have to walk into any Apple store to immediately experience it for yourself, with attentive ‘geniuses’ assisting customers with everything from purchasing decisions to product maintenance, repair and tutorials. This support extends online, too, with detailed support forums for individual products and customer problems that encourage customers to share solutions. 

This has been paired with a very conscious brand sensitivity that always remains culturally current and progressive. Not only does this project a forward-thinking brand image that asserts Apple as the leader of its space, but it also encourages an all-encompassing brand community the world over.

Lego 

In an age where children’s eyes are regularly glued to screens, Lego has effortlessly stood the test of time and remained at the forefront of its space. 

But Lego hasn’t only remained consistently appealing to its core child audience – it’s also managed to cultivate a loyal and passionate community of adult customers. 

While a global franchise of movies, video games, theme parks and more has helped to ensure the longevity of Lego’s brand recognition and customer interest, it’s the introduction of Lego Ideas in 2008 that elevated the brand’s community building to the next level. 

Lego Ideas encourages community collaboration by enabling followers to submit ‘construction ideas’, with the most popular build themes and ideas ending up in production.

By empowering customers with the chance for their voices and creative inputs to be heard, Lego has created a product ideation community that removes the gap between customer and brand. This heightens customers’ sense of value, improving engagement and retention as a result.

Gymshark

No matter whether you’re a fitness freak or couch potato, you no doubt know of Gymshark.

Far and away one of the fastest-scaling fitness brands on the planet, Gym Shark has adopted a customer-first approach to its content creation that has seen its community building scale at a rapid pace.

The brand’s blog, Gymshark Central, acts as a knowledge hub packed full of tips, tutorials and more to position the Gymshark brand as the number one source of health and fitness information. As a result, brand authority and trust signals are significantly strengthened, incentivising customers to keep coming back for more.

All the while, this best-in-space content strategy was paired with an influencer campaign that saw a team of trusted, well-known and respected athletes act as brand ambassadors. 

This amounted to the Gymshark community becoming all but synonymous with the wider fitness community, helping the brand grow significantly as a result.

Starbucks

Nowadays, community is all but embedded into the DNA of Starbucks’ brand image. 

To reach the resounding community building success the coffee giant has achieved (most notably across the pond), Starbucks focused on two key assets: user-generated content and loyalty schemes.

Let’s start with the former.

If you’re in the right demographic, there’s more than likely a picture of a Starbucks cup on one of your social media feeds today. Filtered Instagram snaps of Starbucks orders (featuring customers’ names written on the cups by baristas) have become something of a trend with millennials and beyond – a genius user-generated content trend that strikes up FOMO by projecting the community as socially desirable.

Combined with the Starbucks Rewards program (a customer loyalty initiative that offers members personalised rewards for making purchases and engaging with the Starbucks app), customers have a whole host of incentives to join this ever-growing brand community.

Red Bull

Red Bull’s unique community building strategy is centred around reinforcing its brand image and values.

This is the reason you’ll see the market-leading energy drink’s name featured at a wide range of sporting events – usually ones with a particular focus on high energy and endurance. In other cases, it’ll be an event that’s just downright insane – like this, for example. 

The idea is that, by sponsoring events that relect the high intensity of the brand’s ethos, the brand will more effectively communicate its image and values and better resonate with its target audience.

The result? A community of like-minded customers actively invested not only in the product but in the dynamic brand and what it represents.

Harley Davidson 

Harley Davidson is so invested in its brand community that it has its own name: the Harley Owners Club.

The club started as a way to bring customers and fans together through meetups and events organised all over the world. Since then, the Harley Owners Club has become one of the most popular motoring communities on the web – all with the Harley Davidson brand at its heart.

Recognising the advantages of encouraging community connection, Harley Davidson’s community building strategy centres around the social instinct to connect with likeminded people who share the same passions and interests.

Oh, and not to forget a range of hugely popular perks, including exclusive events, insurance and roadside assistance. All of this drives customer loyalty by demonstrating value to the customer, providing endless incentives to stay engaged and invested.

As these brands have masterfully demonstrated, there are countless ways you can approach your brand’s community building strategy. It’s all about getting to know your customers – their wants, needs and expectations – and leveraging this to incentivise your audience to return time and time again.

To begin implementing your brand’s community building strategy, get in touch with the experts at Six Circles today and discover how our community engagement platform can help to superpower your brand’s growth.

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