The New Marketing Goal: Belonging
Module: Digital Marketing
Assignment Essay as part of NextMBA Marketing Director Course.
From Broadcasting to Belonging
The digital era has fundamentally transformed marketing's core function through three distinct phases: communication, conversation, and now, community. This evolution reflects not just technological changes but a deeper shift in consumer expectations and behaviors.
In the early digital age, marketing primarily leveraged new channels for traditional one-way communication. Brands simply transferred their broadcast mentality online, using websites, banner ads, and email to push messages to larger audiences at lower costs. Success was measured in reach and impressions—how many eyes saw the message.
As social media matured from 2008 to 2015, marketing entered the conversation era. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter created spaces where brands could engage in two-way dialogue with consumers. This period saw the rise of content marketing, social media management, and community managers who monitored and responded to customer interactions. Success shifted toward engagement metrics—likes, comments, shares, and sentiment.
Today, we've entered the community era, where the most successful brands don't just talk with customers; they create environments where customers connect with each other. This represents marketing's most profound transformation: from creating messages about products to creating communities around shared identity and values, transcending transactional relationships to foster belonging. Success now encompasses retention, advocacy, and user-generated content—evidence of genuine community bonds.
This shift didn’t just originate from the increased access to attention through digital channels but is also a response to several market forces: declining trust in institutions, rising consumer expectations for authenticity, the fragmentation of media, and the growing economic value of loyalty in subscription-based businesses. As traditional advertising effectiveness declined, forward-thinking brands recognized that fostering community created more sustainable competitive advantages than clever campaigns ever could.
How PLG and Privacy Changes Accelerated Community Building
Two seemingly unrelated trends—the rise of product-led growth in B2B and increasing data privacy regulations—have converged to accelerate community building as a marketing imperative across sectors.
Product-led growth (PLG) fundamentally changed B2B software adoption patterns by focusing on individual users rather than procurement departments. Companies like Slack, Notion, and Figma designed products that individuals adopt first before bringing them into their organizations. This bottom-up adoption blurred traditional B2B/B2C boundaries in several ways.
First, it democratized the purchasing process, making individual users—not just C-suite executives—influential stakeholders in technology decisions. Second, it placed user experience on equal footing with technical specifications, bringing consumer-grade design principles into business products. Finally, it introduced freemium and self-service models that created massive user bases before formal sales conversations ever began.
These changes necessitated a new marketing approach. Traditional B2B marketing focused on decision-makers through sales-enablement content and lead generation. PLG companies instead needed to build connections with individual practitioners while simultaneously establishing credibility with organizational buyers—a challenge perfectly suited for community-based approaches.
Simultaneously, data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA, alongside platform changes like Apple's App Tracking Transparency, severely restricted the targeted advertising models many B2C brands relied upon. These privacy changes forced brands to prioritize first-party data strategies and direct relationships with customers. Communities provided the perfect solution: spaces where customers willingly share information, preferences, and behaviors in exchange for valuable connections and experiences.
The convergence of these trends—PLG's bottom-up adoption in B2B and privacy restrictions in B2C—created a universal imperative for community building across sectors. Organizations now needed to create spaces where both individual users and organizational stakeholders could engage around product experiences, while simultaneously developing direct relationships that reduced dependence on increasingly restricted advertising platforms.
Building Channel-Adaptive Storytelling with a Consistent Voice
While a channel strategy provides the structure for community building, the content strategy supplies the substance. Effective community content must simultaneously adapt to platform-specific expectations while maintaining a consistent brand voice and value proposition. This delicate balance requires a sophisticated approach to content development and distribution.
The foundation of effective community content is a clearly defined brand voice that remains consistent across platforms while adjusting its expression to match each channel's norms. This voice should embody the community's values and personality, whether that's helpful and educational, provocative and challenging, or supportive and empowering. Like a person who speaks differently at industry conferences than at casual social gatherings while remaining fundamentally themselves, brands must adapt their tone while maintaining their essential character.
Channel adaptation requires understanding each platform's unique content formats, audience expectations, and algorithmic preferences.
LinkedIn content should emphasize professional insights, business impact, and industry credibility through long-form articles, case studies, and data-driven analyses
Twitter/X content should prioritize timeliness, visual impact, and conversation-starting potential through concise observations, GIF demonstrations, and question-based engagement
Discord content should focus on utility, problem-solving, and community recognition through tutorials, troubleshooting guides, and member spotlights
Dedicated platforms should deliver exclusive value, deeper connections, and strategic insights through comprehensive resources, interactive programming, and behind-the-scenes access
Beyond platform adaptation, effective community content strategy requires meeting members at different stages of their journey. Newcomers need foundational educational content that establishes basic understanding and immediate value. Active participants seek optimization techniques, creative applications, and peer connections. Advocates and champions want recognition, exclusive access, and opportunities to showcase their expertise.
The most sophisticated community content strategies develop content themes that can be adapted across platforms and journey stages. For example, a product update might generate a formal announcement with business implications for LinkedIn, visual demonstrations of new capabilities for Twitter, technical implementation guides for Discord, and exclusive strategy sessions for the dedicated platform. This approach creates consistency while respecting platform differences.
Finally, community-driven content must increasingly take center stage as communities mature. User testimonials, case studies, template sharing, and problem-solving become the most authentic and compelling content within thriving communities. The organization's role evolves from primary content creator to content curator and community storyteller, highlighting member contributions while providing the structure and recognition that sustains engagement.
Digital Channels as Community Spaces
Different digital platforms serve distinct roles in community building strategies based on their unique audience characteristics, technical features, and social norms. Successful community strategies leverage these differences rather than applying one-size-fits-all approaches.
LinkedIn functions primarily as a professional identity platform where career advancement, industry knowledge, and business relationships drive engagement. For community builders, LinkedIn excels at establishing thought leadership, professional credibility, and industry-focused conversations. Its formal atmosphere makes it ideal for reaching decision-makers and establishing business impact, but less effective for fostering the emotional connections that drive strong communities. LinkedIn groups and company pages work best for professional development communities, industry associations, and B2B product communities with clear business applications.
Twitter/X serves as a public conversation platform characterized by real-time engagement, broad accessibility, and minimal barriers to participation. Its public nature makes it excellent for expanding community visibility, highlighting user contributions, and demonstrating responsive customer service. The platform's informal atmosphere allows brands to show personality and participate in broader cultural conversations. Twitter Spaces and hashtag-driven conversations create temporary but intense community moments. However, the platform's chronological nature makes sustained community building challenging without consistent engagement.
Discord has emerged as a preferred platform for deep community engagement due to its robust channel structure, real-time chat functionality, and voice capabilities. Originally gaming-focused, Discord now hosts communities for products, creators, and interest groups seeking more intimate, ongoing connections. Its channel organization allows for specialized discussions among subgroups while maintaining community cohesion. The platform's relative privacy (most servers require explicit joining) creates a sense of belonging and exclusivity that drives deeper engagement. Discord excels for communities requiring frequent interaction, technical support, and peer collaboration.
Dedicated community platforms provide the greatest control over community experience but require driving members to a new destination. These platforms offer customized spaces with dedicated features for content organization, member recognition, and community governance. They excel for premium communities, educational groups, and product champions seeking deeper connections without platform distractions. While requiring more resources to maintain and grow, these owned platforms allow organizations to fully align community experiences with brand values and business objectives.
The most effective community strategies use multiple platforms in complementary ways, recognizing that community members engage differently across their journey. Early awareness and education might happen on Twitter, professional validation on LinkedIn, active usage support on Discord, and champion development on a dedicated platform. This multi-channel approach meets community members where they are while guiding them toward deeper engagement over time.
Cross-Channel Hypothetical: The Streamline Community
To illustrate these principles in practice, let's examine how a hypothetical product-led growth company, Streamline, integrates multiple channels into a cohesive community strategy that supports their collaborative marketing project management platform. Streamline's community strategy begins with clear segmentation of their target audiences across their community journey:
Prospective users: Marketing practitioners seeking more efficient workflows
New users: Teams implementing Streamline for specific marketing functions
Active users: Regular users looking to optimize their processes
Power users: Advanced users extending Streamline across their organization
Champions: Advocates who represent Streamline within and beyond their organization
Their multi-channel approach maps these segments to platforms where they naturally engage:
LinkedIn serves as Streamline's authority-building platform, targeting marketing leaders and decision-makers. Their LinkedIn presence centers around a 7,000-member Marketing Operations Leaders group, where Streamline executives and product leaders participate as valuable contributors rather than promoters. Content focuses on strategic challenges in marketing operations, workflow optimization, and measuring marketing impact—topics relevant to decision-makers evaluating solutions like Streamline.
Twitter/X functions as Streamline's product visibility platform, showcasing feature capabilities and user success stories to hands-on marketers. Their content strategy emphasizes practical applications through before/after comparisons, template showcases, and user-generated success stories. Weekly Twitter Spaces on productivity topics bring together users and non-users around common challenges, creating community beyond product boundaries.
Discord operates as Streamline's user mastery platform, where active users receive support, share workflows, and build connections with peers. Organized into role-based channels (#content-marketers, #social-media-managers) and use-case channels (#agency-workflows, #enterprise-setup), the Discord community provides immediate value through peer support while creating relationships that reduce churn. Product team office hours and beta feature access reward active participation.
An in-product space functions as Streamline's champion development platform, where their most engaged users access exclusive resources, recognition programs, and advanced training. A formal certification program creates professional development incentives, while a champion spotlight series recognizes top contributors. Industry-specific spaces facilitate deeper connections among similar users, generating valuable feedback for product development.
Streamline's cross-platform integration creates clear pathways through the community ecosystem. Coupled with systematic content flows through this ecosystem, this integrated approach ensures consistent messaging while respecting platform differences, creating an ecosystem where community members find value at every stage of their journey.
Prospective users discover Streamline through LinkedIn thought leadership or Twitter feature showcases
New users are invited to Discord for implementation support and immediate value
Active users are encouraged to share workflows and templates on Twitter
Power users are invited to the Circle community for advanced training and certification
Champions are featured in LinkedIn success stories and Twitter case studies
New Metrics Measuring Community Success
As marketing evolves from communication to community, measurement must similarly evolve. Traditional marketing metrics focused on acquisition funnel performance provide incomplete insights into community health and impact. Organizations building effective communities now track a sophisticated set of metrics across four key dimensions.
Engagement Depth
Average contributions per active member: Distinguishes between passive consumption and active participation
Conversation ratio: The number of member-to-member interactions versus brand-to-member interactions
Response rate and time: How often and how quickly community questions receive answers
Content creation percentage: The proportion of members who create original content
Community Health
Member retention cohorts: Tracking how engagement patterns evolve for different joining cohorts
Sentiment analysis: The emotional tone of community interactions
Net Promoter Score (NPS): Willingness to recommend the community (distinct from product NPS)
Leadership diversity: The percentage of discussions initiated by community members versus brand representatives
Business Impact
Retention differential: Churn rate differences between community participants and non-participants
Support deflection value: Cost savings from peer-to-peer support versus formal channels
Community-influenced revenue: Sales involving community members in the decision process
Product feedback implementation: Features or improvements originating from community input
Reduced customer acquisition cost: Referrals and word-of-mouth originating from community members
Individual Member Value
Member journey progression: Movement of members through defined engagement stages
Individual influence score: The reach and impact of specific members within the community
Value received index: Composite measurement of benefits members receive (questions answered, connections made, skills developed)
Value contributed index: Composite measurement of benefits members provide (questions answered, content created, referrals generated)
The most valuable insight comes from connecting these community metrics to lifetime value. By understanding how community participation correlates with retention, expansion, and advocacy behaviors, organizations can quantify the true ROI of community investments and optimize their strategies accordingly.
Community as Competitive Advantage
The shift from marketing as communication to marketing as community building represents the discipline's most profound transformation in the digital era. What began as a tactical response to social media has evolved into a strategic imperative for sustainable growth in an increasingly privacy-conscious, relationship-driven business environment.
As the boundaries between B2B and B2C continue to blur, and as digital platforms evolve from broadcasting channels to community spaces, organizations that master the art of building belonging will create their most defensible competitive advantages. While features can be copied and prices can be matched, authentic communities built on genuine value exchange and member connections create barriers to competition that grow stronger over time.
The most successful organizations will be those that view community not as a marketing channel but as a business model—creating spaces where customers, partners, and employees can connect around shared purposes and values. In doing so, they transform transactions into relationships and customers into stakeholders, building the foundation for sustainable growth in an increasingly fragmented and privacy-focused digital landscape.
