Community marketing: definition, benefits and examples for e-commerce

Your customers are already talking to each other under your YouTube videos, in a Facebook group, in private messages and on social media. Community marketing gathers these scattered conversations so that they work for your brand.

This guide gives our definition of community marketing (also called tribal marketing) and what sets it apart from community management and influencer marketing. You will also find examples and a four-step method to build your own.

What is community marketing?

A simple definition

Community marketing is a strategy that brings customers together around a shared interest, then gets them talking to each other. Instead of only publishing for its audience, the brand gives its customers a place and reasons to answer one another.

Community marketing or tribal marketing?

The two terms mean almost the same thing, but “tribal” puts more weight on the sense of belonging. Members recognize each other and share a vocabulary, rituals and sometimes jokes nobody else understands.

Organic or sponsored

Organic community marketing is born without the brand, when customers set up a group, a server or a discussion thread on their own initiative. Sponsored community marketing is driven by the brand, which creates the space, runs it and moderates it.

Many brands experience the first kind without knowing it. On social media, plenty of customers speak up and debate under your posts without any input from you.

Don’t confuse it with community management and influencer marketing

	Community marketing	Community management	Influencer marketing
Goal	Get customers talking to each other	Engage and moderate an audience	Reach someone else’s audience
Who speaks?	Mostly the members	The brand	The paid creator
How long does the effect last?	Long term and cumulative	As long as you keep posting	For the duration of the campaign
Who owns the relationship?	You, if the space is on your site	Often shared with a platform (Instagram, for example)	The creator

Which brands does community marketing work for?

Community-led marketing is not for every brand. A brand selling basic apparel has little reason to bring its customers together. A cosmetics, sports equipment, home decor or kitchenware brand does, because its customers share an interest that exists independently of the brand.

That shared interest provides the content, so you don’t need to invent topics. Your customers have questions, results to show, opinions and ideas.

A brand carried by its founder or its team also builds connection more easily, because customers come for those people too. A space where people can talk with the brand and with other customers offers something big retailers struggle to provide.

And the audience already exists, just elsewhere (YouTube subscribers, members of your Facebook group, Instagram and TikTok followers). So the work consists mainly of bringing these people together in one place, not of recruiting a community from scratch.

The detailed benefits, such as loyalty, peer support or a lighter support load, are covered in our guide to building a brand community.

Community marketing examples

The Harley Owners Group, a classic

The official club for Harley-Davidson owners is the most cited example, with its rallies, rides and online discussions. It shows that a community is built around a lifestyle.

Four e-commerce brand scenarios

A cosmetics brand opens a space where customers share their routines, their before-and-after photos and their questions about which products suit their skin. Each question asked once stays visible and answers the customers who have the same doubt later.

A sports equipment brand publishes its training tips on YouTube and invites subscribers to share their progress on its site, where scattered comments become a permanent space for peer support.

For a home decor brand, interior design projects are what bring customers together. They share photos of their homes, ideas for pairing pieces and advice before buying.

At a coffee brand, each brewing method (filter, espresso or cold brew) has its own thread, where customers swap their recipes and settings.

Is community marketing only for big brands?

Many people believe so, but small brands often start with an advantage. A big brand has to work to create a feeling of closeness, whereas the customers of a small brand often feel close to it already. A big brand also needs thousands of active members for its space to look alive, when a smaller brand can keep a club going with a few dozen customers who know each other by first name.

Small brands therefore have the legitimacy to run a community, but they lack time, which is why they need a method that does not require being there every day.

How do you build a community marketing strategy?

1. Start from the shared interest

Your customers gather around a shared interest more than around your brand itself. They want to take care of their skin, improve at their sport, furnish their home or cook better. A community around a cosmetics brand talks about routines before it talks about your products. Write down in one sentence why a customer would come, for example “find the routine that suits my skin”, “make progress alongside other athletes” or “find ideas for my home”.

2. Choose where the community will live

The deciding criterion is who owns the conversations if the platform changes its rules tomorrow. We compare Facebook groups, Discord and Insider Club in which online community platform to choose.

3. Gather before you grow

Start with the people who already follow you, whether they are your loyal customers, your most active subscribers or the members of your group.

4. Connect the community to your other channels

End every YouTube video with an invitation to discuss it in the club and slip a discussion into every email. After an order, invite the customer to share feedback in the community. Customers who arrive from YouTube, from your emails or after an order then end up in the same place.

FAQ

What is community marketing?

Community marketing is a strategy that brings a brand’s customers together around a shared interest and gets them talking to each other. It builds loyalty, peer support and content.

Are community marketing and tribal marketing the same thing?

Almost, since both describe the same approach, but “tribal” puts more weight on the sense of belonging and the codes members share.

Is community marketing only for big brands?

No, size matters less than the subject. It works best for brands whose customers already share a strong interest.

How is it different from influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing rents a creator’s audience for the length of a campaign, whereas community marketing builds an audience that belongs to you and stays once you stop paying for campaigns.

How long does it take to see results?

Count on several months of regular effort. The first weeks are about establishing habits among your most active members.

Bring your community home

Insider Club adds a forum to your Shopify store, embedded in your theme with your colors and fonts. Logged-in customers are automatically members, with no extra password. You can try it free for 14 days.

To go further, read our guide to the 5 types of content that keep an e-commerce community alive, our article on user-generated content and SEO and the page that presents all the forum features.