Communities are crucial when it comes to long-term business growth, according to a report from The Growth Distillery in collaboration with Present Company.
The report, titled Virtuous Value Creation: A Briefing On Community, reviewed the gaming sector, an industry the report says is made up of businesses that are seeking connection, meaning, and influence.
The study revealed the gaming sector represents global best-practice in cultivating a sense of community with their customers, describing their community as a true asset.
Director of The Growth Distillery Dan Krigstein said cultivating community represents an exciting new frontier for long-term value creation.
“If you want to see what the future holds, look to gaming. This ecosystem has fundamentally changed the way communities can be built, nurtured and virtuously grown,” he said.
“Gaming companies have been amongst the very best at realising the importance of nurturing their communities in not only an authentic way but an altruistic one.
“They have demonstrated that communities can not only build better experiences but establish new lines of business and grow lifetime customer value through mutual acts of service. This space presents a fundamentally new model of virtuous value creation and a new level of fandom.”
The deep dive also found that a healthy community uses a simple value exchange model. To unlock growth, a business contributes to key consumer needs like identity, collaboration, status, access, belonging, rituals and outcomes.
In exchange, consumers allow businesses to pursue their objectives like influence, fostering advocacy, product creation, trial, growth, revenue and profits.
The research identified eight community-first principles:
1. Experience beats engagement: in an age of media saturation, tangible products and
experiences are the most powerful anchors
2. Clear and evolving value exchange: powerful communities exhibit a shared expectation of
building collective value
3. Self-identification is everything: a community is self-aware and will quickly give indications of
how they are feeling
4. Risk and jeopardy are as powerful as wins: imperfection will be met with forgiveness when
the intent is to benefit the group
5. You must cede power: companies must provide governance and self-determination options to
other community members
6. Proxy as a system, not just a structure: supply the community with the flexibility to identify
what they believe the value system is and they’ll develop it accordingly
7. Provide a currency, foster an economy: let community members exploit the asset value the
community generates to create and justify their own premium
8. Play to all sides: no niche is too niche with one customer usually a member of many
communities