Truly Leveraging and Rewarding Your Community: a Startup CMO's Guide

In my journey as a serial founder and advisor to startups, I’ve seen many CEOs and CMOs overlook the untapped potential within their community. It’s a mistake. Your immediate community - comprising early adopters, informal advisors, friends, family, champions, and advocates - can be your most significant asset. Such an ecosystem offers vast sources of talent, feedback, and opportunities. Brands like Apple, which strategically prioritise and engage their community in their growth, demonstrate the under-recognised power of this strategy. So, how can you effectively tap into these resources to boost your growth? Here are some pivotal strategies:

Cover the basics: engage with your community at every opportunity

It may seem obvious, but many founders overlook active community engagement. Take Estonia, for instance. This small nation, similar to a startup in its tight-knit nature, has emerged as a tech hub in a remarkably short amount of time. Why? Active engagement. Founders routinely attend local tech meetups, workshops, and community events, which serve as more than social functions; they're platforms for direct feedback, kick starting collaborations, and securing partnership opportunities. So, immerse yourself in community events. And when you do, prioritise listening—it’s from the most unexpected contexts or discussions that the most valuable insights arise.

Identify superfans and align with their values

Within your community, identify and nurture your “superfans”. Think of this group as a core of 30 to 50 individuals who are always there for you, ready to pick up the phone, offer feedback, or lend a hand in any way they can. Their commitment isn't just based on friendship; they recognise business potential and understand the rewards of loyalty. To keep them engaged, provide the right products, content, and narratives that resonate with their values and vision. Research their preferences and use that knowledge to feed into your marketing initiatives.

Offer incentive systems truly adapted to people’s needs

Many companies benefit from their communities without rewarding them appropriately: platforms like Quora and StackOverflow rely on the authors crafting high-value content - yet the latter receive no direct financial rewards - and it’s assumed they should just be content with the small personal brand lift that comes with their participation. More broadly, a lot of startup CMOs simply smile and thank users for their feedback without thinking that if these people weren’t sharing those insights for free, they’d need to pay someone to do it. Now, usually, these people are true fans of your company, they believe in you, they encourage you, and they want to help you build a better product - they don’t expect anything back for their input. What they want is to participate in something bigger and better. But if they do play a part in your company’s growth and overall improvements, it’s only fair they, too, benefit from this success.

So reward your community: not with traditional referral models, not with small cash rewards in exchange for bringing in new customers, not with things that don’t matter to true fans - but with meaningful, enduring rewards that make people feel like they are part of the journey, like equity or equity-like incentives.

Beyond equity: adopt virtual shares

Virtual shares have emerged as a new approach to stakeholder engagement and rewards. Unlike traditional company shares, virtual shares provide people who contribute to your success with a symbolic stake in the company without any actual ownership - and they are very simple to use for startups, with the right platforms, and without interfering with your existing cap table. Virtual shares can help reward people for specific actions that bring value to your company: promoting your brand, referring customers, or sharing invaluable product feedback. This not only encourages a sense of belonging but also aligns their interests with the company's objectives, nudging them towards increased participation. I believe virtual shares can help cultivate a more committed and interactive community, pave the way for new revenue avenues for your clients, and superfans, and overall support a more egalitarian society by making sure everyone shares in the profits of businesses’ growth.

Combine transparency with celebratory milestones

To maintain a strong community engagement, merge transparency with celebration. Begin by openly communicating your startup's journey — be it the triumphs, hurdles, and anything in between. Regularly sharing insights, such as quarterly updates or current challenges you’re facing, not only builds trust but also involves the community in problem-solving and innovation. And as you navigate this together, make it a tradition to spotlight and celebrate the milestones reached, especially those achieved through collective effort. Whether it's recognising an engaged stakeholder or recognising a top referrer, these celebrations underline the mutual significance of every achievement, strengthening the bond between the brand and its community.

The potential in your immediate ecosystem is huge. By actively engaging, rewarding, and recognising communities, startups can build a network that's not just supportive, but also integrally involved in their growth journey. The community is an asset; value it, nurture it.