There is no Community and Customer Section Link to heading
The motivation of why people join a community is almost personal for each individual. One of the key drivers is a sense of belonging with likeminded individuals. But no matter what the reason they are there.
When it comes to company sponsored communities the reason they sponsor these types of communities is that it keeps the company top of mind to plenty of people who are not customers. But could potentially become customers in the future. You see this a lot with tech companies who have an open source or free version of their software. Core to adoption lead strategy where the more people you can get to use the free or open source version you can convert them to customers.
For context the free or open source version had core functionality that anyone with a general use case can use. But when it comes to enterprise features those are generally reserved for the paid version of the software.
Customers Do Not Graduate Out of Community Link to heading
When someone the community finds the need to become a customer based on their use case they don’t leave the community. What I have noticed they almost double down in the community because they are now invested into the company by becoming a customer. I used to tell the sales reps I worked with that I talked to more customers every day in Slack then they did in an entire week.
Customers are a bit more active in the community because of this new investment. Asking more questions, answering more questions. But one of the things I noticed is that they wanted to see how others are using the project or product. They ask their roadmap questions in the community and take feedback from others on the direction of the respective projects or products.
The Community Still Has People Who Are Never Going to Buy Link to heading
With knowing that customers don’t leave the community. We have to also understand that people in the community will never be a customer. Either the project meets their needs or they just cannot afford the price tag for the enterprise version. So, maintaining a balance in the community is key. You are not going to want to alienate one subgroup or another.
Stop Treating Community as Pre-Sales Housing Link to heading
With this mixture of both pure community and customers in company sponsored communities. We cannot treat the community like they are a pre-sales staging area for potential customers. And I see companies doing just this. “This is a pipeline of potential customers we just have to convert them”, this is the thought process in a lot of company sponsored communities. And while throwing out sales pitches to your community you are annoying the customers you have in there. Now that being said should you keep the community up-to-date with what is new with the project and product? Absolutely because at any time someone in the community might need to become a customer. And in the community space, you have to try to support everyone.