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The Rise of Community Marketing

The Rise of Community Marketing

The Rise of Community Marketing

Posted on February 2nd, 2026 | By Andrew Lord

The Rise of Community Marketing, and how it can help your brand in today's marketing landscape.

Community Marketing 2.0

Elevate Marketing is a marketing agency in Fort Lauderdale, FL, dedicated to helping brands reach new heights! Struggling to stand out this year? Many businesses and brands overlook the power of community-focused marketing. The right strategy isn’t just about ads; it’s about building real relationships and showing up where your audience lives and works. Over the past fifteen years, many organizations have tried to build communities to achieve marketing goals such as increasing awareness, generating leads, and driving sales. Most have made the mistake of creating a destination community by launching a website and attempting to persuade people to join and participate. The problem is that very few people join these online communities. Most experience a brief spike in engagement before eventually fading into long-term oblivion. The reason for this is simple: most people are hesitant to participate in online communities hosted by brands they don’t already buy from.

Enter: Community Marketing.

What Is Community Marketing?

Community marketing is a strategy that uses specific techniques to reach marketing goals. Its core idea is to connect and engage people with shared interests, shaping their attitudes and behaviors positively. Your job is to improve both the number and quality of these interactions. Essentially, it involves engaging with and growing existing communities rather than building new ones from scratch. There has been a shift toward community marketing because traditional marketing is becoming less effective, and audience behavior is changing.

  • Advertising costs keep rising, while their effectiveness declines.
  • PR and search engine optimization are losing impact, and Google's frequent algorithm updates may favor certain communities.
  • It’s becoming harder to stand out through content, especially with the rise of GenAI.
  • Nearly every channel is flooded with content, some of higher quality than others, but all are becoming harder to discover. Audiences feel overwhelmed, and most videos and podcasts are abandoned after just a few seconds.

If you want to reach audiences you don’t already have access to, you must engage outside the platforms you control. Get offline and connect!

The main difference between community marketing and community building is that communities and engagement already exist. People are already there and interacting. Your job is to enhance the quantity and quality of these interactions by increasing your brand awareness and perception.

For most topics, there is a dedicated group of people interested in discussing them. There are places where individuals go to learn, get support, collaborate, and explore the topic. The role of the brand is to support, grow, and add value to these places in a positive way. Maybe it involves supplying beverages, having breakfast or lunch catered for the day, and promoting your name or brand without overwhelming the environment. (Typically, the sponsor of the day provides food & drinks or the venue, gets a set amount of time to speak to the group, display information, products, etc.)

What makes community marketing so powerful today is its cost-effectiveness. It’s earned, not paid. You build relationships, add value, and gain trust. If you do this well, you get to tell your story to people who are open to hearing it. Better yet, others will tell your story for you. Community marketing is an effort that involves time, trust, and relationships. Perhaps the most significant shift is moving beyond a platform-centric approach and instead considering a variety of potential programs. If it makes sense to do this on an owned platform, then do that. If it doesn’t (and it increasingly doesn’t), use different platforms.

The menu of possible programs includes:

  • Nurturing brand advocates. This involves supporting people in your network to grow their audiences and share positive messages about the brand through the most appropriate channels. (Use local Facebook Groups, LinkedIn groups/networks, and other social or networking platforms))
  • Engaging micro-influencers and opinion leaders. This is where you reach out to those already in your area to explore ways to collaborate. This might involve co-developing products or services, joint ventures, collaborating on research or invites, speaking at events, etc. (Most cities have a Chamber of Commerce or ten! There are meet-up groups, networking events, mixers, and charity events; check local community centers for programs and networkers. Many colleges and churches host community days, Reddit, and more! I will add some links at the end of this blog for some South Florida options.)
  • Employee engagement and advocacy. This is where you motivate and support employees to grow their social media audiences so they can share key messages and speak directly to local people.
  • Engaging and supporting existing groups. This is where the brand actively participates as a positive contributor to existing groups. No spam, but consistent helpfulness and proactive support for the group. (Facebook groups, local networking events, BNI, Community Centers, Business Associations, Neighborhood Associations, but as I said. No spam! Read the rules about posting online or leaving items on tables, shelves, etc., at venues or offices, and respect them.)
  • Hosting events and activities. This is where the brand hosts events (online or offline) to build relationships, enhance brand sentiment, and foster a sense of community among members. Events also complement other tactics on this list exceptionally well. (You have full control over who to invite, who to collaborate with, what to do, and how to build it into a monthly, quarterly, or yearly event. You control this platform.)
  • Creating content for audiences. This is where the brand promotes and shares content that meets audiences’ needs. The organization identifies the top topics, finds member-generated content, links to the best resources, and encourages others to produce content. The brand might also create content and use community engagement techniques to ensure it reaches viewers. Additionally, the brand might make a page to highlight the best member contributions.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it offers a solid overview to consider when putting together a program of activities. You’re utilizing existing platforms instead of building your own. While launching your own experience can make sense at times, it’s usually best to do so only when there’s clear demand. The key to success is to deeply understand the community and platform you’re engaging with. You must participate in the community—map it out, talk to as many people as possible, and learn where people go today to learn, get support, collaborate, and explore topics with others. Identify the main sources of information that influence them, and develop relationships with these individuals over time. After mapping out the community, strengthen your connections and relationships with each member. Also, identify and address unmet needs within the community. What does each person want? Ultimately, focus on earning the community's trust and using it to reach marketing goals and objectives. For example, based on the above, a community marketing approach might:

  • Notice a lack of good places to learn and start nurturing employee advocates to fill that gap.
  • Create a user groups program to give members a stronger sense of belonging.
  • Collaborate with influencers who already have a large audience. Help them grow their reputation within the community.
  • Provide unique access and expertise to those already sharing their knowledge to build stronger relationships.

These approaches differ from the traditional ‘build and drive people to a forum’ method, but they also go directly to the target audience and use community techniques to engage them.

A steadfast view of community as a single support platform has led us to community stagnation. Adopting a more expensive, member-focused, and flexible view opens the door to revitalizing community practices. Much of this may sound familiar to those in PR, marketing, and related fields, as there is considerable overlap. The key difference is that ‘community marketing’ emphasizes connections and relationships with and among audiences. It believes that trusted relationships are the foundation of everything else—if you earn the audience’s trust, you gain opportunities to communicate with them. Community marketing also fosters a surge in creativity that’s often missing when we’re overly focused on a forum-style platform. Why not host collaborations with top opinion leaders in your sector? Organize an AMA in a subreddit? Strategically plan a series of member challenges. Or nurture small geographic or topic-specific groups? For most organizations, managing and responding to comments on an Instagram page is considered a way to build a community. There are many more exciting ways to achieve positive marketing outcomes through community techniques once you think beyond traditional platforms. Ultimately, the lesson is simple: if you want to grow from a community, you need to engage communities outside your own.

This is community marketing.

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