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The 3 Ways Your Community Should Be Growing Itself · Build With Becky: Smart Strategies To Grow Your Community-Driven Business

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  Your top of funnel marketing is not the only way to grow your membership.
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  I want you to say it with me.
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  Your top of funnel marketing is not the only way to grow your membership.
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  There are three ways that your community should actually be growing itself.
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  So I want to break those down.
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  Of course, acquisition is one of those ways.
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  So number one, acquisition.
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  This is new people coming in.
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  But I want you to think about this through the lens of through people, not just marketing.
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  So what this means is you're bringing new people in through acquisition, through referrals, through guest invitations, and through shareable moments.
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  When you design an incredible experience, people talk about it and they share it.
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  And that is what it means to create referrals.
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  When you ask for referrals, that doesn't work as well as when they're just happening naturally because the program or the membership or the experience you've created is so amazing that they just can't help but talk about it and
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  invite their friends.
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  Like, this is ideal scenario, right?
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  This is word of mouth marketing.
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  You can also give people affiliate links.
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  You can create moments that are meant to be shared, like challenges where you're leveraging social media or you do like in the flower more community, where they do their monthly challenge, like sharing the flowers, the flower arrangements they
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  create on social is a great way for people to see, like, oh, that's so cool.
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  Let me go dig into what this community is, right?
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  Creating these shareable moments that people then go and post on social about inviting guests into your community to speak or to do like partnerships.
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  So, so that when they're talking about being a part of your program or membership or experience, their audience is seeing that too.
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  So you're getting more visibility in front of other people.
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  All of this is people coming in through people and not just marketing systems.
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  I have an entire episode on creating marketing growth flywheels through like word of mouth marketing that I will link in the show notes.
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  So if you want to go deeper on this acquisition category, definitely check that out.
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  So that's number one.
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  The first way is acquisition.
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  The second way your community should be growing itself is through engagement, which means people actually participating, not lurking, because participation drives more participation.
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  If they go to events and that event was really amazing, and then they give feedback at the end of the event where they say like, oh, I would love to see this next.
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  And then you design more programming and you say, in this programming, we're going to design this based on the feedback we got.
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  And so then you list the next event and then the people that were at that event were like, oh my gosh, I'm so excited about this.
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  This is exactly what I wanted.
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  And they register for it.
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  They keep going, right?
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  And what I'm describing right now is a flywheel that is better with a visual.
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  But creating this like events feedback loop where you're like really getting feedback, you're getting participation and you're designing your programming based on what people need, what they're asking for.
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  This is drives more participation, creating challenges that get people really engaged.
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  And really when it comes down to like not the question is not how can I drive engagement, it's how can I drive participation that's going to lead to my members being successful in whatever their goal is.
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  So like curating experiences for them to be successful is going to create and foster this like participation level that is just next level that also drives them to share.
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  When people have results, they share.
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  People see those results and getting results for your customers is one of the best ways to, to grow your community.
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  And so by creating these experiences, events that actually help them do the work, like the workshops where they're actually doing work, the design critiques, the things that are really helping them work on their craft, make things better, actually
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  grow, the challenges that are getting them to put in the reps, like all of this stuff that you're curating that's driving their participation, that's also driving their success, helps with visibility.
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  When the people that are in your community are the most successful at what they're doing because you're helping them do that, then of course more people are going to want to join.
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  The third way your community should be growing itself is through ascension.
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  So this means people going deeper into like higher level offers or areas of your community that are maybe locked and only available to people that reach a certain level.
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  This is where you're designing for growth and evolution.
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  Like this is super important because as you have people reach different milestones, you want to design for that and think about like how can you continue serving them?
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  And this allows you to increase your customer lifetime value.
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  So all of these things kind of like ladder up to each other.
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  So if they're engaging more, if they're participating and that participation drives more success and then they're getting visibility and then they're reaching another level and then you're supporting them at that next level, then they might be ready to
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  join your like higher level mastermind experience.
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  Or they, they might be able to step into maybe like a co coach type role and maybe they become like one of your lead affiliates that Helps bring in new people.
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  Like, there's so many ways to think about how you ascend people through your community, but it's also really important to think of through the member experience of that.
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  Like, how do they know when they're reaching these different milestones?
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  And how do you make sure that they're not in a room with a ton of beginners and feeling like they don't belong anymore?
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  One of our clients, Breakthrough Academy, has a really incredible system that.
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  That just makes me think a lot about this because they have sort of these different milestones and levels based on.
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  So they support contractor businesses.
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  So based on what level their business is at from a contractor lens, like, are they doing 1 million per year?
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  Are they doing more than that?
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  Do they have a team yet?
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  Like, they go through these sort of different programs and different levels based on their business growth and then what kind of support that they're actually looking for.
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  And so they're always measuring their members over, like, the course of their members have been around for years and years.
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  Like, they have plenty of members that have been there for five years.
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  And so they're measuring their success and their milestones along the way and then creating experiences that support them at these different levels.
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  Now, you don't have to design for ascension immediately.
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  It's kind of like your first cohorts of people that come in and go through your community and then you help them be successful and grow.
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  Then at some point you need to design for those people along the way.
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  And like, that cohort kind of becomes like your experiment.
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  Group of okay, they've reached this milestone.
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  Now I need to think about, like, how do we continue supporting them at this next milestone?
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  And so because you have this cohort that's gone through, that's like kind of the group that you build with as you go.
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  Like, you're co creating this experience with them.
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  You just want to make sure it doesn't get to a point where it's like, oh, there's a drop off.
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  And yeah, you, like, once you are here, then you're just like, become the mentors in the group and this isn't really for you anymore.
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  You don't belong at this beginner level.
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  You can start to level up the community experiences and like, add these milestones with them as they grow.
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  So all of this comes down to like, creating really thoughtful community design really thoughtful member journeys.
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  And when it comes to these three ways your community should be growing itself.
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  Acquisition, engagement, and ascension.
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  The acquisition piece happens because people are talking about the incredible experience they're having and that comes from the engagement piece.
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  Like you're designing really incredible experiences that they're participating in and that they're then talking about.
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  So it kind of like feeds each other.
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  And because they're seeing success through that engagement, they eventually reach these new levels.
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  We're designing new milestones and they're ascending into like higher level products or level experiences within your ecosystem.
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  So if your community is not growing organically, you're likely missing one of these three ways your community should be growing itself.
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  And you likely need some help with your community design and how you're designing these like member journeys and thoughtful experiences.
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  So if you would like some help with this, we can help you map this growth engine for you and your business and what that looks like.
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  So book a free discovery call.
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  The link is in the show notes.
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  You can meet with my team and we'll talk about what does it look like to do a strategy for you, how are we going to help you with your next growth goals?
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  And we can really help you with like, what does this member journey design look like in the world that you're in and to really curate what those different milestones are like and consider different experiences for your different stage
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  members.
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  Okay, thank you.
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  I hope you enjoyed this one and if you loved it, share it with a friend.
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  If you haven't liked and subscribed and followed and all of that, please do those things and I would love to hear from you.
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  DM me on social, I'm on LinkedIn and Instagram and I'll talk to you in the next one.