Building A Brand that Builds a Community

Today’s post was written by Fairy Godmother Rachael Herrscher, Co-Founder of Today’s Mama and CEO.

Before we dive into Rachael’s post about branding, we wanted to share the exciting news that TodaysMama, a leading developer of personal, professional and parenting resources for women and mothers everywhere, recently formed strategic partnerships with the League of Women Voters and SitterCity.com to develop the MamaVote initiative. MamaVote initiative was created to empower and inspire women and mothers to increase their awareness of and involvement in the political process. League of Women Voters will contribute content, perspective, and SitterCity will provide free election-day 2008 childcare in select cities. 

Rachael’s an expert in designing and forming strategic partnerships so we invited her to present at our upcoming October 12th conference on “How to Create Strategic Partnerships.” To meet Rachael and hear her present, please register today. 

Now on with the post!

There is a reason that Dove launched the campaign for Real Beauty, there is a reason that Keen shoes launched an entirely separate website called Hybrid Life  that tells stories about people and their shoes, there is a reason that your local outdoor gear shop offers workshops, guest speakers and parking lot sales – why? To keep in touch with you. To make you part of their community. To make you part of their brand. After all – these days – you are their number one target. If they can get you to tell your friends and family or to post on your blog about them – they have begun the whole chain of viral marketing and that’s the best kind of marketing of all.

Well, if there are all of these businesses going to such great lengths to get to you, why aren’t you going to these great lengths to get to your customers? I know I’m overusing the italics here to emphasize the YOU, but YOU are the important factor in both scenarios.

Let’s take our business, Todays Mama for example – and we’ll call it a working example because I cannot profess that we have done it the best, or even better than most companies out there. But the bottom line is that we have one core product. It’s a reference guide for moms and families in their communities covering places to go and things to do, sports leagues, music lessons, community services etc. etc. etc. It’s 25 chapters and 500 + pages of local community information and the back is full of coupons. Let’s face it – this is a product that most people will buy every other year. Of course the easy answer is diversify your product line – bring them more (which we are doing) — BUT what do you do in the mean time while you’re hard at work servicing new clients and working on new product development? What do I have to offer them aside from a one-time purchase?

The answer is simple – and it’s building a community. But in order to build a community – in order to convince people that my business has staying power and that they should stick around I’ve got to show them that we have something there for them in the first place to keep them engaged and build a relationship of trust. I’ve also got to inspire the type of confidence in the quality of my company through the logos, design, quality of products and clarity of messages that I send them so that it is natural for them to want to keep in touch. But they also have to know that it’s genuine. They need to know that I’m not just doing it to get the next sale and that my/our actions truly reflect our desire to make a difference and build a community that fits their needs.

So we host “Mama’s Night Out” in our local markets, we send a weekly newsletter letting them know what’s going on in their community, we hook them up with ongoing discounts and perks, we’ve tried to create a place online where they’d like to hang out and spend their time whether they’ve all ready bought the book  and are waiting for the next big thing from TodaysMama or whether they’re just getting acquainted with us. We hope that they’ll join our community – call themselves a Mama, and profess their love for our company to their friends.

There are so many ways that you can do these types of things in your business. Look into your community and you’ll see dozens of great examples. Off the top of my head I can think of the wine bar that hosts Salsa classes every week, the outdoor gear shop that runs a program called “Babes in the Backcountry” a program for women to improve their skills and meet others with similar interests, the bread store that hosts a community pancake breakfast. All of these “side jobs” are not necessarily big money makers but it brings them all the closer to their main objective: They want to be your friends – and they want you to tell your friends. You can do the same!