Community-led growth and product-led growth (PLG) are often talked about separately.

But an effective go-to-market strategy can be to blur the lines between them.

Embedding community in your PLG strategy could mean built-in virality.

Examples:

• Strava: Use it to work out. Stay because your friends and colleagues are on the app too, giving you kudos.
• SparkToro: Use it for audience research. Love it because of the SparkToro team’s community participation, like bi-monthly office hours.
• Hacker News: Use it for news and commentary. Go to Y Combinator, which runs Hacker News, when you want to apply for a startup accelerator (example courtesy of Nir Eyal).

“Build community as a competitive advantage” is one of OpenView’s 11 principles for PLG. Compared to the old (and even fairly recent) days of establishing brand reputation through ads and trade shows, now “users are the brands. People respond to people, and look to folks they trust for advice. … Community isn’t just about creating another Slack channel. It’s about convening and connecting your target audience to help members achieve their own goals.”

Five ways to foster community as part of PLG, from OpenView:

1. Highlight power users’ creations to amplify community creators. Example: Figma’s community plug-ins
2. Build relationships by connecting users with their peers. Example: Optimizely’s Developer Community
3. Participate in existing communities where your users are active.
4. Build a content community. Create informative content that will help your users out. Any good content marketing program does this.
5. Acquire an established community, like how Zapier acquired Makerpad (probably a later-stage method).

Don’t have a product yet? It’s not too early to start building a community to get people invested in your concept—and get invaluable early insights into what your users will want.

DTC and ecommerce shops, here’s a creative way to delight and retain customers after a purchase:

1. Buy raffle tickets. These are cheap—a roll of 500 costs less than $9 on Amazon.
2. For each order you ship out, include some raffle tickets. Instead of broadcasting your raffle on your site, keep it on the down-low. Only tell customers in their confirmation email or a note in their order what these tickets are for and why they should hold on to them—this makes the whole experience feel special.
3. Announce the winner via email or SMS. Then ship the prize to them. For raffle prizes, think small goodies that relate to your product.

Why this strategy works:

A raffle is old-fashioned fun, and in this case, it’s unexpected. By delivering unexpected value, it creates delight—and studies show that delight improves customer loyalty.

This strategy might work especially well for subscriptions like FabFitFun and Birchbox since they have recurring orders. You can easily include raffle tickets with each scheduled shipment.

Good video testimonials work wonders in landing more sales. In fact, for 89% of enterprise companies, they can drive anywhere from 25% to 50% lifts in conversions.

But many companies struggle to produce video testimonials quickly and cost-effectively. They spend as long as six months on video production, often recording customers at live events or sending videographers to film their subjects directly. They don’t realize that you can get informercial-level video testimonials without traveling anywhere or investing in expensive equipment.

Here’s how:

• Identify your top customers. Depending on your product or service, these might be your repeat buyers, customers with high engagement, or those who’ve consistently referred your business to others or given high NPS scores.
• Create an enticing offer in exchange for a short video interview about your product. A few examples: an exclusive discount, credit toward customers’ next purchase, or a free month of service.
• Sign up for a free Calendly account if you don’t already have one. This will make coordinating interviews with your customers easier.
• Email your top customers with your special offer and Calendly link.
• Keep your interviews short, no more than 20-30 minutes, and record them on Zoom. Ask questions to guide customers toward a cohesive narrative. Try these ones:
• Why did you want [product]?
• What problem were you trying to solve?
• What do you like about [product] vs. [competitor]?
• What surprised you about [product]?
• Would you recommend [product] to others? If so, who and why?
• Use a video editing software like iMovie to cut out any pauses, umms, or other unwanted sounds. Add music from AudioJungle to give each testimonial more life—we recommend using tracks from the Cinematic category.
• Publish the testimonials on YouTube. Then add them to your sales pages and use them in your ads, emails, and other marketing collateral.

Once you’ve nailed down the process, consider automating your offer as an email sequence so you can collect testimonials on the regular. The more footage you collect, the more assets you have to leverage as social proof for your product.