BECAUSE OF MARKETING: BUILDING A 100K+ STRONG COMMUNITY THROUGH BEING FIRST

Morning!This is the second time in the last few months that I’ve written this on a plane. I’m off to Porto to do some apartment shopping, anyone have any recommendations for places I should visit while I’m there? 

Side note: I feel like the start of these emails always looks a tad bland when you open them in the inbox, so I'm going to start adding my thumbnail/graphic under a short intro to spice things up.

Let's test it out.

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Breaking Down The Strategy

You probably don't know this, but 2 years ago when I started this newsletter I was just another marketing student. - No job.- Little income (doing freelance gigs).- And 0 credibility.

I spent days upon days scrolls down the LinkedIn job section, trying to find anyone that would give me a shot and applying for any and every job I could.Yet, no one would even have me for an interview. Then one day I came across a marketing page with 20,000 followers and reached out to see if I could lend a hand. 

They said yes and made me "Head of Community".

This was the first time someone had taken a real chance on me and my marketing career really began to rocket from their.

Why am I blabbering on about myself?

Because that "little" marketing page was Because of Marketing and since then Rachael and the team have managed to take it from 20,000 followers (on just LinkedIn) to:- 95,000 LinkedIn followers.- 3,000 Email subscribers.- 6,000 Instagram followers. 

It's no longer just a marketing page, it's one of the world's biggest marketing communities. 

So let's answer the burning question, how did they get so big?

My answer: They do one thing better than everyone else...And that's being first. 

In today’s world, creating an engaged community of hundreds of thousands of people is extremely valuable. 

But unfortunately, it’s not as easy as just throwing money at the wall and watching the follower count rise. Very few people know how to do it and most of us wouldn’t even know when to start. 

And I was one of those people pre-joining BOM all those years back.

Until I saw how Rachael operated and began to understand how important speed was when it came to the way she was building her community. 

Because to build a community you need 3 things:- A great value proposition. - Authority.- And a competitive advantage.With BOM, speed brings all 3 of these things.

1) A great value proposition

Marketing is a fairly cult-like community and the majority of people within marketing genuinely love marketing (even outside of work). BOM have this great value proposition of being able to show all of their follower's reactive marketing campaigns within minutes of when they break. 

Not week by week, not day-by-day, but they get kept up to date with the global marketing space by the hour - hugely valuable for people working in marketing. 

2) A competitive advantage

There are 1 million and 1 marketing pages out there that share marketing campaigns - few (if any) with a follower count as high as BOMs.

Again, this is because of BOMs speed.

It’s invaluable for marketers who are literally relied upon to keep their company up to speed with quickly changing modern marketing - and BOM gives them that. 

I don't want to repeat myself too much here, just know - speed is their competitive advantage. 

3) Authority 

I left this one until last on purpose, because I wanted to make sure it really resonated.

Speed = Authority. 

Now, it might not seem like it at first - but it’s true, you just have to look at it from a different angle. 

Let’s forget the content BOM puts out for a second.

Instead, imagine I am a PPC expert and every day you fire me a text asking “What’s new in the paid search space?” and every day I sent you a voice note with EVERY SINGLE update on the space - what would you think?

You’d think I was an expert, that’s what. And the exact same applies here. 

The speed that BOM posts clearly showcases that the BOM team keep up to date with and understands the whole marketing landscape. 

 The audience BOM has, the authority BOM has, the market domination BOM has. 

It all comes down to their incredible speed. 

But if you still don’t believe me, let me apply the same concept to help you. 

For this example, let’s say you are a CEO of a PR firm and looking to build a community around you personally (a personal brand). 

You apply a similar strategy, that looks something like this:1) Twice a day (morning & lunch) you search online for any updates around the PR space + any reactive things of campaigns that have worked well. 

2) You then post the update + your thoughts on it within 15-30 minutes of reading it (across all platforms. 

Boom. 

Now, everyone who reads your content now sees you as: A) As sharp as a knife when it comes to PR and B) On top of what is going on in your industry. 

Granted, thought leadership content, BTS content, value-based content would also be needed to round things off. But being known for constantly being “on the ball” when it comes to your industry could be a driving factor of you signing clients and building a community. 

Because at the end of the day, who wants to work with a PR firm that doesn’t know what’s going in the industry?

Exactly.

Right, that’s it for today, I’m going to have a kip before this plane lands. 

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This has been a breakdown of BOMs marketing strategy. I hope you have learned something and can implement a similar strategy in your business!

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