Defining your community value proposition is something that most community builders struggle with.
However, if you can’t answer the question ‘why should people join my community?’ you better believe no-one will feel compelled to sign up.
Your community value proposition is quite simply the value that your community promises its members. What is the value they get from signing up? What is the ROI for them in investing their time or money into your community?
Common mistakes crafting a community value proposition
Often, community builders will list features when talking about the value of their community:
“Well, we offer 7 live workshops per month, and 30 knowledge base videos, a space where people can share their work and a members-only discount to our wider shop…”
This is fundamentally a mistake, as people don’t buy features, they buy results.
I love my Apple Air-pods. One of the best gifts I’ve ever received (thank you Maxine!). But honestly, I don’t give a crap about the impressive nano-technology inside of them or the host of features available. I love them because I can now enjoy great sounding music and podcasts wirelessly. Because freedom. Because my old wired earphones feel stone-age by comparison.
The bottom line: don’t list features to sell your community to people.
Another common mistake is trying to include too much value for your members.
I know, I know… we’re all generous, good-hearted souls. However, when you add a million bonuses and benefits to your community you’re doing two things:
- Appearing unconfident in your core value proposition (it seems like you’re trying to desperately add as much stuff as you can to create the illusion of value)
- Confusing people! People don’t want to have to understand the inherent value in 100 different moving parts. They just want the value explained to them in a nutshell – short and sweet.
So, what does a successful value proposition look like?
In my eyes, a successful community value proposition should by a mix of the following:
- Predicated on transformation
- Short
- Clear
- Compelling
Think about transformation in terms of the following:
How does your community take people from point A, to point B?
Here are some examples:
Lonely/isolated to a sense of belonging, friendships, support
Struggling to thriving
Unconfident to confident
No having something to having it
Amateur to professional
In the case of Learn.Community, my community for community builders, we have two main value propositions, based on where you’re at in your community journey:
Having no community to launching your first community
Running a struggling community to running a thriving community
Weave your value proposition into everything!
Once you’ve nailed your community value proposition, use it everywhere!
- The heading on your website/landing pages
- In your marketing efforts
- Within your community itself
In Learn.Community we literally get members to self-identify and openly talk about their goals relative to the transformations that we’re promising to help them achieve.
Track transformation as your key community metric of success
We use it as the defining metric of success for our members. We’re less concerned about how often a member is commenting inside the forums, and more focused on if their membership is helping them reach their ultimate goal/desired transformation.
Join 100+ Community Builders
You can apply to join the next cohort for Learn.Community below. Achieve your community goals with the support of like-minded members as well as Tom and his team:
