Work in progress.
https://www.feverbee.com/roi/why-measuring-value-of-communities-is-hard/
https://www.commonroom.io/blog/prove-roi-scale-community-impact-and-empower-the-business/
https://www.commsor.com/post/creative-ways-to-measure-the-impact-of-community
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/joel-primack_community-activity-7049406153159577601-cu1G?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
I’m writing this in August of 2023 (a year of big tech layoffs) and frankly community is out here getting killed. The reason is that community, along with all of the other long-term marketing efforts, has a hard time showing direct attribution of community efforts → paying customers.
CEOs are scared. Burn rates were high and the next round of funding might not be coming.
Does this mean that community doesn’t contribute to the bottom line? No. It just means the methods that most folks use measure where new customers are coming from doesn’t community the credit it deserves.
That’s not to say it’s impossible to measure community’s impact on the business. And you can measure how your community is performing in terms of how active folks are and how your events program is running.
Here’s how I recommend measuring success 👇
Just because it’s hard to directly measure how much community influences revenue doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
Two measures come to mind:
Most B2B SaaS companies don’t ask folks “how did you hear about us?” where prospects sign up or request a demo. There’s various reasons why, but I think the benefits outweigh the costs ithe majority of circumstances.
Knowing where your customers find you today can inform how to better spend your limited resources tomorrow.