Mecca Chit Chats about Online Brand Communities
- slai0025
- Nov 15, 2021
- 2 min read
Updated: Nov 20, 2021
Communities are powerful tools that are constantly evolving to adapt with changing times.
The growth of the internet throughout the information age oversaw the emergence of what were traditionally offline communities in the online space. These "online communities" prove opportune for marketers as according to Khoros, 75% of customers value their interaction with other members in online communities.
With the rising “popularity of online communities among consumers”, online brand communities (OBC) offer great modern solutions to improve customer retention and increase customer engagement.
Let’s analyse these points through Mecca's OBC – Mecca Chit Chat (MCC).
Launched in the midst of a global pandemic, premium cosmetics retailer Mecca sought to digitally transition their reputable in-store experiences and engagement into the online sphere. Especially with temporary store closures, MCC sought to overcome these challenges by cultivating a space on the internet for their audience to “chit chat” (connect directly) with employees/each other about their common interest – makeup.
Retention
Given that Mecca’s name is in the group title, joining the group already creates strong association between members and the brand. Simultaneously, as members are able to partake in open conversation with each other via comments, reactions or post uploads, this places value into the customer's online experience which can increase their support for the brand.
Mecca also promotes MCC across their other social media platforms to attract/sustain the support of their prospective and existing audiences – which reflects integrated marketing campaigns.
Engagement
Approximately 80% of consumers state that the authenticity of content is what convinces them to support a brand. Given that most, if not all of the content on MCC are posts or questions from customers themselves, it makes the community seem more genuine and trustworthy to the average consumer.
“Online communities [also] provide a place for customers to interact directly with a brand”. Participants are able to receive real-time responses from brand professionals and their peers within the community, while also receiving the opportunity to partake in exclusive online brand events. This, along with the previous point of sustaining open dialogue, can strengthen customer brand loyalty to Mecca.
Why is MCC a successful OBC? Simple. Mecca's online community prioritises the needs of their audience over sale targets. Mecca saw that there was a gap in their customer engagement strategy as a result of the pandemic and quickly sought to repair that through online customer retention and interaction.
As stores are slowly starting to reopen again, the community continues to oversee an average of 50 new posts per day (with almost 1500 posts over the past month) without plans to stop anytime soon.
Tell me, what online communities are you a part of?
20/11/21 edit update: grammar.
Hi Sharnelle, Thanks for the great read – you have inadvertently sold ‘Mecca -Chat Chat’ to me. Tips and tricks & exclusive brand events – I am in!
I love how Mecca have used a social media group to create a genuine and trustworthy community to sell their brand FOR them. By prioritising my needs as a potential customer they will likely get more sales out of me. Interesting to hear from Zoe the impact the online group has had in-store - seems multi-touchpoint marketing is at play!
I really agree with your point about loyalty. Many say loyalty is out as audiences have too much choice but I disagree. As that TV show Glee once said ‘being a part…
What a great post! It's really interesting hearing about all the statistics from the Mecca Chit Chat. I worked at Mecca for 3 years and remember when this came about and first started!! It's pretty crazy how much traction it has. People are certainly more connected than ever as we used to get people coming in asking about things that the community had discussed online! A lot of staff are also on there responding and connecting with customers in a new way, it's great! And yes I am still a Mecca Chit Chat member!! :)
Hey Sharnelle, another great post, congrats! The Mecca example looks like a really compelling OBC example, something they set up simply on Facebook. Do you think that was part of their success (hosting it there instead of having a separate destination?).
I just had a read through some of the forum and it's interesting they have lots of natural engagement, but there doesn't appear to be any demonstration of some of the community engagement devices that Luke Greenacre was talking about (eg. badging & super users). Is that just their super customers being highly engaged do you think?
Great example of OBC, thanks for sharing!
Cam