Community Power: Building B2B SaaS Loyalty Through User Communities
Onboarding a new B2B customer shouldn’t be about meeting a sales quota.
It should be about building a long-term relationship.
B2B SaaS is a highly competitive space. To increase your customer lifetime value (CLTV) and stay relevant, you need systems in place that help you create meaningful connections with your users. (New and old.)
In other words, you need ways to cultivate customer loyalty.
And what better way to do that than by building a SaaS user community?
Let’s take a closer look at user communities, why they matter, and how to build your own. We’ll also share some bonus insights to help you grow your community to the next level.
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Differences Between B2C Customer Community and B2B SaaS User Community
A customer community in a B2C setting focuses on engaging and connecting with individual consumers. The user community in a B2B SaaS setting focuses on supporting and providing resources for business users.
B2C business owners tend to target their customers on consumer-based social media platforms, like Instagram and TikTok. B2B businesses create groups in more neutral or business settings, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, or X.
Engagement tactics can range from polling consumers about their favorite skin care bundles to asking users thoughtful questions about the B2B industry.
Benefits of Building a B2B SaaS User Community
B2B SaaS users are self-starters, but they still need help using your solutions to get the most value for their businesses.
By relaying helpful tips, best practices, and tutorials via community posts and chats, you can help your users solve specific problems.
User communities are also fantastic focus groups.
Ask your B2B users anything you want, and you’re guaranteed to learn how you can help them get the most out of your tool. You can also generate valuable customer feedback to help improve or scale your platform—for instance, discover which features to add or improve and how to innovate or diversify your product.
By utilizing the best NPS survey tools, you can gain deeper insights into user sentiment and measure your progress towards achieving a good NPS score. This can help you prioritize development efforts and ensure your product aligns with your target audience’s needs.
How a B2B SaaS User Community Grows Brand Loyalty
Staying in touch with your customers throughout the customer lifecycle is key to staying relevant and investing in a deeper relationship with them.
While email is a fantastic tool to use, your B2B SaaS user community is much more intimate.
Users don’t just want to learn how to practically use your solution. They want to know how to use it at scale to improve their businesses and hit their overarching brand goals. When the CEO or product designer consistently shows up in a user community to talk “big-picture,” users get invaluable advice.
In other words, you’re essentially providing a quasi-consultancy service to your user groups—something that brand owners spend tens of thousands of dollars on when working with a private coach or consultant.
By consistently showing up to help your business users win, you’re becoming memorable. More importantly, you’re becoming an industry expert they rely on and look forward to communicating with regularly. In the B2B world, this is a cocktail for stimulating brand loyalty.
8 Steps To Building A Loyal SaaS Community
When you’re ready to build your own online community, follow these steps:
1. Pick Your Platform
Where do the B2B companies you target hang out online to engage with peers and talk business? Depending on their business model, they’re likely using LinkedIn or X.
Social media users on LinkedIn and X expect business content when using these platforms. So, building an online community there may make the most sense for your business. In fact, 48% of global B2B marketers reported that LinkedIn was the most important social platform for their business in 2023.
Some other spaces B2B SaaS companies use to build their communities include:
- Dedicated community platforms like Tribe and Mighty Networks
- Merchant communities like Shopify and WooCommerce
- Messaging platforms like Discord and Slack
2. Set Clear Goals
What do you hope your B2B user community will help you achieve? Who are you targeting specifically? Getting clear on your goals will help you determine what kind of content to share and how you’d like your audience to engage.
For example, if your app helps businesses run contextual ads that are brand-suitable and brand-safe, you might target ad managers, journalists, and PR firms. If your app helps marketers run their content agencies with ease, you might target Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) and agency owners.
Consider polling or surveying your users to discover what kind of content they’d like and what current needs and questions they have.
Build your strategy around solving their pain points and helping them walk away with at least one key takeaway that can improve their business every time you post or engage.
3. Invite Early Users
What process are you currently using to invite people to try your solution before others? Bake your user community invitation into that process to systematize your approach. For example, send them an automated invite to join your group after they’ve chosen one of your subscription packages.
By having early adopters in your user community, you can get your hands on invaluable insights you can use to improve your product before releasing it to the public. Make sure to prioritize and incorporate their feedback.
To drum up more buzz around your community, identify users who frequently use your product and recommend it organically. (Use a social listening tool to spot them.)
You can also look for influencers or those with a significant following on social media who are a good fit for your solution. Have them start user-generated content (UGC) campaigns to encourage virality and increase group members.
4. Host Members-Only Events
How do you communicate with your VIP users? You probably go out of your way to show your appreciation for them by frequently laying out the red carpet.
Another way to do so is by hosting member-only events to increase brand loyalty and grow your community. For example, you might host webinars for customers to learn more about your tool’s features and how to reach milestones in their product adoption. You might also host Q&As with industry experts, tutorials, or live videos where users can ask their questions in real-time.
By curating your community with VIPs and inviting vocal supporters and influential individuals as founding members, you can set the tone and encourage others to join.
5. Drive Constructive Conversations
What do you think it takes to build a community of loyal customers? One of the best ways to inspire customer retention is by showing up for your members when they need you.
That means:
- Sharing regular and authoritative brand content
- Valuing and implementing customer feedback
- Creating a welcoming space for all members
- Prioritizing replies to member queries
- Incentivizing member contributions
- Localizing content to enable multilingual communication
Your goal is to solve problems and drive constructive conversations within your online community.
For example, if your members have been complaining about Friday night downtimes, consider surveying or polling them to see which day of the week wouldn’t impede their workflows. If they’ve been consistently asking about how to set up automated A/B testing with segmented emails, post a Loom video or step-by-step carousel to walk them through it.
6. Build a Dedicated Landing Page or Website
How can you make sure your online community remains visible and accessible?
While social media and other channels are simple to use, your community can still get lost in the shuffle if users don’t have another way to find it.
One of the simplest ways to add more access points to your SaaS community is by creating a dedicated landing page or website for it. You can create a simple Notion site, add a page to your current site, or make a stand-alone landing page.
Need inspiration? Take a look at how SEO Power Plays uses a simple landing page to encourage visitors to subscribe to its world-class SEO newsletter enjoyed by over 13,500 professionals.
Whichever option you choose, be sure to optimize it with relevant keywords and include it as part of your user acquisition funnels to drive more traffic to it.
Go the extra mile by adding social proof to your membership page. For example, screenshot conversations within your community (and blur user profiles for privacy). Or share user testimonials and company wins.
Give interested users a taste of what your community is like by adding a few bullet points or a paragraph that describes the topics you discuss or events you host.
For example:
“Looking for an SEO community to help you grow your online presence?” Join our members-only community on LinkedIn for exclusive tips and advice on growing your business using organic marketing strategies.”
7. Create a Newsletter
How have you been staying in touch with your target market and user base so far? If you’re like most B2B businesses, you likely send out a company newsletter.
Beyond sharing promos and announcements, your newsletter is also a fantastic tool to use to keep up with your members and promote your community. Consider creating a separate segment for these emails or creating a different newsletter for your online community.
When creating newsletter content, segment your emails by member stage.
For example, create a set of emails to announce your membership. Another set to promote upcoming events and another set to send important announcements. Create a fourth set that focuses on exclusive member content—that might focus on offering masterminds, deals, and best practices according to user pain points.
You can also segment your emails by member’s needs or pain points.
For instance, some members may receive emails about tutorials, others about masterminds, and others about industry news and insights.
8. Grow Your Community
What are some ways you initiate self-service for your B2B users? Encourage growth by piggybacking on some of those strategies for community members. (And make them exclusive.)
For example, consider creating a resource library your members can use to access tutorials, case studies, and downloadable assets. This positions your company as a trusted authority and gives members an easy way to get the most out of your tool without perusing community threads or having to start a conversation.
You can also build an online academy to take this to the next level. For instance, you might create an in-depth knowledge base like monday.com has or create courses for members to earn accreditation or certification. Get inspired by other SaaS companies who’ve capitalized on this approach—think HubSpot, Ahrefs, and Semrush.
For instance, if you have a project management tool, you might create an academy that helps users earn certificates for project planning, resource planning, and timeline planning.
Get Started
When structured well, your online community is essentially a B2B loyalty program. Your members will appreciate you rolling out the red carpet for them and genuinely caring about their business success.
With an engaging and helpful community, you can:
- Build loyalty by helping users grow or improve their businesses
- Boost customer satisfaction by solving user’s top pain points
- Increase customer retention by implementing user feedback
Now, over to you.
Carve out time in your busy schedule to put these insights into action. Meet with relevant stakeholders to vote on a group name, set goals, and start building your community. Track your progress over time and adapt your approach as you get to know your members’ core needs better.
Remember, to build a loyal B2B SaaS community, you’ll need to:
- Pick your platform
- Set clear goals
- Invite early users
- Host members-only events
- Drive constructive conversations
- Build a dedicated landing page or website
- Create a newsletter
- Grow your community
Prepare yourself to cultivate profound and substantial connections with your B2B customers, embarking on a transformative journey that unveils new horizons of engagement and collaboration.
Here’s to your success! It’s time to put the pedal to the metal and get going on building those communities. You never know what might come of it.
PS: Craving more B2B resources? Subscribe to the DivByZero newsletter and never miss out on the latest SaaS news and reviews.
Ioana Wilkinson
Ioana is a business strategist and content writer for B2B tech and SaaS brands. She also helps aspiring entrepreneurs build remote businesses. Born in Transylvania and raised in Texas, Ioana has been living the digital nomad life since 2016. When she’s not writing, you can catch her snorkeling, exploring, or enjoying a café con leche in Barcelona!
