By Zoe Kelly

July 15, 2022

In its August 2021 Trust in Business Survey, PwC reported that 87% of business leaders said that customers have high levels of trust in their companies and only 30% of consumers said the same.

In other words, trust between businesses and their customer audiences is more important than ever but is hard to come by. 

The good news? You as a partnerships professional have the skills needed to help foster trust between you and your customers. Then, you can gather insights from that trust to help bolster your partner marketing motions.

Most partnership professionals are familiar with the difference between a “sales” and a “partnerships” mindset. A “sales” mindset can be transactional; you might be focused on getting a deal across the finish line rather than fostering a long-term relationship. A “partnerships” mindset centers on reciprocity in a relationship. Building and maintaining trust is key to a partnership and coming off to sales-y can put that long-term trust at risk.

The same is true of customers. Treat them as people to be marketed to and you will fail to earn their trust. Treat them as long-term collaborators (like partners) and you can foster a community of people who are willing to give you valuable feedback and be your cheerleaders amongst their peers. Why guess at what integrations to build or what your customers want when you can go directly to a trusted community of them and ask? 

Building your community can be just as important as building an ecosystem of partners. Doing so requires a community mindset, something that is (luckily) philosophically very similar to a partner mindset. 

• Partnerships mindset: Giving your partners warm intros to customers and new partners by bringing them into your ecosystem 

• Community mindset: Connecting your customers to help them grow their own professional network and crowdsource advice and/or best practices.

• Partnerships mindset: Forming partnerships based on a clear shared goal or belief. 

• Community mindset: Bringing together customers around a clearly shared goal or belief. 

• Partnerships mindset: Giving valuable leads to your partners before asking for something in return. 

• Community mindset: Giving your customers a place to collaborate and build valuable relationships amongst themselves before asking for something in return. 

Josh Jagdfeld, Senior Director, Alliances at the Apple security and management company Jamf has been utilizing a community mindset to source and support his co-marketing efforts. We spoke to Jagdfeld, about how he has tapped into his company’s 100,000+ person online community Jamf Nation. 

Attract new integration users and document existing customers’ positive experiences by dramatically increasing the number of reviews left on new integrations in the Jamf integration marketplace. 

Increase the relevancy of integrations by identifying and prioritizing real and common pain points from a target customer audience and building integrations to address said pain points.

Include customer reviews that can positively impact 92% of purchase decisions in co-marketing materials via customer testimonials.

And while Jagdfeld’s community is much larger than most, the lessons are relevant to communities of any size. 

“You can have a tiny community and can still get a lot of the same benefit that I’m talking about,” he shared. “You have to take the time to understand who those people are. Give them a space to meet and a reason to collaborate and you’ll be able to get that same thing out of it.” 

In this article:

• What is an online professional community? (Plus examples!) 

• How partnerships can tap into online professional communities 

• Getting started

What is an online professional community? (Plus examples!)

A professional community is an online space (think Slack or an online platform) where folks within an industry can connect with their peers and access resources to help elevate their work. Companies that create online communities for their existing or target customers might do so to:

Establish themselves as an authority in their respective spaces.

Use feedback from the community to drive marketing and/or sales decisions.

Generate interest in the company’s products or events within the community.

Provide value and assistance to their customers and fans.

Community members can use the space to:

• Share pain points with their peers to crowdsource solutions.
• Access curated resources such as podcasts, webinars, and blog posts about their particular industry.
• Learn best practices from others. 

There is a mutually beneficial, virtuous cycle dynamic involved: The more value your online community offers to users, the more people will join. Which makes the community more valuable for all parties.

While many members of a professional community might be current customers of the company running said community, it is not a requirement. Jagdfeld shared that many of the Jamf Nation members are not Jamf customers. 

“There are people that are in the community that do amazing work to bring value to customers that we would not be able to do on our own,” he told us. “It’s not just Jamf and our customers. It’s also Jamf service providers and customers of other organizations who are all within the Apple ecosystem.”

Knowing how to create long-term trust between you and your customers is an increasingly important skill to have, as Jared Fuller shared in his Supernode presentation.