Welcome to the new Demand Metric Marketing Community

By Jerry Rackley

If you visit the Demand Metric website today, you’ll notice a change. We’ve been working quietly, behind-the-scenes for months building some serious new online infrastructure: a marketing community. The term “community” gets tossed around a lot when a person or organization wants to conjure up some warm feelings about how people are connected. We get that, and you’re probably asking yourself right now, “Why do I care?” It’s a fair question, and we think we have a good answer for you, so please, read on!

Wikipedia defines an online or virtual community as “a social network of individuals who interact through specific social media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals.” Check. This new marketing community is all about that. Allow us to be more specific: our vision for this new marketing community is to advance the state and practice of marketing in mid-sized enterprises by encouraging community members to share their collective expertise. Let’s unwrap this vision a bit further.

• Advance the state and practice of marketing: this vision has been the driving force behind Demand Metric since its inception, and the rate at which it occurs has increased steadily as our membership has grown. What this new marketing community will do is change the rate at which it happens. Before this community was launched, a single member would download one or two Demand Metric resources to help them. Or, another member might schedule a call with one of our analysts. Both of these scenarios have good outcomes, but they are one-to-one exchanges. The new Demand Metric marketing community will take the content of these one-to-one email and telephone exchanges and put them online, where they can help many, not just one.
• Mid-sized enterprises: as of this writing, Demand Metric already has over 32,000 members, all of which, by virtue of their connection with us, will gain access to this new marketing community. Our members range in size from startups to members of the Fortune 500. We’ve learned in the seven years since Demand Metric was founded, that mid-sized enterprises need our resources the most. They don’t have the $30,000 - $50,000 per year it takes to be a client of a traditional research and advisory firm. All Demand Metric members are getting value, but mid-sized enterprises are the most active users of our resources and most grateful for what we provide. The new marketing community will serve all members well, but we expect mid-sized enterprises to participate the most.
• Share their collective expertise: if you haven’t had the opportunity to get advisory from one of our analysts, we have some elite marketing talent to offer our members. At the same time, we have a lot of marketing experts represented in our membership. This new marketing community brings all of that together in one place, with mechanisms to encourage and reward the sharing of problems, solutions, ideas and best practices. Perhaps we should call this marketing community “Thought Leadership Central” because it provides a place of expression for the genius of our members.

Here are some other things you should know about the new Demand Metric marketing community:
• We put the FUN in marketing FUNction! We built this marketing community around a new strategy called gamification. It employs elements of game design to make interaction in the community more fun while providing a system to recognize and reward those who participate.
• Presented commercial free and without interruption. We’ll maintain a well-moderated forum in this marketing community that is free from advertisements or vendor pitches.
• Elite and focused. Not because we made it this way, but because you did. Our members, all of whom automatically become members of this new community, are already quite focused and elite in terms of position: 75% of our members are in B2B organizations, and 67% have job titles of Director or above.
• Roles and topics-based. The community will facilitate discussions and networking around specific marketing roles and topics.

Beyond the obvious benefit of having a place to show thought leadership and access it, there are a number of other advantages to active participation in this marketing community:
• Get one, free download of a Demand Metric tool or template each month.
• Access the Performance Marketing Report, a monthly e-guide to new tools, templates, events, analyst insights and other announcements.
• Read any of our How-to Guides and participate in our benchmark studies, like the one we recently completed on marketing analytics.

There isn’t another marketing community like this one in existence, and we think it can be a game-changer for the marketing professionals that take advantage of it. We invite you to get involved in the community to share your expertise and learn from your peers. When you do, everyone wins.