Benefits of Customer Marketing Communities
The main benefits tend to be:
- Free to join – not all communities are, but the CMA communities are free (at this time)
- Focused on CMA – general marketing communities are too broad for most customer marketers. These are hyper-focused on CMA.
- Peer relationships – Perhaps no professional loves relationships more than the typical CMA professional. In these communities, you can develop more relationships with CMA peers.
The downside of Customer Marketing Communities is that they can be echo chambers, which can provide a false sense of confidence in CMA beliefs and practices that might be misaligned with those in marketing leadership and other executive decision-making roles.
Comparing Customer Marketing Communities
CMAweekly has the most engagement, but the organizer, Mary Green, is planning to step away from it, so there’s risk that the community will fizzle out.
The Customer Marketing Alliance is one of several “Alliance” communities created after the success of the Product Marketing Alliance. They seem to know how to monetize a community with things like paid events, but the organic engagement levels are low, and the content substance is light.
