The Community-Led Show #5: The Power of Community-Led Marketing with Katie Perry
In this episode, Public's GM of IR Innovation, Katie Perry discusses how she thinks about Public's evolution, Community-led marketing, and working cross-functionally.
This week Katie Perry, GM of IR Innovation at Public, is in the firing line of all our questions for The Community-Led Show.
In this episode, she discusses how she thinks about Public's evolution, Community-Led marketing, and working cross-functionally.
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The Community-Led Show #5: TL; DL
About Public
Public is an investing platform that helps people become better investors in the same place where they invest.
GM of IR Innovation, Katie Perry says they offer stocks, ETF (exchange-traded fund), Cryptos, and soon-to-be NFTs and collectibles — all in the same place.
“I've been with the company for about two and a half years,” says Katie. “A lot has changed since then. When I joined, we were a much smaller startup and had a smaller member base. Now we have over three million in-app members.”
Katie’s previous role was VP of Marketing, with community reporting into the marketing department.
Community functioning independently
As their community grew, it became important for Community to become its own department, says Katie.
It created space for the team to have a true community vision and directive that is outside of supporting another department.
“That is a part of natural evolution. There's added responsibility and impact of community that happens when a company scales,” she says.
“Also, the power of community isn't just another kind of marketing channel or a piece of marketing. It is this separate thing that needs the space to have its own goals and vision outside of being placed under another piece of the organization.”
Marketing X Community
Marketing and Community departments are one of those cross-functional matches made in heaven.
At Public, marketing is like the promoter that gets people to come to the club and community is the DJ who keeps them there all night. Essentially, marketing gets audiences through the door but community is what makes them stay.
“We're really focused on helping people in the long term, we want long term relationships with our customers, we want them learning and getting better over time,” she says.
“Retention is one of our biggest goals so we want the community and the feel of the community to reflect the values of our brand. What we're putting forth in our advertising needs to be real in the product, and the community is a really big part of that."
Katie says a Community hire was early on in the development of their marketing strategy when Community was a part of that function.
“One thing I think the team did really well was set the tone of the community when we were much smaller. When you establish norms in a group, and what is acceptable, and just the patterns in which people behave, it sort of allows you to scale that vibe, as you grow,” she says.
Working cross-functionally
The role community has played at Public is that of facilitating education and helping members level up as investors.
“The Community department is one of the most cross-functional units we have at the company. Our community represents our audience, so working with marketing is almost natural,” says Katie.
Their Product and Customer Support departments also work very closely with Community.
“What's really interesting about community that makes it so innately cross-functional is that it functions as a real-time feedback loop we have with our audience at all times. There are instances where we spot trends in the community or we hear people aggregating around certain needs or feedback on the product itself, and it's really important and valuable.
“It's a unique differentiator that we have that feedback loop all the time. We can use that to optimize marketing messages and give product feedback,” Katie says.
More Community-Led resources
As we touch on in the show, we've got a whole host of things available on our Community-Led site. There, you'll find the Community-Led Growth Model, The 2022 Community-Led Report, and the Community-Led Assessment.
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