Build your marketing strategy with your communtity
Community-led marketing is a practical approach to building trust, creating belonging, and making marketing people want to participate in, contribute to, and share.
New to community-led marketing?
Start with the fundamentals of CLM and learn how community can become part of your marketing strategy.
What is community-led marketing?
Learn what community-led marketing means, why it matters, and how putting belonging and participation at the centre of your strategy can help build long-term growth.
CLM eBook
Ready to go deeper? Get the step-by-step guide to building a community-led marketing strategy – from creating belonging to measuring its impact and putting CLM into practice.
See community-led marketing in action
Join the community-led marketing movement
Trusted by 3,500+ social media marketers, written by Joe Teo, CEO at HeyOrca.
Frequently asked questions
Can community-led marketing work for small businesses?
Yes. In fact, smaller brands often have an advantage because they can build closer, more personal relationships with their community.
Do you need to run paid ads with CLM?
No, paid ads aren’t required for CLM, but they work best when used together. CLM builds trust and demand organically, while paid ads amplify reach and accelerate results through retargeting engaged audiences, boosting high-performing community content, and staying top of mind during decision-making
How do you prove the value of CLM?
By tracking leading and lagging indicators. Leading indicators: engagement, community growth, brand mentions. Lagging indicators: revenue impact, retention, and customer acquisition. Together, they show both early traction and business results.
How is community-led marketing different from inbound marketing?
Inbound focuses on attracting and converting leads. Community-led marketing focuses on belonging, participation, and long-term relationships that naturally lead to growth.
What are examples of community-led marketing?
Examples include co-creating content with your community, responding to feedback publicly, hosting discussions, and highlighting community members.
What's the difference between community-led growth and community-led marketing?
Community-led marketing (CLM) is different from community-led growth (CLG) because CLM focuses specifically on how marketing teams use community to grow brand awareness, engagement, and advocacy through channels like social media, newsletters, events, creators, and online groups. CLG is the broader business strategy focused on how community supports overall company growth through customer retention, referrals, product adoption, and loyalty.