By Emily Steele, CEO and cofounder, Hummingbirds

There’s an exciting movement happening in commerce called community-led growth (CLG).

It’s not a completely new concept, as direct sales and affiliate companies have tapped into their own networks for years, but rather an existing concept being modernized to suit today’s consumers.

Today, you don’t need to be a MLM brand or e-commerce company to utilize peer-to-peer influence. Humans as your marketing distribution channel is available to almost every type of company and can radically shift how people perceive your brand, engage with your offers, drive sales and, ultimately, create customer loyalty.

CLG is gaining popularity for three key reasons that consumer-centric brands should pay attention to in 2024.

Consumers care about who they’re buying from.

Brands can no longer rely on a flashy website to close sales; they need to have a meaningful mission, story and real faces representing their brand. Brands that only rely on monologues to reach consumers are missing an incredibly exciting opportunity to lean into dialogue, whether it’s from their own brand (think of what is possible with AI) or because of their advocates.

92% of people trust friends and family over any other form of advertising.

Consumers are learning about brands in a variety of ways, but we all know that a real person’s opinion has significantly more weight than a static message on a metal sign in the sky. The question is, how do you blend channels with extensive reach while also tapping into the voices that bring those channels to life through emotion and engaging conversation?

Consumers source information in multiple places before making a decision. 

The journey of reaching today’s modern consumers is complex. They may see a billboard, overhear someone talking about a company at the coffee shop, then they happen to scroll past a post from their friend on Facebook and send them a message over Messenger to see what they thought. 

Add a CLG growth channel to your marketing plan this year

Including CLG as a growth channel in 2024 is a sure way to connect with real people who want to amplify your business and become your long-term customer and superfan. It creates a shift from interruption marketing to intimacy marketing, where customers feel connected to you. 

Ready to try CLG to drive local behavior? Hummingbirds has given brands access to these everyday people who are eager to try out their business and share it with their network of friends both online and offline.

View Emily’s bio here