Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Long-term (6+ months)
Last year, I watched a B2B SaaS client pour $15,000 into building what they thought would be the ultimate user community on Slack. They had everything the "experts" recommended: dedicated channels, weekly AMAs, gamification badges, even a community manager.
Six months later? Ghost town. 847 members, but only 12 people had posted anything in the past month. The community manager was basically talking to herself, and the founder was questioning whether community building was just another Silicon Valley buzzword.
But here's where it gets interesting. While their Slack community was dying, something unexpected was happening. Their customers were naturally congregating somewhere else, creating value for each other in ways we never anticipated. That's when I realized we'd been approaching SaaS community building completely backwards.
Most SaaS founders think community building means creating a platform where users gather to discuss your product. That's not community building - that's creating a customer support forum with extra steps. Real community building for SaaS means understanding where your users already spend time and becoming valuable there.
In this playbook, you'll discover:
Why traditional SaaS community platforms fail 90% of the time
The "piggyback strategy" that costs 80% less and delivers 3x better engagement
How to identify where your customers naturally gather (it's probably not where you think)
The content framework that turns product updates into community fuel
Real metrics that matter vs. vanity metrics that mislead
This isn't another "build it and they will come" guide. This is about working with human behavior instead of against it, based on what actually works in 2025.
Industry Reality
What every community consultant will tell you
Walk into any SaaS conference or browse through "community building" courses, and you'll hear the same playbook repeated over and over:
Step 1: Choose your platform (usually Slack, Discord, or Circle)
Step 2: Create topic-based channels
Step 3: Hire a community manager
Step 4: Host regular events and AMAs
Step 5: Implement gamification and rewards
The logic sounds reasonable: give users a dedicated space to connect, provide structured conversations, and facilitate valuable interactions. Create a sense of belonging around your product.
This conventional wisdom exists because it worked well for consumer platforms and large enterprise software companies with massive user bases. When you have 50,000+ active users, creating a dedicated community space makes sense. You have enough people to sustain conversations organically.
But here's the problem most SaaS founders face: you don't have 50,000 active users. You have 200, maybe 500 if you're doing well. And these people are busy professionals who are already overwhelmed by Slack notifications, LinkedIn messages, and industry forums.
The traditional approach assumes your product is central to your users' professional identity. For most B2B SaaS tools, that's simply not true. Your project management tool or CRM might be essential to their work, but it's not their passion. They don't wake up excited to discuss project management methodologies with strangers.
What's worse, this approach treats community building as a "build it and they will come" strategy. You create the infrastructure and expect engagement to follow. But community isn't about infrastructure - it's about value exchange and natural gathering patterns.
The result? Most SaaS communities become expensive ghost towns maintained by community managers who end up creating most of the content themselves.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The client I mentioned earlier was a B2B analytics platform serving marketing teams at mid-size companies. Think 50-500 employee businesses where marketing directors needed better reporting than Google Analytics but couldn't justify enterprise-level tools.
When I started working with them, they were convinced they needed a community. Their reasoning seemed solid: their customers were constantly asking questions about implementation, sharing creative use cases, and requesting features. "If we could get all these conversations in one place," the founder told me, "we'd reduce support tickets and create network effects."
So we followed the playbook. Launched a Slack community with channels for "General Discussion," "Feature Requests," "Show & Tell," and "Ask the Team." We even had themed weeks: "Metric Monday," "Workflow Wednesday," "Feature Friday." I helped them craft launch emails, create onboarding sequences, and design engagement campaigns.
The initial response was promising. 400 signups in the first two weeks. But then reality hit. After the novelty wore off, daily active users dropped to single digits. The "Show & Tell" channel had three posts. "General Discussion" was mostly tumbleweeds with occasional product support questions that belonged in a help desk.
The community manager we hired was talented, but she was essentially performing content theater. Creating conversation starters, sharing industry news, responding enthusiastically to every comment. It felt forced because it was forced.
Meanwhile, something interesting was happening in our customer interviews. When I asked where they learned about marketing analytics best practices, customers kept mentioning the same places: specific LinkedIn groups, a particular subreddit, certain industry newsletters, and - most importantly - their existing professional networks.
One customer said something that changed our entire approach: "I don't need another place to check. I need smart people to show up where I already am."
That's when I realized we were trying to extract people from their natural habitats instead of adding value to their existing communities.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Instead of building our own community, we completely flipped the strategy. Rather than asking customers to come to us, we went where they already were. I call this the "piggyback strategy" - becoming valuable members of existing communities rather than competing with them.
Here's the exact process we implemented:
Phase 1: Community Archaeology
First, we mapped where our customers naturally spent time. Not where we thought they should be, but where they actually were. Through customer interviews and social listening, we identified:
3 active LinkedIn groups (Marketing Analytics Professionals, B2B Marketing Leaders, CMO Network)
2 relevant subreddits (r/marketing, r/analytics)
Industry Slack communities they were already in
Twitter conversations around specific hashtags
Industry conference attendee lists and networking groups
Phase 2: Value-First Participation
Instead of promoting our product, we focused on becoming genuinely helpful community members. The founder started sharing weekly "Analytics Audit" posts in LinkedIn groups - not product demos, but actual tactical advice with examples.
I helped create a content framework called "Teach, Don't Sell":
80% pure value (templates, frameworks, case studies)
15% industry insights and commentary
5% subtle product context (never direct promotion)
Phase 3: Community-Driven Content
We turned customer questions and use cases into content that served entire communities. When a customer asked about attribution modeling, we created a comprehensive guide and shared it across relevant groups - crediting the customer who inspired the question.
This created a flywheel: customers felt heard and recognized, communities received valuable resources, and we built authority and relationships simultaneously.
Phase 4: The "Expert Network" Approach
Rather than trying to get everyone into our space, we created value exchange opportunities within existing communities. We started hosting "office hours" in partner Slack communities, contributed expert insights to industry newsletters, and facilitated introductions between customers facing similar challenges.
The key insight: community building for SaaS isn't about gathering people around your product - it's about your product serving existing gatherings of people.
Community Mapping
Identify 3-5 existing communities where your customers already gather and actively participate
Value-First Strategy
Focus 95% on helping, 5% on subtle product context - never direct promotion
Expert Positioning
Become the go-to resource in existing communities rather than competing with them
Network Effects
Facilitate customer-to-customer connections within their natural professional networks
The transformation was remarkable, but it didn't happen overnight. Within three months of shifting strategies, we started seeing real engagement. Not fake "community theater" engagement, but genuine conversations and value exchange.
The founder's LinkedIn posts were averaging 50+ comments instead of the 2-3 we saw in the dedicated community. Customer support tickets decreased by 30% because people were getting answers from peers in various groups. Most importantly, word-of-mouth referrals increased significantly.
Instead of 847 inactive community members, we had built relationships with approximately 150 highly engaged professionals across multiple communities. These weren't just users - they became advocates, beta testers, and referring partners.
The financial impact was clear: customer acquisition cost dropped by 40% as more leads came through referrals and organic discovery in existing communities. Customer lifetime value increased by 25% because users who discovered us through peer recommendations in their professional networks had much higher retention rates.
But perhaps most importantly, this approach was sustainable. Instead of requiring constant community management overhead, it became part of the founder's natural networking and thought leadership activities.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here are the most important lessons learned from completely rethinking SaaS community building:
1. Infrastructure isn't community - Building a platform doesn't create community culture. Focus on relationships and value exchange, not channels and features.
2. Go where the energy already exists - Your customers are already in communities. Your job is to add value there, not extract them into your own space.
3. Quality beats quantity every time - 50 engaged professionals who know and trust you beats 500 inactive community members.
4. Community building is relationship building at scale - It's not about broadcast messaging or event planning. It's about consistently providing value to specific groups of people.
5. Measure engagement, not membership - Vanity metrics like member count tell you nothing. Track meaningful conversations, referrals, and relationship depth.
6. Your product should serve communities, not compete with them - The goal isn't to replace existing professional networks - it's to make those networks more valuable.
7. Founders make the best community builders - Authenticity and domain expertise can't be outsourced. Community managers can amplify, but founders must lead the relationship building.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups looking to build authentic community:
Map where your customers already gather professionally
Focus on being helpful in existing communities before building your own
Use customer questions as content inspiration for broader communities
Measure referrals and advocacy, not member counts
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce brands building community:
Identify interest-based communities your customers participate in
Share lifestyle content and tips in relevant forums and groups
Partner with existing communities rather than competing
Focus on customer success stories and user-generated content