Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Long-term (6+ months)
When I first started working with B2B SaaS clients, everyone wanted the same thing: "We need to build a community around our product." The vision was always the same - a thriving Slack workspace or Discord server where customers would naturally gather, share tips, and become advocates for the product.
But here's what actually happened across multiple client projects: we'd spend weeks setting up the perfect community infrastructure, crafting welcome messages, and organizing channels. We'd get an initial burst of sign-ups from existing customers, maybe 100-200 people who joined out of curiosity or politeness.
Then reality hit. Within 30 days, engagement dropped to near zero. The community manager we hired was essentially talking to herself, posting updates and asking questions that got maybe one or two responses. The founder would check the community dashboard weekly, watching member counts grow while actual conversations died.
The breaking point came when I realized we were approaching this completely backwards. We weren't building communities - we were trying to extract people from their natural professional networks and convince them to join yet another platform. That's when I discovered the difference between building communities and building customer networks.
In this playbook, you'll discover:
Why traditional community platforms fail for 90% of B2B SaaS companies
The "Network Piggyback Strategy" that costs 80% less and delivers 3x better results
How to identify where your customers actually spend time (spoiler: it's not your Slack)
The content framework that turns product updates into network fuel
Metrics that actually predict business impact vs. vanity metrics
This isn't another "build it and they will come" guide. This is about working with human behavior instead of against it.
Reality Check
What every community consultant tells you
Open any "community building for SaaS" guide and you'll see the same tired playbook:
Step 1: Choose your platform (Slack, Discord, Circle, or whatever's trending)
Step 2: Create topic-based channels (#introductions, #feature-requests, #success-stories)
Step 3: Hire a community manager to seed conversations
Step 4: Host regular AMAs and webinars
Step 5: Implement gamification with badges and leaderboards
The reasoning sounds logical: create a dedicated space where users can connect, provide value to each other, and build stronger relationships with your brand. The success stories always reference the same few companies - usually consumer platforms or massive enterprise tools with tens of thousands of users.
This conventional wisdom exists because it worked for a specific type of company in a specific era. When Slack was new and exciting, when people had fewer digital obligations, and when joining online communities felt novel rather than overwhelming.
But here's the fundamental flaw in this approach: it assumes your SaaS product is central to your users' professional identity. For most B2B tools, this simply isn't true. Your project management software might be essential to someone's work, but they don't define themselves as "project management enthusiasts." They're marketing directors, operations managers, or startup founders who happen to use your tool.
The traditional approach also treats busy professionals like they're sitting around waiting for another Slack workspace to join. In reality, they're already overwhelmed by existing communities, industry forums, LinkedIn groups, and professional networks where they actually get value.
Most importantly, the conventional wisdom focuses on extraction - pulling people out of their natural professional habitats and convincing them to engage in an artificial environment centered around your product.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The realization hit me hardest while working with a B2B analytics SaaS that served marketing teams. The founder was frustrated because their expensive Slack community had 400+ members but almost zero organic engagement. Meanwhile, he was personally getting dozens of thoughtful responses every time he posted about marketing analytics on LinkedIn.
"Why aren't these conversations happening in our community?" he asked during one of our calls. That's when it clicked - they were happening, just not where we expected them.
I spent the next week doing what I now call "community archaeology." I traced where the company's customers were actually having conversations about the problems their SaaS solved. LinkedIn groups focused on marketing operations. Industry-specific forums. Twitter threads about data analysis. Reddit communities for growth marketers. Even niche Slack workspaces focused on broader topics like SaaS marketing or analytics.
The customers weren't avoiding conversation - they were having rich, valuable discussions about exactly the topics our client's product addressed. They just weren't doing it in spaces branded around a specific tool.
This led to an uncomfortable truth: most SaaS founders are trying to solve a distribution problem with a community solution. They want more touchpoints with customers, better feedback loops, and increased engagement. But instead of going where customers naturally gather, they're asking customers to come to them.
That's when I completely flipped the strategy.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Instead of building another platform for customers to ignore, I developed what I call the "Network Piggyback Strategy." The core principle is simple: become valuable in the professional networks where your customers already spend time, rather than trying to extract them into a new space.
Here's the systematic approach I've now used with multiple B2B SaaS clients:
Phase 1: Community Archaeology (Week 1-2)
First, I map where customers naturally congregate. I survey recent customers with one simple question: "Where do you go online when you need advice about [problem your SaaS solves]?" Not about your product specifically, but about the underlying challenge.
The patterns are remarkably consistent. For marketing tools: LinkedIn groups, Marketing Land forums, and industry-specific communities. For dev tools: Stack Overflow, Reddit, and GitHub discussions. For operations software: industry association forums and LinkedIn groups focused on ops.
Phase 2: Value-First Participation (Week 3-8)
Instead of selling or even mentioning our client's product, we focus on becoming genuinely helpful in these existing spaces. I work with the founder or subject matter experts to share insights, answer questions, and contribute valuable perspectives.
The key is the "Teach, Don't Sell" framework. When someone asks about data visualization best practices, we share actionable advice without mentioning our analytics tool. When someone struggles with campaign attribution, we provide a helpful framework without pitching our attribution features.
Phase 3: Content Amplification (Week 4-12)
As we build credibility in these networks, we start using customer questions and discussions as content fuel. A common question in a LinkedIn group becomes a detailed blog post. A Reddit thread about implementation challenges becomes a case study.
But here's the crucial part: we share this content back to the communities where the original conversations happened. This creates a feedback loop where community discussions inform content creation, which then provides more value back to the community.
Phase 4: Customer Advocacy Network (Week 8+)
Instead of asking customers to join "our" community, we encourage them to become more active in their existing professional networks - and we support them with resources to do so.
We create "Customer Advocacy Toolkits" - templates, talking points, and case study frameworks that make it easy for satisfied customers to share their success stories in the communities where they're already active members.
Network Mapping
Systematic process to identify where your customers naturally gather and engage in professional discussions
Teach Framework
Value-first content strategy that builds expertise positioning before any product mentions
Amplification Loop
System for turning community insights into content that feeds back into network growth
Advocacy Toolkit
Resources that enable customers to become advocates within their existing professional networks
The results speak for themselves. Instead of managing a dying Slack workspace with 400 ghost members, that marketing analytics client now has:
Consistent presence in 8 active professional communities where their target customers spend time daily. Their founder's LinkedIn posts routinely get 50-100 engaged comments from qualified prospects.
Content strategy directly informed by real customer conversations. Their blog posts now average 3x more shares and comments because they're addressing questions that people are actively discussing in professional networks.
Customer advocacy that happens organically. Instead of trying to generate testimonials for a company community, satisfied customers naturally mention the tool when relevant questions come up in their professional networks.
Most importantly, the cost dropped dramatically. No community manager salary, no platform fees, no gamification software. Just strategic participation in existing networks where customers already wanted to be.
The metric that matters most: qualified conversations with prospects increased by 180% while the cost per interaction dropped by 70%.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
After implementing this approach across multiple B2B SaaS clients, here are the key lessons that consistently emerged:
1. Communities exist - you don't need to build them. Your customers are already having conversations about the problems you solve. Your job is to find these conversations and add value, not to create new platforms.
2. Expertise beats promotion every time. One genuinely helpful answer in the right professional forum is worth more than 100 promotional posts in your own community.
3. Content strategy should follow conversation patterns. The best content topics come from observing what customers are already discussing in their professional networks.
4. Advocacy happens in context. People are more likely to recommend tools when relevant questions naturally arise in their professional communities, not when prompted in a company-owned space.
5. Scale comes from systems, not platforms. Building repeatable processes for network participation scales better than trying to grow member counts on your own platform.
6. Relationship quality beats community size. Having meaningful connections with 50 active professionals in relevant networks delivers more business value than 500 passive members in your Slack.
7. Distribution follows relationships. When you're genuinely helpful in professional networks, people naturally share your content and insights with their connections.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups looking to implement this approach:
Survey 10-20 recent customers about their go-to professional information sources
Identify 3-5 active networks where your customers naturally spend time
Commit to daily value-first participation for 90 days minimum
Create customer advocacy resources instead of community platforms
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce brands adapting this strategy:
Focus on lifestyle and interest-based communities rather than product-centric spaces
Use customer questions to create educational content for existing forums
Support brand advocates in communities where they're already influential
Leverage user-generated content within established social networks