#16: It’s All About Community
Event marketing is on the rise
In Tuesday’s edition, we chatted about the downfall of the dropshipper’s business model and the necessity to build a brand by first establishing community.
“Build a community to serve as the focal point of your business.”
Quoting myself here (I’m very humble), I’m referring to gaining followers online. You can start an Instagram or TikTok account, post videos and chat back and forth with followers. Or you can be an active Redditor, bestowing your wisdom in various subreddits relevant to your niche. There are countless other options like starting a newsletter (shoutout Substack), an X or BlueSky account, or joining a Discord server (or starting your own) to deepen engagement with your niche.
Whichever platform(s) you choose, engage with your audience. Respond to their comments or emails. Dig into your platform analytics and double down on the content themes driving the most engagement (a mix of watch time, comments, shares, and saves). Get people interested in what you have to say because when you come around to sell them something, you will come off as much more authentic.
The point is, cultivating a core set of followers will yield dividends as you build your business. This cohort can give you feedback on new product ideas. Whether it’s a new flavor or size, your followers can provide the data points you need to take risks.
I believe that posting content online consistently and engaging with your audience is the quickest way to build a community. However, if you really want to achieve escape velocity with community development, there’s something else you can try on for size.
Event marketing.
“Come again?”
Host in-person events. IRL.
Event marketing takes a different skillset to master and is not a realistic endeavor for everyone who is trying to build a brand. But if you can get it right, you’re unlocking a synergistic combination of brand loyalty and content velocity.
Let’s play out this scenario: you are interested in starting a running apparel company. You’re posting online about various athletic fashion trends, upcoming races, and which brand’s shoes are the best for long runs. You are growing your following slowly, but you want to turn it up a notch.
So, you start a run club since it’s a relatively low lift to set up (you simply… run a route). You post a call-to-action on your socials to meet at a local park (bonus points if you live in a densely populated area) for a group run.
The first few run club meetups are weakly attended, but suddenly a social post catches fire and one hundred people show up at your meetup. Then three hundred. You see people posting how they made new friends at your weekly run club event.
I’m way underestimating the amount of effort event planning takes as well as the immediate conversion of online followers to offline fans. But think about it: the people that show up to a brand’s in-person event are fans of the brand and have similar interests (otherwise they wouldn’t have shown up to the event). You are getting a group of like-minded people together to share in an experience. This creates the potential for the forming of new friendships all thanks to that brand event they went to. This is community development.
Here’s where the more business-minded folks should zero in: people are social beings and in 2025, people like to express their social behavior online. Creating ways and incentives for people to post content from the in-person event online creates this flywheel effect where more people will see the content and get interested in the brand. That post that went viral, leading to exponential online follower growth and attendees? It was from someone who showed up at your run club and shared how much fun they had. Earned media value, hook, line and sinker.
Create opportunities for like-minded people to have a shared experience with your brand - and feel proud to share it online. Here are a few brands that I believe are crushing in-person events and building community along the way.
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An upscale men’s fashion brand based in NYC, Le Alfre looks to be a new-age Ralph Lauren. Targeting the Wall Street crowd, Le Alfre created a loyalty program where ownership of just one item* unlocks invites to elegant soirées, exclusive product drops, and members-only perks.
*Well, there’s an application process but it appears the main criteria is that you must show proof of clothing ownership.
This idea has product market fit written all over it. Le Alfre knows their core customer and creates opportunities to provide value to their loyal community in ways that are of interest to their community. In turn, they throw cool parties and bring together fans of the brand, further increasing the brand/content flywheel.
Bilt Rewards boasts a credit card that allows you to earn rewards points on your rent and/or mortgage payment without requiring a transaction fee to do so. Game-changing. I personally use Bilt and these rewards points are racking up quickly.
In early 2025, Bilt opened a coffee shop in NoHo (a buzzing Manhattan neighborhood). Bilt cardmembers receive point accelerators on all purchases at the coffee shop.
It gets better. On the first of each month (to-date), they host a “Rent Day” celebration and give out free coffee to any Bilt cardmember. On April 1st, they brought in a DJ spinning deep house, while a line stretched halfway down the block. I had to check it out for myself to see if it was an April Fool’s joke or legit.
As the picture above suggests, it was the real deal. While this event doesn’t foster the same niche community as a fashion brand party, it created ample opportunity for people to take pictures/videos and post them online. And for the cost of a cup of coffee, Bilt was able to continue proving their value for the sake of customer retention. And who knows? In a popular area of Manhattan, there are plenty of people walking by who may stop to see what all the fuss is about. They’ll look up Bilt online and perhaps even sign up for a card themselves.
Want free coffee on the 1st of every month? Check out Bilt here.
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Fostering community, both online and IRL, isn’t just a feel-good strategy; it’s the foundation for brand loyalty, organic growth, and long-term success. Put in simpler terms, build the community and commerce will more naturally enter your orbit.