Community marketing is a strategy to engage an audience in an active, non-intrusive prospect and customer conversation. Whereas marketing communication strategies such as advertising, promotion, PR, and sales all focus on attaining customers, Community Marketing focuses on the needs of existing customers. This accomplishes four things for a business:

• Connects existing customers with prospects
• Connects prospects with each other
• Connects a company with customers/prospects to solidify loyalty
• Connects customers with customers to improve product adoption, satisfaction, etc.

There are two types of community marketing:

• Organic (created by users with no company intervention)
• Sponsored (fostered and hosted by a company)

Recent skepticism building among consumers as a result of blatant advertising and other unethical communications has affected the success of the sponsored form of Community Marketing. Continuing success in community marketing strategies has been found in engaging and cultivating the natural communities that form around their product/service.

Benefits

• Bi-directional communication with customers - Resulting in increased feedback, identification of customer needs, and a customer-focused product development
• Reduced Communication Barriers - Easily introduce messaging to customer audience regarding new products, Public relations
  Public relations
  Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
  
   strategies, or Damage control (news)
• Identify, engage, and leverage Advocates - Allow enthused and loyal customers to benefit your overall marketing through Word of mouth
  Word of mouth
  Word of mouth, or viva voce, is the passing of information from person to person by oral communication. Storytelling is the oldest form of word-of-mouth communication where one person tells others of something, whether a real event or something made up. Oral tradition is cultural material and...
  
   and Knowledge Management
  Knowledge management
  Knowledge management comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences...
  
   that reduces the load on your internal support mechanisms (particularly for tech products).
• Gaining Trusted Advisor Status - Reduced skepticism towards your marketing message as a result of a demonstrated openness, transparency, and commitment to customer focus through Community Marketing involvement. Results in an "ownership" of the discussion surrounding a product/service that reduces negativity and positions the providing company as a resource, rather than simply a vendor.

Tools used in community marketing

• Online Social Networking - The chief medium for Community Marketing revolves around Web 2.0
  Web 2.0
  The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...
  
   interactivity such as Internet forum
  Internet forum
  An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
  
  s, Wiki
  Wiki
  A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
  
  's, Social network
  Social network
  A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
  
  s, Blog
  Blog
  A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
  
  s, and related syndication (RSS
  RSS
  -Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...
  
  ).
• Community-Specific Tools & Features - To encourage community participation, many companies offer tools and features exclusively to "members" of the community. These include Webcast
  Webcast
  A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand...
  
  s, Podcast
  Podcast
  A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication...
  
  s, and email bulletins. The key factor, however, in using these tools is the value of the message. Communities revolve around user-valuable messages (information, support, tips & tricks, etc.) and NOT promotional messages.
• Community Infrastructure and Governance - Some communities engage the participation of their customers in the role of elected officials, advisory board members, and volunteer "guru" status in order to exemplify key customers in their communities.
• Partnerships - Although this is often a purely Public relations
  Public relations
  Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
  
  strategy, some people view partnerships with non-profit consumer advocacy organizations to be a Community Marketing effort.