Your kids or your friends’ kids might be using it regularly, and it could be what your B2B marketing strategy is missing; we’re talking about the Discord app—and it might be time for you to create a profile for your business.
Sure, it was initially created for gamers to converse (think: Fortnite and Minecraft), much like B2Bs do via Slack or message boards, but now, with a user base in the hundreds of millions, brands and companies are clued in and accessing a whole new market of prospects.
So, should you set up a Discord server for your company? Let’s find out.
What is Discord?
Discord is a popular voice and text chat platform with over 150 million active monthly users and 560 million registered accounts. While it has its roots in gaming, only 22% of users are on the app solely for gaming activities. In fact, it’s finding use among businesses and marketers that are looking to engage with customers where they are.
Discord doesn’t currently have an ad-based revenue model. Instead, the platform relies on sources like premium subscriptions and game distribution for revenue.
Businesses can use the platform to build their brand by using Discord marketing and the community to grow by using a combo of video, voice, and text communication.
Dissecting Discord: How Does it Work?
Discord works by allowing users to create servers, which are essentially groups of users who can communicate with each other. Within each server, users can create channels, which are specific areas for communication, such as voice chat rooms, text chat rooms, and more. Users can also share files, photos, and videos, making it easy to collaborate and share information with others.
A business might have a main server under the brand name with different channels for each of its products, a support chat, one channel for news or updates, and one for community discourse.
Users spend at least 280 minutes on the platform every month, and there are 19 million active servers on Discord weekly, catering to a wide assortment of interests. Discord users reportedly log a total of 4 billion minutes of conversation a day. Popular with Gen Z and millennials, it’s being dubbed the “anti-Facebook” in an effort to prioritize community building and an “always on” digital space.
Often compared to Slack and Microsoft Teams, Discord’s interface and messaging system aren’t groundbreaking breakthroughs in technology. But with their strong focus on community, Discord’s growing popularity means anyone can share their interests—and any business can grow an audience. The real question is: How?
How can you use Discord for marketing?
Brands are used to leveraging social media to reach online customers, but messaging apps like Discord, What’s App, and Facebook Messenger are increasingly popular, infiltrating the ranks of top social media platforms.
Discord’s appeal? It’s free, secure, and has apps for both desktop and mobile. Both private and public servers can be created—and there really isn’t a limit to how many servers you can run. And for businesses ready to take the leap, Discord can replace Slack, Skype, and other business collaboration tools.
Why? Discord uses fewer system resources than Slack or Skype, their development team is easy to reach, and their company’s own marketing model focuses on listening to the needs of its massive community—a community you can now reach.
Obviously, internal communication is just one of the many uses of Discord for your business. It’s also an ideal platform to engage with your customers, and Discord marketing is being hailed as the new B2B social media marketing platform to watch.
Discord Marketing Benefits
Community Marketing
Discord is the perfect place to start your community marketing efforts. And all successful brands already have communities because buyers love belonging to them. If you want to build and expand your brand’s online presence, you should consider starting a Discord server.
Discord’s features include:
- FREE access to all members.
- You can segment like-minded buyers with server channels.
- You can share pictures and Encourage interaction among your customers.
- Your server is a central place for all your audience members to stay connected to each other and your brand.
Once you start running a Discord server, develop an online community. Building an online Discord community will take time, and you need to keep these tips in mind:
- Create community rules.
- Use branding throughout your channel for an enhanced customer experience.
- Frequently interact with your community members.
- Consistently post engaging content.
- Create automated rules for users to be welcomed after joining your community.
- Assign dedicated moderators to answer questions, provide support, and promote a positive environment.
Customer Support
Customer service is the heart of a positive customer experience, and the experiences your customers have with your brand determine their loyalty.
Positive brand experiences convert to sales in 60% of consumers, while 73% of consumers will switch to a competitor after multiple negative experiences with a brand.
Fortunately, Discord enables businesses to quickly respond to customer questions. Discord provides an instant messaging system in live chat, allowing businesses to instantly communicate with customers. You can also create multiple channels to handle specific types of inquiries, such as technical issues, billing questions, product updates, and more.
Effective Branding
Through Discord, you can share the story of your business directly through videos, words, and images—all of which will have a positive impact. Content quality is key. You want people to get the word out about your business and build hype around it. To do that, you need to effectively tell the story of what you’re doing, and do it often. More engagement means more interaction, and if you can interact with your audience, they’ll be more likely to interact with you, too. So, being active and engaging is important.
How to get started with discord marketing
Getting started with Discord marketing is easy. Get started by creating a server for your brand, then start communicating with your customers and followers right away! Here are a few tips to help you get started:
- Make sure your server is well-organized with clear and concise channels for different types of communication.
- Ensure you have a clear and consistent brand message.
- Engage with your customers and followers by responding to questions, comments, and feedback.
- Use analytics to track the success of your Discord marketing efforts.
12 Bulletproof Discord Marketing Strategies
1. Choose who you add.
Discord marketing is all about personalization—and they have a ton of options. You can control who joins your group(s), much like you would in a Facebook Group. But Discord offers even more customization beyond that; you can label members. Specific roles can be assigned to each member and access to different channels within your server can be granted or denied based on those roles.
Basically, you decide how you control the group, as well as who you invite. The privacy settings allow you to target messages however you’d like.
2. Create moderators and tiered groups.
Unlike some social media platforms (we’re looking at you, Facebook), Discord doesn’t limit you to just one group within your server. You can set up several text and voice channels, and you control access using the above-mentioned assigned roles.
There are different access levels to different chat groups. This depends on the various roles: owner, admin, moderator, or member. You’re able to plan with your team on one channel while engaging with your customers and prospects on another.
What’s more, you can create special groups for highly active members and niche channels for different departments—like a technical support group and one for Discord marketing.
Tiers and member levels make organizing and communicating across multiple channels seamless.
3. Promote your company’s values and exclusive sales.
While Discord users do tend to skew younger, they are typically smart consumers. Half-baked marketing schemes that fill social channels won’t work with them—they are looking for data-backed research and real value.
The key to building an engaged community for your business on Discord is by providing exclusive sales to community members. Discord enables this through its partner program.
A simple way to give away prizes or special discounts? Announce the launch of your new Discord channel and offer these incentives to the first 1,000 members. It’s a great way to lay the foundation, spark interest, and create an active community.
4. Host regular community events
Hosting regular events for your Discord community can be a great way to engage with your target audience and build brand awareness. Whether it’s a virtual happy hour, a live Q&A session, or a gaming tournament, hosting events gives you the opportunity to connect with your audience in a fun and meaningful way. Plus, these events can be used to drive traffic to your website, promote new products, or gather feedback from your customers.
5. Take advantage of their customer service.
A quarter of consumers now use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to seek resolution for issues they’re having. But Discord offers something that the more common social media platforms typically don’t; they provide customer service.
The ease with which members can reach resolutions fosters the community environment that keeps bringing customers back—and it’s one of the most effective ways to engage with prospective and current customers.
6. Moderate your community.
In addition to internal communications, you can also create a Discord server as a platform for moderated social discussion. Depending on what your target audience might want to discuss, you can create different channels and let your audience bond with one another.
You can create a text channel to discuss interests that seem relevant to your business and target audience, and you can even start a voice or video channel if needed.
The sky is pretty much the limit.
The best part: As your community grows, so will the popularity of your business. Word of mouth is extremely powerful for Discord marketing, after all.
Related post: How to Create Product Awareness as a B2B Brand
7. Network with like-minded people.
Discord marketing isn’t just about building your community; you can also meet other like-minded individuals and businesses on different Discord servers.
Finding relevant servers is easy once you know what you’re looking for. From there, you’ll be able to meet other business owners and grab opportunities for collaboration. Plus, you can expand the reach of your products and services beyond your target audience.
8. Share relevant industry content.
You can obviously use Discord to share your website articles and other updates from your industry—but it’s so much more than that. You can connect all employees on a single server and leverage their social media presence, too. They can share the articles on other Discord servers and their personal social media profiles to increase reach.
Basically, it makes your team subject-matter experts by default, and it will help you develop authority among your audience.
Related post: Here’s How to Build Trust In Your Brand
9. Post image-based content.
It’s not just about articles here; you can also post branded memes, GIFs, and screenshots to market your business.
Since Discord operates more like a chat app and is independent of any algorithm, whenever you post content on your business server—or the community server—every member will get it.
So, the more relevant and share-worthy the memes, the more interest in your business. On the other hand, if you post filler content (throwing something out there just to keep up a posting cadence), everyone will get that as well.
That’s why, on Discord, it’s key to focus on strong, relevant, and shareable content. There’s no posting for the sake of the algorithm on Discord.
10. Utilize bots and automation.
Bots and automation can be powerful tools for Discord marketing, allowing you to streamline your efforts and reach a wider audience. From automating message responses to sending targeted messages to specific users, there are many ways that bots can be used to improve your marketing efforts. Just be sure to choose a bot that aligns with your goals and audience, as using the wrong bot can have a negative impact on your Discord marketing tactics.
11. Use Discord Ads.
Discord offers its own advertising platform, allowing you to reach a targeted audience with targeted messaging. Whether you’re promoting a new product, driving traffic to your website, or simply building brand awareness, Discord Ads can be a powerful tool for reaching your target audience. Just be sure to create high-quality, targeted paid ads that align with your brand and audience, as well as monitor your results to make improvements over time.
12. Monitor activity.
Much like Google Analytics, you can aggregate your Discord marketing data daily, weekly, and even monthly—and you can even export it for further analysis.
By doing this, you can figure out your audience’s geography, engagement with channels and other members, member retention numbers, and where your server members are coming from.
Three Brands Leveraging Discord Marketing Effectively
Many companies have created their own Discord servers, allowing them to connect with their customers and promote their products or services. Here are three examples of how you can use Discord marketing for your own B2B brand:
Chipotle
One company that has successfully used Discord for marketing is Chipotle. They created a Discord group called “Chipotle Together,” which allowed fans to chat, play games, and win free food. Members of the server also had access to exclusive content and discounts. By creating a server catered toward fans, Chipotle was able to foster a sense of loyalty and engagement among its customers.
GameStop
Another example is GameStop, who created a server called “GameStop Community” for gamers to connect with each other, get updates on new releases, and participate in events. GameStop’s use of Discord marketing is a great example of how a brand can use the platform to reach a specific audience.
This is a reminder that it’s important to identify your target audience and reach out to them in a way that speaks to their interests and needs. By connecting with your customers on a platform like Discord, your B2B can build stronger relationships and drive sales.
Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records also got in on the Discord marketing action, creating “The Green Room” server where music fans could chat with their favorite artists, get exclusive access to music and merchandise, and ultimately generate a sense of exclusivity and excitement surrounding their products.
The music label serves as a prime example of how your brand can leverage the platform to generate value and exclusivity around the products or services you offer. By providing exclusive content, discounts, or other perks to customers, businesses can foster a sense of loyalty and increase sales.
Discord marketing in a nutshell
This gaming-app-turned-social-media-giant is still heavily in the gamer space, but the non-gaming user base is growing. In fact, 78% of Discord users engage in non-gaming or partial-gaming activities, branching out and using Discord for reasons beyond building their Minecraft cities or hunting down Borderlands aliens.
Discord lends itself to community management with true engagement. For this reason, the most important thing to know with Discord marketing is your audience.
Right now, Discord users are predominantly teens and younger adults, so if your core audience segments are Gen X or older, Discord may not be on their radar. However, if your core audience segments include Gen Z or young millennials, you should definitely look into how Discord marketing can help grow your brand and engage your community.
Related post: Gen Zs or Millennials? How to Uncover Your Target Audience
But Discord isn’t a professional network like LinkedIn; it’s for a casual audience, so keep that in mind. The content you share on Discord isn’t looped or hidden by algorithmic patterns, so users on your server will see everything you post—for better or for worse. This means making sure everything you post is engaging and relevant.
Discord is primarily an app for real-time communication, but it offers a lot of benefits to businesses—if they learn how to capitalize on them. Build a community, meet like-minded individuals, and provide quick customer service.Need help designing your Discord marketing strategy? Reach out.
