The Three Community Roles Model
Choose whether community is the product, drives it, or amplifies go-to-market
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 99%
The Three Community Roles Model distinguishes three structural uses of community. First, community can be intrinsic to the product, as in a social network where interaction is the core experience. Second, community can directly drive a separate product because users naturally share templates, practices, use cases, or recommendations around it. Third, community can sit adjacent to the product and amplify a specific go-to-market stage through education, onboarding, support deflection, advocacy, or market influence. Teams classify their situation before selecting tactics, then give the community explicit outcomes, resources, and measurements suited to that role. The model prevents a support community from being judged as a core acquisition loop or a truly social product from treating community as a peripheral marketing channel.
Origin
Extracted from Marketing Against The Grain as Kieran Flanagan summarized three versions of product, community, and go-to-market fit.
Core principles
- 01Community needs a clearly assigned structural role
- 02Community can be intrinsic, product-driving, or amplifying
- 03Each role requires different outcomes and operations
- 04Community strategy must fit both product and go-to-market
- 05Tangential communities should not inherit core-product expectations
How to run it
- 1
Test for Intrinsic Community
Ask whether member interaction constitutes the product's central value and whether the product fails without an active network. If so, classify community as the product.
Pro tip Look at the user's primary job rather than the company's category label.
Watch out Adding comments or sharing does not automatically make community intrinsic.
- 2
Test for Community-Driven Product Value
Determine whether peer sharing, recommendations, templates, education, or varied use cases materially drive adoption and product success even though the product remains usable alone.
Pro tip Trace whether community output repeatedly leads users into deeper product use.
Watch out Correlation between active fans and adoption does not prove a causal driver.
- 3
Test for Go-to-Market Amplification
Identify whether community supports a discrete funnel outcome such as onboarding, education, support, advocacy, or conversion. Treat this as an adjacent role.
Pro tip Name the exact funnel stage and behavior being amplified.
Watch out Do not disguise an unbounded acquisition ambition as amplification.
- 4
Choose the Primary Role
Select the role that best describes the dominant mechanism today. Secondary benefits may exist, but one role should govern strategy and resourcing.
Pro tip Use evidence from user behavior and operating cost to resolve ambiguity.
Watch out Claiming all three roles produces diffuse goals and contradictory metrics.
- 5
Define Role-Specific Outcomes
For intrinsic communities, measure network health and value exchange; for community-driven products, measure influence on product behavior; for amplifiers, measure the selected funnel outcome.
Pro tip Pair business metrics with member-value metrics.
Watch out Using membership totals as the universal success metric obscures the mechanism.
- 6
Align the Operating Model
Assign product, community, marketing, support, and growth ownership according to the chosen role. Revisit the classification as the company matures.
Pro tip Intrinsic community requires close product ownership, while amplifiers may sit nearer customer success or marketing.
Watch out An organizational chart that contradicts the structural role creates product and go-to-market disconnects.
In the wild
In Clubhouse or Twitter, user interaction and the social graph are intrinsic to the experience. Community behavior is therefore part of product value, acquisition, and retention rather than a separate marketing venue.
→ Community strategy remains tightly integrated with core product decisions.
Notion remains a usable low-touch product, but its many use cases encourage people to share templates and ways of working. Those exchanges help other users discover and adopt the product.
→ Community directly drives product growth without literally being the product.
A B2B software company operates an adjacent community to educate free users, improve onboarding, and let customers help one another. It does not expect the community to replace its primary acquisition channels.
→ The community receives clear supporting outcomes and realistic expectations.
Common mistakes
Giving Community Every Job
A community tasked simultaneously with acquisition, onboarding, support, retention, and revenue lacks a clear mechanism and accountable outcome.
Confusing Driver With Product
A community can materially drive a product without being the product's core user experience.
Judging Amplification as Acquisition
An adjacent education or support community should not be evaluated as though it independently creates customers at scale.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for leaders operationalizing community after deciding that it has a legitimate place in the business.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal for organizations that have not yet established real member-to-member interaction.
From the transcript
“There's something that is intrinsically linked to the product, which is like Clubhouse. Community is intrinsically linked to the product or Twitter or all these…”
“Then you have something where community is a core driver of the product because the way you've set your product up, like Notion is a…”
“and then you have the kind of community that amplifies your go-to-market”
From the episode
Community-Led Growth vs. Product-Led Growth with Anu Atluru
Anu Atluru