As GTM strategies shift, Apollo.io has found a steady approach to stay ahead: through community. 

At CMX Global, Dani Hao, Sr. Manager of Community & Customer Marketing, shared how Apollo.io integrates community into every part of their GTM strategy. The community serves as a flywheel, driving growth across all departments, from accelerating product feedback to fueling the sales pipeline. The result? A GTM strategy built to last.

The session was packed with insights, but we didn’t get to every question. So, we’ve gathered them here, with Dani sharing her thoughts!

1. Which platform do you host your community and community events on?

For our community, we host it on Slack and our community events via Lu.ma. We use the lu.ma widget to host community events on our landing page here. Additionally, we’ve built a form for folks to join the community via HubSpot, sending them through a welcome sequence via email and Slack when they first join. 

2. Do you have any recommendations for attracting or engaging community members who are senior employees or VIPs?

Executives are short on time and care about like-minded people and in-person experiences. We’ve found a lot of success with executive dinners and invite-only events for exclusivity. It helps to name-drop a co-host or community advocate with a similar title to attract new ones to participate. 

We’ve also experimented with more intimate roundtables focused on very specific topics that pertain to this segment. In these, we have people on the product & leadership teams who offer them a forum to be heard.

3. When creating win-win offers for the community and the organization, how do you ensure the value exchange remains equitable? How can community leaders avoid the perception that they’re prioritizing business goals over members' needs?

My personal philosophy is a 3:1 split. For every request we make of our members, we need to ensure we give that value back threefold. 

As community managers, it’s our job to protect the interest and integrity of our community. From a process standpoint, this means we developed an intake workflow when teams want to engage with the community. We make our best judgment on how this gets conveyed and maintain accountability among internal members for incentivizing the members afterward. 

As I mentioned in my session, the key here is to align the OKRs from business stakeholders alongside what will benefit the member and scope out the priorities based on effort. 

4. As community-driven approaches drive product advocacy and growth, how do you prevent the community from becoming overly focused on promoting the product and instead maintain a space where members feel supported and heard?

Apollo’s community is in a unique space because it was built on a foundation of superfans. Our product started with a PLG model, the product philosophy of making outbound sales accessible to all (starting with our free version) makes our community naturally an Apollo-focused community. 

That being said, for other communities I’ve worked with in my career, it boils down to understanding what members want. They are essentially joining your community because they are hoping to learn or get access to something, whether it is:

• Networking with like-minded people.  
• Wanting to solve problems about XYZ topics.  
• Wanting to learn about how other customers use your product or solution.  

Building a community is very similar to building a product. You need to have a clear ICP (in this case ideal community persona), features (programmatic offerings), and a differentiator (why is your community different from the others in the space). 

Tactically, sending out pulse surveys every quarter on what to stop, start, and continue, and being comfortable with sunsetting programs allows you to make adaptations to programming, alongside being ok with having chats with community members to gather their opinions.

Rewind the Session! 

Catch up on Dani Hao’s CMX Global session, “Spin the Flywheel: How Community Accelerates GTM,” and discover how Apollo.io integrates community into every aspect of growth.

More Insights from CMX Global

Want more insights on community-driven growth? Explore other CMX Global sessions here.