The Community-Led GTM Flywheel: How to Put Community at the Center of Growth

# Theme: GTM Strategy & Trends

# Theme: Community Building & DevRel

# Format: Best Practices & Playbooks

# Challenge: Cross-Functional Alignment

# Role: Marketing/Growth

How shared learning, co-creation, and advocacy turn community into the engine of modern go-to-market strategy.

November 3, 2025 · Last updated on November 8, 2025

Joshua Zerkel

For many companies, go-to-market still runs as a set of disconnected functions. Marketing launches campaigns, sales pursues leads, product ships features, and customer success works to keep accounts happy. Each team adds value, but without shared context or feedback, the system slows down.

Community changes this dynamic. When it sits at the center of GTM, it acts as connective tissue, a space where customer needs, peer stories, and cross-functional insights come together. Over time, this creates a flywheel effect: the more teams engage with community, the more useful it becomes to every part of GTM.

Listening as the first motion

Community is where customers speak most freely. It’s the earliest place to spot patterns, questions, and needs that may not surface through traditional feedback channels. By listening closely, GTM teams can move faster and respond more precisely to what matters most.

At HubSpot, for example, teams monitor recurring topics across community forums. When similar questions appear again and again, they use that information to adjust onboarding materials, inform new content, and strengthen messaging. Sales teams rely on the same data to align language and better anticipate customer objections.

Listening turns raw conversations into operational insight.

Track and tag recurring questions or themes within your community.

Share key insights across product, marketing, and sales teams.

Compare community patterns with support tickets or win/loss data.

Reuse authentic customer language in messaging for greater clarity and trust.

Listening isn’t passive. It’s how GTM teams align around real customer understanding and stay ahead of shifting needs.

Building resilience through co-creation

Strong GTM strategies rarely emerge in isolation. The most resilient companies build with their communities, not just for them. Atlassian, for instance, regularly tests new ideas with small groups of community members before launching campaigns widely. This practice reduces risk, speeds iteration, and signals that member input is truly valued.

Co-creation turns customers into collaborators. It transforms feedback from a post-launch task into a source of ongoing validation. When done consistently, it builds trust and efficiency across teams.

To bring this practice to life:

Invite a small, trusted group of members to preview GTM ideas.

Test campaign concepts, positioning, or content before rollout.

Close the loop by sharing how feedback influenced the final result.

Treat co-creation as a continuous rhythm that evolves with your strategy.

By opening the process, teams gain faster insights and communities feel invested in outcomes that reflect their voice.

Turning customers into storytellers

Customers are often the best messengers of your value. When people share how they use a product or solve a challenge, it adds authenticity that no marketing team can replicate.

Notion’s approach illustrates this beautifully. The company curates user-created templates, highlights them publicly, and integrates them into its own marketing ecosystem. These contributions power real stories that resonate with new customers while giving contributors visibility and recognition.

To help customer stories thrive:

Surface standout community-created content in newsletters, blogs, and onboarding.

Turn real member experiences into enablement or demand-gen materials.

Blend brand and member content to create a shared library of voices.

Always credit contributors to strengthen authenticity and encourage more participation.

When customers see their peers featured and celebrated, they understand that the brand values their work. The result is an organic storytelling engine that strengthens trust and connection.

Scaling advocacy

Advocacy grows naturally from a healthy community. When people feel heard, supported, and recognized, they want to share that experience. Salesforce’s Trailblazer program captures this spirit by elevating advocates and integrating their stories into campaigns, events, and sales conversations. The result is credibility that marketing alone could never achieve.

Encouraging advocacy means creating space for recognition and inspiration.

Celebrate contributors publicly in community channels and campaigns.

Highlight advocates in webinars, case studies, and events.

Use peer stories as proof points across the customer journey.

Position advocacy as a natural extension of participation, not a reward program.

As advocacy grows, it adds energy back into the system, fueling more engagement, more stories, and more insight.

Why this flywheel works

Each motion strengthens the next:

Listening fuels co-creation.

Co-creation generates stories worth sharing.

Sharing elevates advocates.

Advocacy drives new engagement and listening.

Unlike traditional campaigns that fade once they end, a community-led GTM flywheel builds momentum. Every part of the organization benefits: marketing gains clarity, product gains validation, and sales gains credibility.

Community isn’t an add-on for support or marketing. It’s the operating system that keeps GTM connected, credible, and continually learning.

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