How to Launch a Community Program (or Pilot One First)

# Theme: Community Building & DevRel

# Theme: GTM Strategy & Trends

# Format: Best Practices & Playbooks

# Challenge: Early Growth

# Stage: Community Size <100

Learn how to launch a community program with a pilot that reduces risk, engages members, and proves business value before scaling.

October 13, 2025 · Last updated on November 7, 2025

Joshua Zerkel

Starting a community often feels bigger than it really needs to be. Leaders picture a bustling forum or a highly produced event series, and suddenly the task seems impossible to do well with the time and resources available. The good news is that communities don’t need to begin at full scale. Most thriving programs started as pilots — small, focused experiments that helped teams learn what works, test ideas, and build confidence before expanding. A pilot lets you reduce risk, align internal stakeholders, and deliver value to members without overcommitting.

Define the “why” before the “what”

A community should never exist just for the sake of it. The strongest programs are anchored in a clear purpose that balances business and member needs. Without this clarity, you’ll struggle to prioritize activities and prove impact.

Business clarity: Decide what problem you want the community to help solve. This could be reducing support volume, driving product adoption, improving customer retention, or amplifying advocacy. Tying community outcomes directly to business goals ensures leadership support and resources.

Member clarity: Define what problem you’re solving for members. Are they looking for faster answers, deeper product knowledge, or professional networking? The community has to be worth their time, otherwise participation will drop off quickly.

The bridge: Write down how the business and member needs connect. For example, if members want peer support and the business wants fewer tickets, a community Q&A forum satisfies both.

When your “why” is strong, everything else — content, engagement, technology — has a clear rationale.

Do the research

Assumptions kill early community pilots. The only way to know what will resonate is to ask. This is as much about listening to your internal teams as it is about understanding customers.

Inside the business: Talk to marketing, product, support, and customer success leaders. Ask what they hope a community could achieve and what success metrics matter most. This helps you spot areas of alignment and potential champions inside the organization.

With customers or prospects: Interview a small sample to learn how they currently share information and where they get stuck. Ask open questions like, “What would make a community worth your time?” or “How do you prefer to connect with peers?” Their answers will highlight the most motivating use cases.

Capture stories: Beyond numbers, collect memorable quotes and anecdotes. Later, these become powerful evidence when you’re making the case for scaling the program.

This research keeps you from building in a vacuum and gives you a roadmap based on real-world input.

Design a pilot, not a full program

A pilot works best when it is intentionally narrow. Think of it as a pop-up rather than a full city. By limiting scope, you make it easier to measure results, adjust quickly, and avoid overwhelming yourself or your members.

Start with one audience: Focus on a segment that has both need and energy, such as top advocates, power users, or early adopters.

Pick one or two core activities: Maybe it’s a monthly peer-learning call, a discussion thread around best practices, or a test group for new features. Avoid the temptation to do everything at once.

Write a success hypothesis: Frame your test around a simple statement like, “If we create a peer-learning series, new customers will activate faster and reduce their reliance on support.” This gives you something concrete to measure against.

The goal isn’t perfection. It’s proving whether your assumptions about value are correct.

Start with a subset of engagement opportunities

One of the biggest challenges in early community building is the temptation to launch everything at once. Leaders often feel pressure to offer forums, events, subgroups, resource libraries, and advocacy programs from day one. The result is that energy gets spread too thin, members are unsure where to focus, and the team quickly feels overextended.

A more effective approach is to treat the pilot as a chance to test a smaller set of engagement opportunities. By narrowing your focus, you create clearer paths for members to get involved and give yourself a manageable way to measure what’s working.

Limit the scope. Instead of launching every possible feature, select just a few. Many teams begin with events, a forum for Q&A, and a resource library.

Test and learn. Pay close attention to how members use these activities and what feedback they share.

Expand deliberately. Once you have evidence of engagement and impact, add new opportunities like subgroups, ambassador programs, or specialized events.

If you’re using Gradual, this modular approach is built into the platform. You can activate only the components you need for your pilot, see what resonates, and then layer on more functionality as demand grows. By avoiding the urge to do everything at once, you give your community space to grow in a sustainable way that matches both member needs and organizational goals.

Recruit and onboard your first members

Who you invite first will shape the culture of your community. A small group of enthusiastic participants can spark the right tone and momentum.

Select intentionally: Focus on those who already engage with your product, share knowledge, or have asked for a community.

Make it personal: Don’t just drop them into a space. Personally invite them, explain why they were chosen, and thank them for being early participants.

Set expectations: Share what they can expect from the experience and how they can contribute. Offer a welcome guide, kickoff call, or curated introductions to help them feel connected.

Think of onboarding as stage-setting. If the first experience feels warm and purposeful, members are more likely to stay engaged.

Run the pilot like an experiment

Pilots are about learning, not just activity. Treat your launch as a test, and measure both quantitative and qualitative results.

Track participation: Look at sign-ups, log-ins, event attendance, or content contributions.

Measure impact: Connect the dots to business outcomes, such as fewer tickets, higher product adoption, or faster onboarding.

Gather feedback: Use surveys or short conversations to learn what members value most and what could be improved.

Look for organic energy: Pay attention to unprompted actions, like members helping each other or starting their own discussions. These are signals of true community potential.

What matters most at this stage is whether the early signs show value, not whether you’ve achieved scale.

Report and Refine

A pilot is only as useful as the story you can tell about it. Share your results with stakeholders in a way that highlights both numbers and member experiences.

Show what worked and what didn’t: Be transparent about areas of improvement. This builds credibility.

Use stories and quotes: A simple testimonial like “I solved my problem in minutes in the community” can resonate more than a chart.

Connect to business goals: Translate outcomes into language stakeholders care about — reduced tickets, faster adoption, higher retention.

Framing the pilot as a learning process, not a final product, makes it easier to secure support for the next phase.

Plan for Growth

If the pilot demonstrates clear value, you’ll be ready to expand deliberately. Scaling too fast can dilute energy, so let the results guide your next move.

Expand to new segments: Once the model works for one group, introduce others gradually.

Add new engagement formats: Bring in events, subgroups, or ambassador programs as your capacity grows.

Secure resources: Use your pilot results to make the case for more budget, staff, or technology.

Communities grow best when they scale in alignment with member demand and organizational support, not simply because the team feels pressure to “go big.”

Launching a community through a pilot approach is a practical, low-risk way to prove value and build momentum. By starting with purpose, grounding your design in research, and focusing on a small, intentional group, you create the conditions for something that can expand authentically over time.

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