I listened today to a founder discuss his marketing strategy. He has an established company that’s doing over $10 million in annual revenue—so, not a start-up. His strategy involves growing the company’s online community—he wants current customers, prospective customers, employees, and anyone else passionate about his space to participate.

I’m a fan of online communities and believe community-led growth will become an effective long-term growth strategy for companies. My conversation today is another data point that supports this belief.

Digital communities have been around for quite some time, but I think we’ll see them go from nice to have to must have for growing companies. I’m not sure how long this will take to play out, but I’ll be following the evolution closely.