In this episode of Demand Gen U, Jason Widup, VP of Marketing at Metadata, and Katie Ray, Head of Community at Metadata, explore how to build a thriving B2B community from scratch.

Episode Summary

The discussion covers the initial planning process, determining what type of community to build, and identifying the priorities that make a community succeed long-term.

Key Takeaways

1. Build for the Right Reasons

Communities should prioritize delivering value to members rather than focusing solely on revenue generation. Leadership should genuinely believe they can add value before investing in community-building efforts.

2. Center Decisions Around Members

Community managers must prioritize member needs over business KPIs and analytics. Regular feedback and polling help identify what community members actually want rather than what the business assumes is valuable.

3. Communities Can Become Self-Sustaining

While revenue and growth are byproducts rather than primary goals, successful communities eventually generate returns. A thriving community may eventually offset operational costs through sales and growth generated within it.

How to use this resource in evaluation

Use Building a Successful B2B Community as a working prompt for your buying committee, not as a standalone takeaway. The useful question is how the idea turns into governed campaign execution: which accounts are included, which contacts are reachable, which channels carry the message, which budget controls apply, and how results are reviewed after launch.

Bring the resource into a demo or internal planning session and ask each owner to inspect a different layer. Demand generation should review the audience and offer logic. RevOps should inspect CRM, marketing automation, and reporting flow. Sales should confirm whether the campaign creates context they can act on. Finance should ask how spend, conversion quality, opportunity creation, and pipeline are connected before budget expands.

Before treating this as complete, compare the recommendation against one current campaign. Check the audience source, channel fit, exclusion logic, approval owner, expected conversion path, and the report your revenue team will use after launch. That keeps the resource tied to an inspectable operating workflow.

  • Audience fit: define the exact account, contact, customer, or intent segment this idea should reach.
  • Campaign controls: confirm approvals, exclusions, budget limits, creative variants, and launch readiness before spend starts.
  • Measurement path: decide which leading indicators matter early and which pipeline outcomes matter before scaling.
  • Next action: turn the concept into one reviewed campaign object, one owner, and one follow-up date.

The strongest walkthrough should make the resource concrete: a campaign plan, visible guardrails, a revenue-review owner, and a reporting path that a revenue team can inspect without relying on native ad-platform summaries alone.