Frequently Asked Questions

1. What exactly is Branded Community?
 

Branded Community is the 24/7 brand-centric program that mobilizes and monetizes your user base, allowing them to endorse your brand to each other, increasing interaction and brand loyalty, while generating additional and incremental revenue for your brand.
 

2. How does i-legions achieve that?
 

We create an environment in which brand users interact with others on issues related to your brand. i-legions creates a custom suite of programs that reinforce and validate users’ choices of your brand's products and services.

3. Don't we do that already -- with our customer support service? How is i-legions different?
 

Actually, while customer support is a good thing, its main purpose is crisis control, solving users' difficulties and questions. It does nothing to generate revenue or enhance the brand’s value to users on a daily meaningful basis. i-legions pro-actively creates custom programs and venues to help your users advance their own lives and businesses.
 

4. We already have a web-based system for users. Why would we need anything else?
 

Web-based programs produce a tiny fraction of activity, for two reasons. First, they rely on the user to log on to the site, whereas i-legions contacts them on a regular basis. Second, web-centric programs rely on user to machine interaction, while i-legions programs rely on human to human interaction.

5. What kinds of programs are involved?
 

Much depends on the specifics of your brand. A Branded Community begins with a free service to which users subscribe in their own interest. That service cultivates brand involvement. After a certain time period, the members of the Branded Community realize that your brand is helping them to further their own agenda with real, tangible results: they meet new people with similar interests, network with others and purchase the product we create for them. Eventually, members invest more dollars -- and data -- into more sophisticated products and services for which they’re willing to pay. Those products and services can be anything from e-mail and web-based subscriptions to hard goods and physical inventory.

6. How many programs are involved in i-legions?
 

The number of programs is determined by the wants and needs of the users. Executed properly, the Branded Community members take ownership of the Branded Community, suggesting new products and services themselves. The more programs they suggest, the more revenue they generate.

7. Why can't we just build our own in-house program?
 

There are several reasons, but the short story is that deploying i-legions costs far less – in both time and money -- than hiring, training and trying to build a system from scratch.
 

First, our experience with Branded Community lends itself to a high degree of success.
 

Second, while you could ostensibly build a Branded Community, managing and operating the Branded Community with effective and productive results is another matter entirely. Your business is built to run the business, not a Branded Community. If you expect your present employees to create and operate a Branded Community, it will fail for the simple reason that it is not part of their daily job description, and so the Branded Community will die of neglect.
 

Third, having specialized in Branded Community for as long as we have, i-legions is able to bring a suite of proven products and services to your Branded Community without the pain of building them from scratch.
 

Fourth, even if you could amass the talent, time and skills, it would still cost you more in time and money to hire, develop and deploy an in-house program. Even longer to generate revenue of any kind.

8. It sounds expensive. How much does it cost?
 

i-legions programs are split revenue, based on paid performance. There is a  monthly maintenance fee, but the bulk of the costs can be offset through revenue sharing. The monthly fee that covers both management and technical administration. The balance of revenue is earned through a percentage of gross revenue earned by the programs.

9. How much of our time does this require?
 

None. The whole point of i-legions is to allow you to focus on your core business, which is why i-legions is designed to be turnkey in every aspect. Your participation is usually not required beyond approving proposals.

10. How do we track activity?
 

All program activity, including revenue and participation, is available to you in real time reports via a web-based control panel. You are assigned a password protected URL into which you may log at any time.

11. What are the non-revenue benefits of an i-legions Branded Community?
 

Increase Brand Loyalty & Awareness: Remember, that the main point of branding is to “turn users into evangelists.” By providing the Branded Community for their own purposes, your brand benefits as it's perceived as more than just a vendor or provider. Your brand is seen as truly lending itself to its users' growth -- just one brand aspect that no competitor can offer in such real, appreciable terms. This leads to further endorsements to like-minded prospects and the public.
 

Market Research: Surveys are well and good, but i-legions Branded Communities allow directed free exchanges in which users take ownership of the brand. When they do, they volunteer far more reliable information, to the point where they actually suggest meaningful improvements to your business that might not otherwise have occurred to a research firm.