Welcome to the Tribe: A Beginner's Guide to Tribal Marketing

The key is to market to a group of individuals are bound by their common interests, beliefs, goals, etc. Tribal marketing goes beyond audience demographics.

Notice: This article is taken from parts of my upcoming book A Beginner's guide to Tribal Marketing. Available soon on Amazon, Google and all other platforms where books are sold.

Welcome to the tribe...

I have always viewed the word as a dirty word. The word "Tribe". To me, this is a word that describes how folks behave when they suspend all concepts of independent thinking.

When folks start to act like a cult. The “follow the leader” no matter what mentality. Tribal thinking has caused more pain in the world than one can imagine.

In certain parts of Africa, The Middle East and around the world, tribal divisions are and have always been the reason, folks, oftentimes from the same family tree resort to acts of violence in an attempt to settle scores.

This is the reason (tribal behavior) we often fail to understand other people's differences in opinion, lifestyle, life choices, etc. The reason we cannot help but demonize those we consider “not one of us”.

In my opinion, we are seldom at our best when we resort to this kind of primitive behavior.

That being said

In this article, I will focus on the more positive aspects of tribal behavior and how you, as a marketer and businessperson, can take advantage of some of the more predictable aspects of human behavior in the context of folks who share common interests and beliefs regardless of their varying demographics.

For us entrepreneurs, these folks are also a tribe, and selling to them based on what we know they like, dislike, and believe in is what we call Tribal marketing.

Marketing ourselves, our products, our services, and so on to folks based on what we know they are into.

Cards on the table

I think that the idea of marketing to tribes is nothing new. People do it all the time without actually thinking about it. Look, I will prove it to you.

Let me ask you a question. During this time of the year when you go shopping for close family and friends, do you just buy one item in bulk to wrap individually for the ones you love, or do you take the time to visit numerous online and offline shopping destination looking for and sometimes willing to pay top dollar to get just the perfect gift for each person on your list?

Now truth be told, if you chose option #1 then you suck. I just thought you should know that. But I am sure many of us take the time to get presents our folks will love. The kind of gifts they will cherish for many years to come.

This brings me to my main point. How do we know uncle Benny will love this box set of the show 24, starring Kiefer Sutherland, all one thousand seasons? Because, he is a huge fan of the Kief, He loves conspiracy stuff – he is the kind of guy who watches Ancient Aliens on the history channel, and thinks Alex Jones is an investigative journalist and he may have mentioned that he only saw the last few seasons of the show before it went off the air.

See, you know that because you know your uncle, or you have at least had enough conversations with him to piece together what you think he might enjoy.

Christmas day finally rolls around, you give your uncle his gift and guess what? He loves it. It's his idea of “The perfect gift”.

Good Job you!

This is Tribal Marketing

This is essentially what Tribal Marketing is all about. You know what folks you know like because you know them.

The idea behind Tribal marketing is to get to know your audience. I mean really know them. Go beyond the run-of-the-mill crap and really get to know what makes them tick, what types of shows they like, dislike, and so on.

Look past your audience as it relates to whatever you are trying to sell them. Get to know them on an individual basis. Once you embark on this challenge and you start to make some progress, you will realize that they, your prospective customer share a lot in common with other folks.

Not just their age, race, income level, etc. Nope! Again, that stuff is the everyday stuff. I am talking about things that bind folks together. Folks that you would have never thought had anything in common.

Once you start to piece together a fine tapestry or map of what folks like and dislike and the other folks around the world who share similar interests and tastes, you will have started to uncover a tribe(s).

You will soon learn, with the help of various tools available these days, that they are even more likely to like a particular service, product, cause, etc.