On any list of recommended Marketing books, there always seems to be a space for Seth Godin’s, “This is Marketing - You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to Be Seen.” His book is considered a cornerstone for the development of a marketing mindset. What resonates about his approach is the idea of successful marketing being the search for, and service to “your tribe.”
Who is your tribe you may ask?
Well, that is the exact question that Seth Godin thinks needs to be answered for your marketing to be a success. Instead, of using salesy marketing pitches to engage with all people, it's a matter of getting the right people emotionally engaged with your product. You should think carefully about the following:
Who would your product best serve?
Who has a problem that you can solve?
Who has a need to be met that you can provide a solution for?
These people constitute your “tribe,” and your marketing should be aimed at building a relationship with them. If you can build a relationship of trust and recognition with a core group, your activities will have far more added value for your business than if you tried to market yourself to the world as a whole.
So what are some specific ways that finding your “tribe” can help you be successful in marketing?
It helps you identify and understand Your Niche
Knowing your tribe helps you find a niche where your business can belong and thrive. Look at the product you have and think about who would be most drawn to it. Chances are you can easily identify some core characteristics that define this group. Anything from age, gender, or lifestyle, to the recognition of special interests, can be used to help you segment your audience. And once you’ve found this group it is easier to carve out a specific space where you can address their needs. Think of this action as finding the community you belong to.
Once you know where your people are it becomes much easier for you to decide how to reach them. It increases the likelihood of you being able to build a relationship with them and for them, in turn, to recognize and utilize your business or product.
It helps you build a tighter and more structured marketing plan
This benefits you because it helps you target your marketing activities in a more strategic way. Knowing who you want your product to serve will help you clearly define what it is you need to be doing. It helps you to figure out where on social media your tribe would most likely be found. Would it be on professional connection platforms like LinkedIn, for example? Or on more social platforms like Facebook or Instagram? It could tell you what community sites or local platforms you should be active on, or where you would be best served by ad placements. Knowing the characteristics of your tribe, therefore, helps you to define the types of marketing activities that you need to engage in. And knowing this can not only save you time but also money.
It helps you to market yourself in a more meaningful way
Finding your tribe helps you to understand how you can build an emotional connection to your product. People want products that make them feel, and your business is more memorable to someone when they can connect it to an emotional experience. When you first created your product or opened your business, you likely had an idea of the change you wanted it to make. And quite often this comes from a place where you were unfulfilled by other available offerings.
If you find a group of people who have had the same experience as you - these are the people who are most likely to understand why you created your product, and who are most likely to positively respond to it. You will connect with them as their pain points are your pain points, and you can build an empathetic bond that will engage them in a more meaningful way than other businesses could. This connection will make them far more likely to use your product or return to your business again and again.
It enables continued growth and change
An added benefit of knowing your tribe is that you can also continually learn from them. At the core of a good marketing plan is continued adaptation. As you interact with customers you can continually learn what it is that they need, love or don’t love about your offerings, what they wish you offered and, through observation of their habits, see needs they haven’t identified that you could meet. You can alter your products to more closely fit the needs of the community and change your marketing strategy to help these products connect. This only comes from having a group with whom to have a dialogue. And it gives you the opportunity to use this feedback loop as a source of innovation and adaptation. In this way, being engaged with your tribe can stave off stagnation, which is so often the enemy of growth.
Let us know If you would like our help in identifying and connecting with your tribe.
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