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Catering to your Tribe’s Needs (a.k.a. Customer Needs)
By Luis Paez | June 17, 2009
You may have heard of Seth Godin’s 1998 book called Tribes: We need you to lead us, as it’s slightly popular being the #1 bestselling book in Amazon’s Psychology > Leadership category, and #7 in the Business > Leadership category. It seeks to describe the changing nature of our social relationships in business and marketing. In a sense you can consider the increasing “niche” groups these “tribes”. The ease with which information is shared means you can create a tribe of cell-phone enthusiasts – or more appropriately – a new product/service.
An interesting thought that is an offshoot of this theme is that our job as marketing professionals and brands, is not necessarily to give people a product, but it’s to facilitate connections and communication between them. For a synopsis of this idea, view this video, published by a Norwegian marketing agency.
At QuantumDigital, we’ve been enabling our clients to support the links between their customers for years. For example, a real estate Just Listed card does just exactly that – it enables a real estate agent to send a notice to their contacts about a recent listing from one particular client. Contacts get updated about their favorite agent and have an opportunity to pass around the card to their friends. It’s about connecting your network to one another. The more an agent helps connect people, the more recognition and word of mouth referrals come their way.
On a different level, however, this “Tribes” concept challenges us to think differently about our brands, too. Is it postulating that the strongest brands in the future will create a distinct identity for their “tribes”? If so, then will real estate companies that characterize themselves as “eco-friendly” corner the market on people who identify themselves as environmentalists? In retail, will companies like Wild Oats / Henry’s Markets corner the market on those who are both health-focused & socially-conscious? That’s the suggestion being made, as the more competing brands enter an industry.
If you’ve got an unclear identity – or rather, if your customers don’t share an obvious clear, unique identity – then more work is required to use Pareto’s principle to identify the few that produce 80% of your revenues. Ask them who they think you are, and perhaps you can pare down the image to a pair of keywords. The more questioning, the better because as a leader, your tribe needs you.