Target Marketing vs. Tribal Marketing

What is the income range of snowboarders?

What is the age range of people who do yoga?

What is the age and income range of Carolina Panthers football fans?

What is the age and income range of Republicans?

What are the beliefs and opinions of a person who is 30 years old?

What the hell is a Millennial?

Your intellect believes those questions have answers but your heart knows the answers would be ridiculous. Age and income are not tribal markers. They are false categories that appeal only to the small-minded person within each of us that clings to stereotypes.

Let go of the stereotypes and embrace a more accurate picture.

Successful advertising talks to the customer in the language of the customer about what matters to the customer.

Hills and snow and a love of adrenaline are what snowboarders have in common.

Yoga is what binds Yoga people.

A team unites Carolina Panthers fans.

Strands of belief unite a political party.

What matters to your customer has little to do with the year they were born or the amount of money they make. What matters are the desires and beliefs and values of their tribe.

Marketing isn’t about targeting an individual. Marketing is about targeting a group.

The behavior of an individual can vary widely from moment to moment. But when you observe the behavior of a self-selected group you’ll see predictable patterns emerge. This is true whether you’re watching snowboarders or yoga practitioners or Republicans but it goes horribly wrong when you categorize by age group or income.

Millennials aren’t a tribe. They are a collection of tribes.

We unconsciously join a tribe when we see and feel and think as they do on a particular subject. Tribal marketing simply reflects back to a tribe their own vision and emotion and logic.

Brilliant ads are built on this concept.

I mentioned snowboarding and yoga in my opening statements because Chip Wilson made millions of dollars by selling specialized clothing to the snowboarding tribe, then switched to the yoga tribe in 1998 (Lululemon) and started making billions. Forbes currently ranks him in the Top 1000 richest people on earth.

Chip Wilson understands Tribal Marketing. It is a happy affirmation of identity and purpose.

Yoga people span the spectrum of age and ethnicity and income. Their education, politics and taste in music are similar to the unfiltered public.

But they all agree on Yoga. And that’s all you need to know.

Ryan Deiss of DigitalMarketer.com is a cognoscenti of Wizard Academy whose advice is valued by followers worldwide. Ryan says, “Identify a tribe. Engage the tribe. Market to the tribe.”

Rolex makes watches for tribes.

The Submariner is the watch for the scuba tribe.

The Daytona is the watch for the car-guy tribe.

The Yacht Master is the watch for the boating tribe.

The Air King is the watch for the airplane tribe.

The Milgauss is the watch for the technical tribe.

The Explorer is the watch for the outdoor tribe.

The President is the watch for the business tribe.

Marketing to tribes has worked out pretty well for Rolex, don’t you think?

A tribe isn’t targeted through carefully selected media but through carefully selected words. If your product was designed with a tribe in mind and your ads are written with that tribe in mind, you are on your way to joyous success.

Forget targeting through demographically-correct media.

Begin targeting through tribally-correct ad copy.

Learn the language of the tribe.

When you’ve learned to see and feel and think as the tribe does, your ads will start working wonders.

Enough said.

Roy H. Williams