Let’s talk Tribes
By Burn •
We’re fans here at Burn. Fans of lots of different things; new technology, dogs, a good cup of coffee. But mostly we’re fans of customer-first thinking. We believe that by adopting this approach we can help our clients increase brand love, improve engagement across all channels and encourage advocacy. And one of the ways we approach customer-first thinking is via something else of which we are huge fans; Tribes.
“A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.”
― Seth Godin, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
Now Tribes are nothing new, but we think Godin (whom we’re fans of too!) is really onto something. There is no point in communicating with your customers about something they have no interest in – they won’t engage. As consumers, we know this. Don’t talk to me about cats when I’m interested in dogs (see our flag nailed to the mast above). But if we spend time to identify what it is the customer is really passionate about, and on which channels they like to converse, we are more likely to develop an engaging, two-way dialogue with them – maybe on a 1:1 level. And bang! You’ve got the start of a powerful relationship.
The concept of Tribes formed a major part of a recent Customer Communication vision we created for a brand. The more we looked into it, the more it made sense. Find out everything you can about your customer; their passions, their favourite channels, their demographics, their behaviours, their buying habits, their engagement levels and isolate the Tribes to which they belong – and there may be more than one – then find a way to build that relationship through relevant communications. You’re into travel? We’ve got a point of view on that, and we can add some value too! Win-win.
Yes, this level of customer knowledge requires investment but putting the customer first creates brand love and we all know that building strong brands with a loyal fan base creates long term value.
