The tribal marketing playbook
Seven questions that sum up what tribal marketing is, and why it is about serving tribes rather than leading them.
By Elia Mörling
This is a short guide to the ideas behind Tribaling, organised as the questions they answer.
1. What is tribal marketing about?
Tribal marketing is not about leading tribes but serving them. It is often less about building a tribe of your own than about reaching out to the ones that already exist. Many brands try to build relationships with customers directly. Tribal marketing works indirectly, by strengthening the bonds between people. It is customer-centric because it is less about you and more about helping people do what they want.
2. Why does it suit startups?
Tribal marketing is about exchange and sharing, not extraction. A young company does not have the budget to shout. It can partner with tribes that share its values, beliefs and experiences, and grow with them.
3. How do you become relevant instead of loud?
Spreading a message from the top down can feel like success. It is not yet momentum. Momentum comes when people pass your ideas on to each other because the ideas help them connect.
4. What do our tribes share, so that we can share it too?
Tribes are the lens people use to judge what you share. When someone passes on your story, they pass it to people with the same interests, and the tribe's culture decides its value. The Tribal Map helps you see that culture: artefacts, spaces, influencers, stories, language and experiences around a core of values and meaning.
5. Who has influence inside our tribes, and how?
The 7Cs of Tribal Influence describe seven roles, from the chieftain the tribe looks up to, to the crone who teaches newcomers. They help you see an audience as a network of people with a lot in common, not as a list of individuals.
6. Why do curators matter?
Curators lead from the bottom up and peer to peer. As members of the tribe they will always be more native and relevant than an outsider. They are valued not only for their insider skills, but for keeping the culture alive.
7. Where do our tribes gather?
Everyone belongs to several tribes and moves between them easily, and each tribe has its own places. Read more in Where do your tribes gather?
Today
These ideas now run the atlas of synthetic tribes: source-backed profiles of real consumer tribes that you can question, test ideas against and seat in a focus group.