Traditional marketing segmentation is outdated. Focus on community marketing!
"Brands have understood this well. In fact, there's a growing trend that illustrates this very well: community marketing, or tribal marketing.
The aim? Rely on a community of consumers to make your products or services shine, thanks to a dose of listening, a pinch of unifying values and a dash of influence.
Ready to exploit the full potential of tribal marketing? Here's the recipe, with advice from Olivier Amici, Head of Marketing France at Semrush.
What is tribal marketing, or community marketing?
A brief definition of community marketing
Community marketing, or tribal marketing, involves using a community to achieve marketing objectives, such as the launch of a new product, by sending them a specific message.
But what exactly is a community? In marketing, it refers mainly to individuals who come together for reasons of affinity, shared values or common interests.
☝️ In this sense, this marketing approach runs counter to traditional strategies that segment on the basis of homogeneous, fixed criteria: age, gender, geographical area, etc. Here, people come together, share common values and share common interests. Here, people come together because they feel they belong to a group, they share codes, behaviours and a vocabulary.
For example, a brand targeting a community of surfers reaches out to different age groups, genders and nationalities.
Organic VS sponsored
It is important to distinguish between two types of community marketing:
- Organic community marketing. In this case, it's good old word-of-mouth that works. The community naturally talks about a brand that has won its heart by meeting its needs or providing it with emotions. A godsend for the company, which gets publicity without spending a penny!
- Sponsored community marketing. This involves taking concrete action to :
- use the community to your advantage
- or create your own.
If your brand is not sufficiently well known, this is the approach to consider.
How is community marketing evolving?
An increasingly distrustful consumer
Community marketing has emerged in a context in which consumers are increasingly exposed to advertising: on their phones, on the Internet, on television, in the street, etc. This overabundance is giving rise to suspicion.
This over-abundance is leading to a lack of interest in, and distrust of, traditional advertising messages. So where can we turn to find out which brand to choose? To the people who look like us.
Consumers become proactive. They seek information from their friends about the products that suit them, even before the brands come to them.
The new challenges of community marketing
Where do you find your tribe?
One of the first challenges when tackling tribal marketing is that the structure of communities is not really predictable. It can be complicated to identify groups, locate them and find ways of getting in touch with them.
But the good news is that with the rise of the internet, communities are becoming virtual. Forums, groups on social networks, etc., all provide easier access to your tribe, and therefore to potential customers.
How can you talk to them without losing their trust?
Historically, what reinforces the trust of a community in a brand is the spontaneity with which members gather around it.
So if you don't have enough brand awareness for your tribe to form itself, you need to be skilful when introducing your marketing messages to them. Concentrate on the value you bring, on the consumer's interest, and listen carefully. In other words, don't navel-gaze.
Why should you switch to a community strategy?
Advantage no. 1: cost
Let's face it, money is the lifeblood of any business! And tribal marketing offers real economic advantages: since your reputation can spread thanks to word-of-mouth, positive reviews spread by your most loyal ambassadors, you don't even have to spend a fortune on your advertising.
💡 The ultimate: use the feeling of belonging to your brand and its values. Is it worth remembering how Apple managed to sell (very) expensive products by letting its community think it was different from the average person?
Advantage no. 2: acquisition
Any community strategy involves understanding the codes of your tribe. And by taking care to understand them, you become able to identify the needs of these consumers and address them in a more relevant way.
What's more, by being less intrusive, tribal marketing wins over customers who have become resistant to traditional advertising.
Benefit no. 3: customer loyalty
Once your customers have been won over, it's easier for them to stay loyal! They feel comfortable and confident in their communities, and are less likely to want to go elsewhere.
What's more, by getting to know the members of your tribe, you know how to pamper them to encourage them to stay. A real opportunity when you consider that retaining an existing customer costs 7 times less than acquiring a new one.
Advantage no. 4: the offer
It's fairly easy to get feedback from your community on your offers. In this way, you can determine the best way to develop your products or services so that they best meet their needs.
Another good point: use the ideas generated by your community to fuel your own thinking. It's a great way to innovate!
Here are a few examples of tribal marketing to inspire you
- 🏃🏻 Sport Heroes, the connected sports equipment brand, relies on events to bring its community together and motivate them. It therefore organises a large number of events enabling sportspeople to exercise together. It also sets up challenge systems to encourage practice.
- ☕ Starbucks gives its tribe a voice. Thanks to the My Starbucks Idea website, consumers share their ideas with the brand to improve products and develop a tailored offering.
- PlayStation has integrated a forum into its site. This allows gamers to exchange ideas freely on a wide range of subjects around their shared passion for video games.
How do you go about community marketing? 8 steps to get started... and perform!
Step 1: Identify your personas
First and foremost, you need to identify the type of individuals you consider to be your best representatives, those who most closely match your values. In other words, identify your personas.
But beware: in community marketing, centres of interest take precedence. So avoid segmentation criteria such as gender. Instead, focus on components such as :
- hobbies and passions
- common issues that your products/services address.
Step 2: Get to know your community
Getting to know your community means discovering :
- its culture
- its codes,
- its language.
This observation work is essential for engaging and inspiring your tribe by sending them the right messages, both in terms of content and form.
💡 O ur advice: go where your community is, for example by subscribing to groups that interest them on social networks. It's a great way to discover "their world"!
Step 3: rally around the right values
Creating a community is above all about bringing together people who share common ideas and unifying values.
So, as you will have realised, you need to identify these very special values, the ones that will drive the actions you deploy as part of your tribal marketing strategy. For example, we need to identify
- innovation,
- excellence
- integrity,
- sustainable development, etc.
Step 4: Go where your community is
Once you've identified the DNA of your community, it's easier to guess where to find it. Social networks are a good place to start. For example, you can :
- Join groups that bring together consumers with similar interests to your brand,
- create your own pages to communicate with them.
Other avenues to consider :
- the community built around your blog
- the community on review sites,
- themed events.
A word from the expert
Events are a good way of raising your profile when you're not too well known. When you grow and become a world-famous company, it becomes too expensive... even though you're talking to people who already know your product!
Online events, on the other hand, are a perfect response to demand. At Semrush, for example, we organise personalised webinars with customers, led by experts who are well known in France.
Step 5: Create an atmosphere in your community
This is where things get tricky, because once you know who your community is and where to find them, how do you actually go about engaging them?
The bad news is that there is no magic bullet. It all depends on who you are and who your target audience is. But there are a few ingredients that work every time:
- Regularly create relevant and unique content (posts, blog articles, videos, etc.). After all, how can you inspire your community if you don't talk to them?
- Share content other than your own. If your audience loves you, you're not the only one who finds favour in their eyes! By sharing what others are doing (as long as it fits in with your community's DNA), you increase the relationship of trust.
- Focus on their needs and aspirations. In other words, don't just talk about yourself and your products.
- Interact as much as possible with your community, in particular by responding to comments.
- Think multi-channel. In the internet age, your audience is on all fronts... and not just on social networks!
- Think "multi-content". Videos, blog articles, white papers, etc., vary the formats. There's only one watchword: adapt to your audience.
- Address your community using its own codes and language.
A word from the expert
To address our community, we adapt to our personas. For example, we've noticed that in terms of SEO, we're lagging behind the US. All companies want to go digital in the wake of the crisis, but they don't necessarily understand much about SEO. For these professionals who are just starting out, we show them how a tool like Semrush can meet their needs (for setting up or developing a business, finding out about competitors, etc.). We're more about teaching.
On the other hand, as soon as we start working with large groups who have a better understanding of SEO, we focus more on the product. Why use Semrush? What are our new features? What advantages do we have over other platforms?
Step 6: Bring your community home
Some companies, like Amazon and its reviews system, have understood the importance of bringing their community back to their own websites. There are several strategies for doing this:
- include testimonials on your blog posts
- integrate forums on your site (in moderation, of course),
- integrating reviews of your products or articles, etc.
💡Why not rely (discreetly) on your best customers, those you've identified as your ambassadors? For example, approach them to obtain a testimonial, in return for a commercial offer.
Step 7: Use influencers
These days, influencers are the talk of the town, promoting brands to an audience that follows them in confidence.
Influencer marketing has the advantage of increasing the visibility to your products/services among targeted personas, and helps to establish viral marketing.
💡 It's up to you to select the right influencers according to the characteristics of your community (content offered, channels used, etc.) to preserve your credibility.
A word from the expert
In B2B, and particularly in SEO, we talk more about partners than influencers. But it's important to work with them. At Semrush, for example, we rely on partners to promote the brand and get feedback, in a win-win relationship.
Step 8: surround yourself with the right profiles
Community manager or not community manager? That is the question! If you can afford it, hiring this type of profile is a good way of developing your tribal marketing strategy. A good CM will be able to animate all your virtual communities and promote your products and services on the web.
As a general rule, bear in mind that all of a company's departments contribute to spreading its brand image, from marketing to support to sales.
It's up to you to make the most of their skills and all the levers mentioned above to win over your target audience.
Article translated from French