How To Build a Tribe of Extremely Loyal Customers

Brandon Welch 0:00
It could be giving them discounts, free access to your events, content that only they will see, announcements and special news that they’ll see first Q and A’s, meet and greets, after hours, events, anything like that. But you’re going, you’re formalizing and saying, Hey, would you like to be instead of just being a customer a transaction today, would you like to be part of our tribe? Yeah.

Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m your host, Brandon Welch, and my co host, who has returned I’m back, is Caleb Agee, hey. What did the chiropractors say to his return patient, I don’t know. Welcome back. This is the place where we answer real life marketing questions to help you eliminate waste and advertising, grow your business and achieve the big dream. And this is a big topic today, so I’m gonna go ahead and turn it right back over yes and ask, what are our big dreamers up to this week?

Caleb Agee 0:59
Okay, so we have a question that came from a very close friend of ours, and it’s a great, great question, what we’re going to do? We’re gonna do a little backwards today, so we’re going to dig in a little bit into the concept that we think applies to most businesses, if they want it to right.

Brandon Welch 1:19
The question at the end is going to tie all this together. That’s an awesome question. Button it up. So

Caleb Agee 1:25
today is all about tribal marketing. That was the teaser tribal marketing. And the I mean, a deeper question would be, how do you create and market to a tribe?

Brandon Welch 1:38
You know, most people are probably thinking, What the heck is that? Yeah, why do I need it? And this is normally the place I would insert a second pun, yeah, and I was going to do a pun about indigenous people today that, but seems sketchy. I had reservations. So, so you’re asking, What in the heck is a try? We’re not talking about that kind of a try. Why do I care about a tribe? And my only question, before we get any further, is actually five questions. It’s my only five questions. Only, would you like to would you like people to buy from you simply because you are you? Would you like people to tune out your competitors instantly? Would you like people to know they’ll be buying something from you this year, next year, and every year that you plan or that they plan on being alive, regardless of your price, boy, would I or regardless of your delivery schedule? Imagine if you had a business like this, where your customers, once you earned them, you had them forever. And would you like your advertising to be fun? And would you like it to continually work better and better and better the longer that you do it? Yes, yes. Most people want that result. And if that was your answer was yes, then you need a tribe, or maybe, as we’ll learn later, a few tribes. Yeah, but you need to harness this thing called tribal marketing, and give us a little bit of the back story. So we’re jumping into something that this is an industry term, but it’s also something that’s a little more inherent to, I guess, our internal language. Yeah, most people think about targeting and like demographic Yes, like marketing, yeah. Tell us. Tell us. Tell us about that. We

Caleb Agee 3:21
want to juxtaposition this to targeted marketing. So in the marketing classes I took in college, if you go read, you know, maybe a more standard marketing book, they’re going to take you to your, you know, your target customer, right? That’s one of the first questions you’re going to look at, is, who is your target customer, and then the questions they ask next, which finding a target customer actually fair point. That’s first part of the Maven method. Who are you talking to? Who are you talking to? We want to identify that person, but the questions they ask next are usually very statistical. Statistical,

Brandon Welch 3:57
yes. Can I make up a word?

Caleb Agee 4:01
It is. It’s like, how old are they how you know, gender, socioeconomic status, do they own a house? Do they own this car? Do they own? And some of these things are more just, they’re just demographic statistics. And if you boil down your customer base, and you go, Well, let me go crunch my CRM and see if there’s a consensus we’re missing a big part of this. Absolutely,

Brandon Welch 4:26
yeah. So you can’t fit the biggest aspirations of people in this to us to a statistic, yeah, the biggest reasons why people buy Yeah. And so even though, yeah, it’s wise and it’s probably self evident to go, Hey, a 90 something year old may not be buying my wakeboard because they’re past that part of their life. What’s the what’s the age range of somebody who buys that product? Otherwise it’s It spans generations. It spans different demographics. Yeah, this whole idea of household income, this. Whole idea of political affiliation, this whole idea of geographic it just there’s, there’s a bigger thing than that, yeah. And so while demographics tend to talk about who people are statistically, it’s really more about why they are the way that they are. That’s what tribal marketing is about. Yeah, when you understand why they are the way that they are, you can help them reinforce that identity. And the things that they think about themselves are the most powerful form of marketing you can have if you’re just reminding them of who they are, yeah. And so when it comes to buying your thing, it’s all about what the thing means to them. Yeah, that’s what really matters. Otherwise, you’re in commoditized territory, and it’s about your price or your speed or maybe just the convenience that you can deliver to the person. That’s what we would call today Marketing. And today marketing is really more bent towards this demographic type targeting. And yeah, but tribal marketing is more of a function of tomorrow marketing, but when you get it right today, customers and yesterday, customers and future customers become so so so much easier to to earn. By the way. Did you hear that tribal language today, yesterday and tomorrow? Customers? That is a tribal language of Frank and Mabel. I’m going to talk about that in a minute. How you talk about way, the way you do your things, and why you do your things, is really the heart of tribal marketing. Yeah, so here’s just some basic questions to start thinking about, when your customers have your thing in their hands, or when they’re imagining having your thing that you’re selling on their hands. Where do they imagine going when they have that thing? Who do they imagine getting comments from? Who’s going to give them compliments or praise or inclusion? Who do they imagine belonging with? Who do they imagine being able to go places with? What do they imagine being able to accomplish? What comfort or convenience will they have? Who will truly understand them? Maslow, right? We’ve talked a lot about Maslow on the podcast, Maslow’s hierarchy. Yeah, you’ve spent half a minute in a college psychology class. You learn about this thing called the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And basically, we need physical needs first, shelter, safety. We need our bodies and our health to be okay. But after that, as human beings, our brains and our emotions and everything to start trending towards this whole I need to belong, yeah? I need love and belonging, first from my inner circle, and then I go looking for an outer circle, yeah? And that is what, that’s where tribal marketing exists very, very close to, like the human experience, yeah?

Caleb Agee 7:39
And then, well, and that leads to relationship. Right belonging comes from being connected to, usually, another person or a group of persons, yes. And so when we talk about marketing, we talk about a brand. We’re talking about connecting to people, building on relationship. And if we go back to that statistical information, you know, just hey, talk about the weather. What do you do for a living? Those kind of conversations are conversations you have with an acquaintance, somebody you just met. But then when you have known somebody, it doesn’t really feel it just it’s passing on time. Maybe that’s how you start, but you can move to a deeper place. And when we are a brand, like, if we’re friends, we should talk at a level that’s deeper than just that surface level stuff. And when we are brand that as a friend, yeah, we do. We go a little deeper, too. So

Brandon Welch 8:30
if we’re friends and you’re my guy, and you happen to own a lawn mowing company, do you think I’m gonna call you first, or am I gonna call the punk that call me because everybody else has learned, right? You better call me first. Yeah, it’s just you. You’re my guy, right? Yeah, it happens to us all the time. We get the call because we’re friends, or we’re the guy of the business owners, and then they’re their friends, pass them on to us, and we get, you know, tribal inclusion, even with a little marketing company, right? Yeah. So I think it’s appropriate, and I actually, actually looked this up about 20 minutes ago. What is the definition of a tribe? Oxford Dictionary calls it a social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect, typically having a recognized leader, that’s good. I think it might translate, translate to what we had already written for this episode. Yeah. And so if you’re any kind of business going man, I want business to be a little more fun. I want it to be a little easier. I want it to be a little more purpose and passion driven. I want to work with people that I like to work with and people who like to work with me. Yeah, and I want to work for people, and I want this idea of my business is fun. I don’t care if you’re a janitorial company or a home improvement company or a legal company or a really cool, you know, luxury brand. Of any kind, you can apply these tactics of tribal marketing. And here are the five tactics, and we’re going to share lots of really practical examples from national and local companies, so you can see how this might fit to you. So yeah, five tactics we’re going to talk about. One, invite them to the tribe. Two, give them a leader. Three, establish a tribal language. Four, hold tribal meetings. Five, remind them of who they are often. Now we’re using this word tribe. It can be weird. It can be associated with, you know, old school, cavemen, indigenous people, tribe, but it’s the exact same. We have not changed as human beings. We need to be safe. We need to belong to something that is when we are the most fulfilled. And it doesn’t matter if that’s the Harley Davidson club or the quilt making club or the chess club, yep, or the underground weird club thing that you belong to, that you know nobody knows

Caleb Agee 10:56
about, but he knows about but you like it, because nobody knows about it.

Brandon Welch 11:00
Guess what? Being whether you’re introverted or extroverted, whether your club or your tribe, is about being less recognized or being more recognized, still a club, still a tribe. Yeah, so how you identify and how you connect with people on the values that you have. So let’s talk about first first tactic, invite them. This sounds simple, but it does take a little bit of planning, a little bit of intention. When you invite people to your tribe, let’s just imagine somebody comes to your store. They could have found that you have this product online. They could come into your store, or they come into your online store, buy the thing for the price they expected, leave it works as expected, and they’re fine, right? Yeah. They’re happy enough, right? Yeah. But what if instead you invited them to an insider club, and it doesn’t matter if your product, you know, it’s really easy to do this with cool retail, luxury type things that are accessories or a means of a hobby, but even if you’re kind of a boring old home improvement club, your value or your insider could be about a community that you serve. It could be about a charity or a cause, or what your money and what your collective interest as a company does for the people and the people around them, yeah, or working with a really cool nonprofit this afternoon who literally has zero intention for making, like, big money. His his purpose in his club is to bring um, dads and business leaders together who are in this middle life, you know, section having all this pressure on them, yeah, nobody really knows what it’s like to be that guy, yeah, or nobody talks about it, and

Caleb Agee 12:39
they’re usually actually lonely, and they don’t talk about the real issues. And so he brings them together and says, let’s talk about it. Talk

Brandon Welch 12:46
about faith and fatherhood. And so did doesn’t have to be centered around some like product, because we’re going to use product examples, but we’re also going to use service and non tangible examples, but you need to invite them. You need to get them practically. This looks like give them a an identifier, a token, something that makes them know that they’re in your tribe. Yeah, hat, yep. Could be a special coin or a card they carry around. Yeah. Could be a bumper sticker. Yes. Ours, unintentionally, over time, became these big, heavy mugs like that is anybody who’s in the FM tribe as one of those. And it’s a, it’s a remarkable, like, promotional product that we just found and we liked, but it became kind of a anchor, yeah, and staple for sure, yeah? So, um, member card bumper stickers, um, inside this club, or this insider club, or if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re, you’re in you’re in the FM tribe, you’re in the Maven tribe, right? It could be giving them discounts, free access to your events, content that only they will see, announcements and special news that they’ll see first Q and A’s, meet and greets, after hours, events, anything like that. But you’re going, you’re formalizing and saying, Hey, would you like to be, instead of just being a customer a transaction today? Would you like to be part of our tribe? Yeah,

Caleb Agee 14:08
yeah, yeah. I think, I think having that invite just ready and, and it really depends on the business you’re in, how you how you would bring that up, I think, or how you would frame it, but I think you can be pretty creative with that. Yeah, and think about it’s, it’s goes back to that. Why would they why do they identify themselves in this way? What do they believe in? What does their heart go to? Let’s

Brandon Welch 14:30
say you’re Alan. You’re a mechanic. Love you Alan, but you’re going, Hey, my customers aren’t particularly car enthusiast. I’m an everyday person’s mechanic, yep, and he has great mechanics, and it’s a fantastic company that they built. How would I create a tribe? Well, who are your customers? Their moms, your kids? Yep, maybe your tribe is living good family life. Maybe you talk about how to get more out of your day, because this. Because Alan, particularly, and this example, stands for getting in and out of his shop fast he knows that his product is not oil changes and yeah, you know AC repairs, it is getting mom back to her life, or getting the busy work person back to their work. And so that’s why they have pre delivery and stuff like that. Maybe you do things and you hold events, and you have newsletters that are about the little corner of town you serve. So make a tribe, invite them a step one, step two is give them a leader, a voice. So this could be a real or a fake character. In last week’s episode, talked with Carter, our genius behind a lot of the words and the characters that we create at Frank and Maven, but you want a character, if you if you missed that episode, it’s really, truly one of my favorite we’ve done so far. So go back and listen to it. But what you want is someone who stands as a persona or a figurehead, or, quite possibly, somebody who is actually just the person. You may not have to embellish them at all, but as somebody who’s been through the same things that they have been through struggles the same way, or has the same taste for adventure, yeah, it would vary based on the commoditization or the service or hobby nature of your product, Yeah, but you’re giving them a voice. So I’m gonna go the wide gamut of examples. Dude Perfect. Have you ever watched Dude Perfect?

Caleb Agee 16:24
Oh, yeah. Of an eight year old boy absolutely

Brandon Welch 16:26
all the time. They actually have four characters, five main characters, really, yep, four and then a disruptor character, right? And so you’re looking for somebody who just speaks to that adventure language. In that case, yeah, how about Johnny Morris of Bass Pro? Does he not personify the outdoorsman that we all want to be? Oh, yeah, if you want to be an outdoorsman or the family man that we all want to be, or the conservationist or the nature person that we all want to be, that’s an example of a CEO who is not in any way but embellished. That’s just who the dude is, yeah. And so you’ll see his name and that sort of Persona around that. And when you go to his restaurants or his resorts or even his stores, you’ll see it chock full of stories of when he was a kid, a picture of his uncle Bucha taking him fishing. He’s got all of this, like life story, an origin story. In that case, he just harnessed what he already had. How about slash from Guns and Roses? Totally different direction. Yeah. About Jimmy Buffett of the parrot heads? Right? These are the leaders, Daniel and what? Rex what? Daniel Whittington and Rex Williams. They are the whiskey experts. They’re the largest whiskey experts in the world. I happen to be friends with him. Met them 1015, years ago, and they started this YouTube channel, and they’re talking about the art of storytelling around the topic of whiskey reviews, right? Yeah. Tribe leaders. Tom Beaudette, he’s a tribe leader for the thrifty, casual, traveling American, right? Talked about him last week. Any influencer ever as a tribe leader without a doubt. Oh yeah, Mr. Beast, bar stool sports. I don’t know why I thought of this one, but kind of old school, but Bob and Tom, yeah? Tribe leaders, right? Some Frank and Maven tribe leaders. Corey the car cowboy, stands for the goofy dad having fun and doing just crazy unexpected things. Oh yeah, like Kid humor, right? Yep. And he, he’s a car dealer, and we purposely created that tribe leader to stand against, you know, boring and stuffy. And we make him the center of the ads, doing crazy unexpected, goofy stuff, right? Yeah. Can

Caleb Agee 18:43
I break the fourth wall for a second? Break the fourth wall. You’re quite a character. Oh my gosh. So, you know, I think we definitely have set you up in that way, that

Brandon Welch 18:54
so is Nathan. Camera guy, yeah, and eighth camera guy, I need the camera actually, Carter, the camera guy today. Carter’s making his third debut on the episode,

Caleb Agee 19:01
yeah, by name, known by name alone. So

Brandon Welch 19:05
Nate, Nate was Nate here, so that would be a character thing. That would be a quirk. Yeah, it’s unbearable for some of you, and I’m so sorry, but when we look at my character diamond that we kind of make for this podcast, it’s the goofy pun making whimsical thing, right? Yep, and I happen to do a little bit of that a dabble in real life, yeah, okay. But in concentrate, you get it on this podcast, yeah? Hey, the camera guy is the guy we just throw stuff at randomly, right? Caleb is the steady steward the let’s bring this back to the actual thing. Let’s bring us back to an outline and that that actually is who Caleb is. We got in trouble last week because we made an episode that was 52 minutes long. We turned a 30 minute episode into 52 minutes. So you go, Caleb’s gonna make sure we’re on time today. Let’s try keep going. So give him a leader. I think you know who that is for your company. But. If you’re not like a prolific person, certainly if you’re not a person that likes the spotlight, be willing to have a third party or maybe a younger voice, or maybe a more bubbly voice in your company that does that for you, or lean into the opposite of that. Caleb does not remember this because I told him or asked him the other day, but the red green show those characters of that tribe, that’s a huge tribe, like if you, especially if you grew up in the 90s or 2000s I used to watch it with my dad. Was this show on PBS. But anyway, those guys that their characters were leaning into being gruff and grumpy, yeah, and sometimes that persona, in and of itself, will serve you. So yes, be the leader, harness that voice and be the one that’s delivering the advice, the encouragement, the insight, the expertise or the otherwise entertainment for that tribe. Third is, establish a tribal language. This will largely be upheld and established by the leader, but these are your catch phrases. Who do you think of when you think of a tribal leader with tribal language?

Caleb Agee 21:10
Oh, I listened to Dave Ramsey. Actually, I switched to listen to more of his entree leadership, which has, I think they’re they’re defining their tribal language. Perfect example in that one right now, because they’re talking about five stages of business. But we’ll go back to the one that’s more commonly known as Finance, Financial Peace and all of that. People call in and they say, hey, hey, Dave, I’m on baby step three. I’m working on baby step four. And if you didn’t know anything about Dave Ramsey and you just listen to that guy say that you’re like baby step what? What does

Brandon Welch 21:41
that mean? Every the known insider, if you read his book for 30 minutes, you know what that is, exactly what it is. And it’s in every one of their emails. And they have been using the same shtick for 30 years. Oh yeah. And it’s that’s their tribal language. He talks about the baby steps. He talks about dead is dumb, cash is king. He talks about plastic me cutting up your credit cards. He talks about consolidation. And like every day, somebody calls and asks him about debt consolidation, and he talks about that. And so these are things that were he probably didn’t even realize he was creating when He created him. Yep, they were little phrases that got popular out of his book. And that’s actually happened to us with our book in a way, smaller way. But the Ramsey brand has definitely a tribe leader. Now. They have many sub tribe leaders, and they have these, you know, they’ve gone from just personal finance to business to life and relationships, and they’re just this rich life flowing attract people. I want to do it a different way. And they have these really simple ways of saying things, yeah, shift gears to Big Green Egg, huge tribe, right? You can buy a lot of different barbecue grills. You can buy a lot of different things that will maybe deliver, you know, smoked meat or a seared steak or whatever. But if you’re a big green egg owner, yeah, you are a big green egg owner for a reason. You pick the bigger name over all the other products for a reason. Yep, and it had to do with they have a tribal language. They have a sense of something bigger going on. They have a sense of high five in and the bumper sticker thing. And this thing they call eggheads. Their language is eggheads accessories. They talk a lot about grilling, smoking, roasting and baking. And if you went to their website, you would see these categories like for years and years and years, they were the same

Caleb Agee 23:27
way. The truth is, let’s, let’s look at the contrast of this. The truth is, you could buy, I’m gonna make some big green egg people upset. You can buy a somewhat similar product that can, technically, yes, do those other things careful. I’m an egghead. Easy. I’ve got one at home too, but I’m saying technically it can do. You could go buy the thing at Sam’s that’s not green, it’s like black or orange or something like that, right?

Brandon Welch 23:51
And, and I would tell you why you were an idiot, because I’m a tribal

Caleb Agee 23:54
because you’re a tribal person. But the thing that that big green egg has done better than the Sam’s Club brand, or whoever else sells it, is that they have spoken this tribal language already, and you are committed and you are in it. And even when people don’t have one, they’ll be like, Yeah, I’m gonna cook it on my egg. But that’s not even what anybody else calls them. That’s

Brandon Welch 24:14
exactly right. You know? It’s the same that, yeah, they own the category term, yes. And anytime somebody who buys one of these off brands for $50 less, you’re like, Well, it’s kind of like a kind of like a big green egg. Yes, you know the big green egg? Well, it’s that, but it’s not, it’s

Caleb Agee 24:26
not like, it’s the staple, it’s the it’s the one that everybody holds up. So, yeah, that’s

Brandon Welch 24:30
like saying I bought a Kia that also you can take the doors off of. It’s kind of like a jeep, but it’s but you don’t like jeeps, but, yeah, same thing, right? So Big Green Egg is an example, Harley Davidson. If you went to their website, you would see them talking about stories, freedom, ain’t quiet, united. We ride Born in the USA. That tribal language. Imagine what that biker talks about. That’s a gruff it’s not a bubbly character, right? They want

Caleb Agee 24:55
it’s like, are you? Are you ready for this punk? They’ve got kind of got that rough vibe handle it. Can you? Handle

Brandon Welch 25:00
this. It’s like somebody who goes and buys a Honda that look exactly like the knockoff, you know, or Yamaha, of the Harley Davidson, yeah? And you pull it to light. And even I’m not like a Harley guy, by any means, but I look over to my guy, it’s not a Harley, yeah, yeah,

Caleb Agee 25:13
yeah, for sure. It’s kind of like a Harley, though it’s kind of like no.

Brandon Welch 25:17
And they’re very engineering of that product, the way they make their exhaust. There’s nothing that sounds like a Harley, right, right? They have a certain tuning and a certain I believe it’s a has to do with the camshaft that makes it sound a certain way. Potato, potato, potato, right? Hopefully at least one listener knew what I was talking about there, and I didn’t butcher that. How about Red Bull gives you wings and all the things about Red Bull make you feel empowered because you’ve got this can Nate the camera guy’s sub car. You’re a really good substitute. Yeah, you look good. Look at this though. Look at everything about

Caleb Agee 25:55
you see that checker blue and gray? Checker

Brandon Welch 25:56
blue, yeah, and their colors and their logos remind us of all this language that’s been around, all this things we’ve seen, right? Yep, choosey moms. Choose jif. There’s a link to a really cool skit about that in the post today. Get yourself in there. How about built Ford? Tough parrot head? Apple. Think different. Yeah. Speaking of Apple, Steve Jobs said this is a very complicated world. It’s a very noisy world, and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is and so we have to be really, really clear what we want them to know about us. And I think he was capturing tribal language. Everything Apple does is simplistic, simplistic by design. They don’t take very many words to say what they do think different. Their packaging says it the white noise, or, sorry, the white space, the stark graphics. And so that kind of leads to another thing. Tribal language is way more about what you leave out, yes, take away all of the surrounding noise.

Caleb Agee 27:04
I think there’s also a little bit of simplicity to tribal language that’s required. So obviously, Apple does it really well, but, but then it’s simple and repetitive, those two things together, yeah, I think are the way you get that tribal language to stick, you will get bored of saying it. Yes, you will feel like everybody’s so tired of hearing me talk like this.

Brandon Welch 27:29
How many times you think Jimmy Buffett saying Margaritaville and just hates it, but that’s his homing beacon, though, right?

Caleb Agee 27:34
You probably will hate it after you said it the 500th time, but there’s still somebody new who’s picking up on it that’s still back at square two. And you also have people at square 100 but they bought in, and they’re they’re okay with hearing you say it, yep, 501 times, yep. So there’s every time Brandon’s

Brandon Welch 27:50
try to get away from this, they always come back. Yes. Do you think Bud Light’s trying to come back right now to their original brand Coca Cola? Just observing, I’m not making any comments one way or the other, yeah, saying, like, people know why they chose a product, and when the brand leader or the brand voice violates that, they will uproar, yeah? They will throw an ever loving fit, yeah. So know who you are. Be willing to stick to it. And, um, sometimes your mission will require you to create another sub brand, and we’re going to get to that. That is really the heart of today’s question. But real quick, some examples on a local front or a smaller front, maybe non national rank and Maven today, tomorrow, yesterday, customers. That is something we wrote sort of as a philosophy of how we execute our craft, and we have customers repeating that back to us. We have people who are referred to by our customers or read our books come to us and go, Yeah, I really need to work on my tomorrow. Customers, you guys are great at that, yes, and we’re like, oh, that’s our tribal language. We say, if your ads don’t bring smiles, fists or tears, they fall on deaf ears. Every person in this building and many of our clients could tell you that, what are the first two questions we ask any business owner, how’s business and right before that, the first time, oh, the first time, yeah, or what’s the big dream? What’s the big dream, right? Yeah, hang it up. You almost didn’t

Caleb Agee 29:14
prove my point. I’m so sorry. I was like, You should spend

Brandon Welch 29:17
more time with our tribal leader. Yeah, yeah. Every person that comes our way, we’re trying to get to the bottom. What’s the big dream? Why are you wasting your time here? Yeah? Or why are you spending your time here? Maybe, yeah. And how can we help you make that a little faster? The first intro this podcast, welcome to Maven Monday, where we take real life questions to eliminate waste in advertising. That’s in the title of our book, by the way, by the way, grow your business and help you achieve the big dream, right? Yeah, so that’s that’s a little bit example from our world. You probably have seen some of those we talk about window source Kentucky all the time, because they’re just so dadgum good at this, and they’re just such great people, and I love you Randy and Dee. Save where you can so you can spend where you want. Hmm, that’s a that’s a little thing. If you spend very much time around them, you’ll know D is standing up for your dollar save where you can so you can spend where you want. Or that’s a D guarantee. We have an awesome jeweler we’ve just adored working with, and he has this awesome, really legacy type business. He’s really what we would call a legendary business, yes, in his category. And he’s been saying these things forever, and he didn’t quite realize maybe that that was was his tribal language. It’s more than a slogan, by the way. It’s not just this one liner. It can be like that can be part of it, but there’s surrounding language. And so he’s a guy who’s not the he’s not the, let me fight against the mall retailers. He’s not the I’ve got this or that brand. He does have all those things, but he’s more about celebrating the this moment and this decision, yeah, of love, yeah. And he just thinks it’s the coolest thing ever. And so he says things like, make the magic last forever, and that could be a boyfriend proposing to a girlfriend. That could be a dad reminding his daughter of who she is and the love that she’s he stands for. That could be a old man reminding his wife why he married her. It could be any time. And they have this they have these languages and these phrases that just are spanning all their ads. Now it’s a moment that deserves a symbol, your jeweler for life, things like that. Last one talk, talk about English port a little bit. Yeah, English

Caleb Agee 31:37
port is a boat dealer. They have very different tribes. I’m cheating here a little bit, but some of the unifying things we say is things like, we believe your time on the water is valuable, so for their service department, that’s a big problem. Yeah, your boat goes down and you got to send it to the shop. One week is is a big deal. What if it’s out for six weeks? Yes. And so that’s where they really so

Brandon Welch 32:01
before your if you are their customer, or if you’re leading up to being their customer, you will see this in their ads. You’ll see this on their website. They’re sales people, and I know Don says it every time he pulls in the people to that that end up leaving, you know, their showroom with a boat, and they’re phenomenally successful, like, the biggest dealer of most of their brands that they carry, yeah, and they’re in like, this little rural town in the middle of Missouri, but he’ll take him aside, and he’ll be like, we want you to know you’re an English port marine customer, and we know your time in the water is valuable. That’s why we have this. Anglers guarantee all the things on that are their tribal language so good. And if you see their emails and the things that they continually stay up with people on their Facebook post. It’s all about wetting a line and dropping a hook. And they’re not just some, you know, boat payment you went and got they are your guys. Yeah, that’s why they have a phenomenally good repeat business and referral business. Okay, so that was a long way to say, establish a tribal language. Yeah? Uh, it’s either centered around a value you have and or a way you think things ought to be done. And then slide in the enthusiast feel good things of the lifestyle. We try to put Howler bike park in here, because they’re like a really good example of somebody we work with. But go look at Howler bike park.

Caleb Agee 33:18
They’re a downhill bike park. So they they cart you up, think like a ski lodge, right? They sit, they drive you to the top of the hill, and all you do is so that one of the lines we say is just the fun stuff, just the fun stuff, so you’re not hard pedaling. There is an uphill if you want to hard pedal, but all you have to do is just the fun stuff, beautiful,

Brandon Welch 33:37
right? And they’re, yeah, everything about their brand is awesome. Howler bike park, look them up. Okay, so the fourth we have talked about, just real quick as a real quick recap. We have talked about inviting them to the tribe, giving them a leader, establishing a tribal language. Now we’re going to talk about holding tribal meetings. And we’re having a tribal meeting right now. Yes, this is things like Sturgis. It’s a big one. That’s a tribal meeting. It was

Caleb Agee 34:05
a tribal meeting,

Brandon Welch 34:08
the Global Leadership Summit. Our hero, Craig Groeschel, is, you know, he’s a phenomenal pastor and a leader in the spiritual world. But he jumps over to this other tribe he has, which is leadership. And he says Everyone wins when the leader gets better. And so he has, he’s a big part of this global leadership summit, and all the people who are leaders, that is its own tribe, right? It’s a B to B tribe in a lot of cases, but it’s a tribe. How about Jeep fest? Yeah, there’s one of those that happens once or twice a year in every town, everywhere. And if it ain’t Jeep fest, it’s Saturday afternoon and it’s the fall, and everybody, every Jeep fest makes itself because you take the doors off, you go do something in your teeth, right? Yeah. Or how about the ducks, the whole thing, people leaving ducks on Jeeps. Have you seen that ducking? That’s a tribal event every time that happens, right? Yeah. Going totally different, opposite spectrum, Burning Man, that’s actually a little bit more of a proper tribal with a fire and all right, yeah, egg fest. If you’re going to talk about Big Green Egg, gonna talk about, it’s a year every Big Green Egg dealer, yeah, hosts this thing. They provide the grills, and they get people together and cook and do all the things that are egg worthy. And then yeah, what

Caleb Agee 35:21
about anytime Trump goes anywhere? Oh, love him or hate him. How about Yeah, he will, they call those he’s a tribal leader of any kind, absolutely, like probably the most notorious tribal leader of our time right now, I would say between him and Taylor Swift, yeah, you really want to take bets on that. I

Brandon Welch 35:44
don’t know. You get, you get somebody to put down. You know, 64 million times there for you. I mean, any, any of the presidential candidates, get close to that, but yeah, Taylor Swift, that’s a big tribe. Yeah, absolutely big tribe. And what’s the second biggest tribe that Trump gathers? I don’t know, maybe, maybe they’re actually the first big excellent depending on which town he’s in, the Trump haters. Yeah, they’re going to be a whole heck a lot of those outside of their signs and their

Caleb Agee 36:10
but that’s a that’s a part of it. Yes, that is. It’s what

Brandon Welch 36:13
you stand for and what you stand against, inversely, right? So that’s hold tribal meetings for you. So the product driven ones like egg Fest and, you know, Sturgis and biker things, those are easy, but if you are not a like enthusiast type product, it could be as simple as a customer customer appreciation event. Yeah, we have a great friend and client who has a law firm, and they didn’t. There’s nothing about that product that’s enthusiast driven. But they got together and had some good old fashioned ice cream, a great band and a celebration last year. They’re gonna keep doing stuff like that. It’s great. Sometimes it’s a learning event, if you’re somewhere in between there. But think heating an air company. What would those guys do? They would just get the community together and make them feel good, yeah, yep, so, or maybe some charity event too. You could type,

Caleb Agee 37:07
yeah, you can probably piggyback on to another community event as well, exactly a part of that. Yeah,

Brandon Welch 37:14
cool. So that’s hold tribal meetings. Do an event once a year. Do an event once a quarter. It’s really dependent on your audience and your size and your resources. That was number four, remind them of who they are. Often. This is the last one. I think this is so, so, so important. And it’s really, this really demonstrates the strength of your tribe. You know, you could have brand preference because you had a good experience. And maybe, maybe, like, level one is, I had a good experience here, and I had a, yeah, not so good experience at this other company. So I’m going to choose this because I’m going to choose this because it was easier, yep. But if you are reminding me of who I am often, I am an insider. And this is going to parlay into our actual question for the day you were you were getting me on some sort of an email list. You’re a big green egg Insider. And we’re just gonna go back to this one. You’re sending me recipes, insider tips. If you own a music store, you’re sending things out like my friend Nate does chords and coffee. And he’s just this phenomenal he’s the tribe leader, right? He’s just this phenomenal guitar player, like best I’ve ever seen. And he gets in front of a camera once a week and teaches you something cool, and he’s playing some cool guitar, and he’s talking about it, and sometimes he’ll relate that to something in life. Sometimes he’ll bring in somebody cool to talk about this or that with. But it’s all about that moment we all experience when we’re making great music and playing really great instruments, right? Yeah, love you Nate, um, you’re talking about cool stuff that’s that’s happened. You’re the leader, bringing them news about your product, to your industry, on your social media, you’re sharing memes that play into the humor style. Yeah, if you’re a mom driven product or mom driven business, make funny memes about the chaos of being a mom with, you know, young kids, three or four little ones running around. Yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah. Homeschool tribe. We both belong to that one. And there’s all kinds of crazy stuff about the homeschool tribe, right? It could be encouraging, it could be funny. It should be both, right, yeah. It could be informative. It could be inspirational. It could be reminding the person of why they are where they are, because that is a that’s an experience for every human being every week. Yeah? No matter how fulfilled we are, we

Caleb Agee 39:29
have bad days. We struggle with that identity, identity, yeah,

Brandon Welch 39:32
and so remind them of the bigger thing. You could have your billboards or your signs with lifestyle images. We’re doing that with our jeweler friends right now, just reminding of that peace moment that exists inside your product, or that better outcome. Or how about a podcast? Caleb podcast. You should do a podcast that’s

Caleb Agee 39:54
a great idea we should start or do. What are we on? Episode 12, maybe, right? Episode 12, wow, yes, doing this, we’re doing it

Brandon Welch 40:04
a podcast would do the same things, right? If you’re listening to this podcast, you’re in our tribe. We’re reminding you of how to be intentional about your business. Be intentional about how you talk about the things you are so you can eliminate waste in advertising, grow your business and achieve the big dream. That’s what just gets us out of bed. That’s what we are on fire about. And so that tends to resonate with anybody who’s on a journey of making something they have bigger or more effective. And so you can also write books, which we’ve also done. Do you have a copy of the Maven marketer? Your is right here in front of you. What I was saying. Do you copy listener? Have a copy of the maybe marketer, yeah. Next month the audiobook releases, I may announce that the next podcast actually, did you just it’s done. You just ruined. I think I did just ruin it. I teased it last week. You’re, yeah, you’re an insider. So you’re an insider, and you just got the sneak matter of fact executive decision. We are going to announce it on next week’s podcast, and you listening will have the first link, and then we won’t announce it to the public or the website or Amazon till the week after that, you’ll have a special announcement. Welcome to the tribe. Love it all. This leads up to the big question. We talked about creating a tribe, inviting them in, giving them a leader, establishing a tribal language, holding tribal meetings and reminding them of who they are often. So, so what does that have to do with our question today? Tell us who asked the question and then summarize. All

Caleb Agee 41:37
right, so ALEC is he is the marketing director for a local and regional, I should say, and taken on the world by Scott, gonna be

Brandon Welch 41:48
national, yeah, gonna be, gonna be in the category national, very,

Caleb Agee 41:50
very soon, yeah. So they are a music retail store, right? And so very legendary businesses. They’re, they’re in the third ALEC is the third generation in that 60 years, I think, yeah, we both have give us and our families have given them 1000s of dollars. I basically

Brandon Welch 42:10
grew up there. Yeah, I worked there. We worked there for a bit, and that was formative and foundational experience in my life. Yeah, things that have allowed me to sit here today, I came from this company, yeah, and talk with confidence about the things we talk about.

Caleb Agee 42:25
And besides that, they sell great gear for us to Did

Brandon Welch 42:29
y’all know Caleb’s a drummer, guitar player and a singer, and I’ve never seen anything he can’t do. Oh,

Caleb Agee 42:34
man, and Brandon’s a way better piano player than I can do any of those things. So we all

Brandon Welch 42:39
like to play little music, and so this is a cool company. It’s so cool that we get to even talk and work with him.

Caleb Agee 42:47
Lay out the question, all right, so he, he wanted to give us as much as possible, so I’m going to kind of summarize a little bit. He said, I’m marketing director for a brick and mortar slash e com Music retail business. So they sell it in store and online. We stock items like flutes, drums, guitars, trumpets, DJ equipment, live sound systems and keyboards, for example. Within each of these instruments, we stock entry level all the way up to professional level equipment, and so that, what they found is that a clarinetist is way different than a guitarist. I would

Brandon Welch 43:26
like to meet the clarinetist that exists as a guitarist as well. I think that would be an interesting person in his free time.

Caleb Agee 43:32
So there’s a lot of friction between their different audiences. You think about a DJ who’s dealing with live sound or all of that equipment. Think about a band nerd. I can say that because I was one. You think about the rock band musician playing bass, you know, in their garage band.

Brandon Welch 43:50
And what’s unique about this company, we can both attest to this. They are literally the best in their area, in all of these things. Yeah, there are. There are a lot of companies. If they ask this question, our honest answer would probably be, you think you’re this, this and this, but you’re actually only this one thing. You can only do one of those. I’m telling you, this company has got it. There’s not a category that they do not lead, yeah, by a lot. And

Caleb Agee 44:11
in reality, a lot of businesses in this industry that are brick and mortar and E comm have been shrinking up and going away, and that’s right, they’re growing rapidly, which

Brandon Welch 44:24
they’re growing a category that’s shrinking. The commoditized the marketplace

Caleb Agee 44:27
is rewarding them for being awesome and having good tribes, so which was too so

Brandon Welch 44:35
I think Alec knows all about this, like we’re we’ve been preaching to the choir. Yeah, Alec all the time, because he knows all these things inherently, and he actually even says as much, yeah, question, um, get to that. Get to finish the question, and then I have a statement about a couple of things. Okay, so

Caleb Agee 44:51
he said one phrase I have frequently spouted out to my team over the last few years is that brands that speak to everyone speak. To no one. We just end the podcast right there. I’m gonna read it again. That’s Alex. You answered your own question, Alec. Alec, in his own question is giving you the best marketing advice in the last 30 minutes, but we’ll just keep going. Brands that speak to everyone speak to no one. So his dilemma is, it’s my desire to create niche communities in social platforms for where people feel like they get spoken to directly. So his decision was to make five unique YouTube channels for some of the different customers they serve. That way, the trumpet player isn’t getting notifications about the new bass guitar getting, you know that came in and vice versa, right? Yep. So he said, I also tried a more broad approach, speaking to reasons why music is good, makes people feel good. He said it was great, but it lacked the specificity of, hey, check out this really cool finish on a limited edition guitar. Yes. So his question is, how should I speak develop my brand and appeal to various types of customers through the lens of one single profile.

Brandon Welch 46:07
Cool, well, we already said he answered his own question. You can’t, because the short answer is that there’s no tribe or the marching band for the reason that people want to be a marching band and the metal band now, metal band. Now there is a subset, a tiny sliver of the Venn diagram, where you will have a rocker that is also a jazz trumpet player. I know these people, right? Yep, they exist. But if you wish to unlock and speak to the heart of that jazz player, he’s got to have his own brand. Now, he may belong to both tribes, yeah, but Kool Aid has a flavor for a reason. Yeah, and don’t water it down. Tribal inclusion is actually an inverse of what is tribal exclusion. Yeah, exclusion is probably more important than inclusion. What you leave out is even more important. So, yes, as a company, and certainly inside your four walls, the bigger story is that we are a music company. We empower lives, we empower people to have joy and peace and harmony and collaboration and an instant bond with other people, because we are Palin Music Center in this case, yep, and we do that for our community, and that’s driven their growth, their passion. I know, I know the leaders of this company, Eric and Brett and Dan senior and Dan Jr, they believe this stuff, and that is why they’re so so successful. They’ve never forgotten who they are at their core. But, and so, so there should be a house brand. I don’t want to say that there shouldn’t be. And by the way, the house brand can be supporting these sub brands. But when you want to break out and be a leader and be an online voice and be all these things we just talked about, you’re gonna have to have a separate tribe. And that is a tough answer. It’s tough enough to do it for one company, right? Oh, yeah, what we’re doing today, and what we’ve been doing to build our tribe is really about one tribe, which is small business owners. And sounds like Alec has five. And my short answer, unfortunately, is keep doing it for five. But let’s go through those steps again, make sure that the band person knows they’re in the PMC band tribe, or whatever that handle is, yep, this looks like having an email list, I think, where, if you become a PMC insider, Palin Music Center insider, you get to subscribe to all the five lists you have. I’m a band guy and I’m a guitar guy. Awesome. You’re going to get content for both. But also, let me just be a band guy. Yeah, you. And then when you’re building your email list, you just choose, is this a piece of content that would apply to one tribe, two tribes? Sometimes that’ll happen, but yeah, most often your your tribal content is going to be individual, right? Um, so give them a leader. Uh Nate is definitely the leader of the PMC guitar tribe, yeah, but it’s got to be Aaron or Eric or somebody else that’s the leader of the band tribe, yeah? And you guys know this, but for sake of example, you guys have different pillars inside your company and people that lead those different pillars inside your company. It’s the same thing externally, yeah? And so you might have the same building, you might have the same address, you might have the same website, but you give people a really quick way to go, offer those so give them a leader. That person is going to curate that content, be the voice, establish your tribal language for each of the each of those tribes, and maybe start with your two biggest and build the process, yeah, and build a cookie cutter duplicate it. It doesn’t mean you have to do all this at once, but just look back when you’re sitting in your you know, board meetings or your company annual planning events and certain things get said, and think about what was going on in that room who said something that made somebody laugh. That’s probably your tribal language. Pull that out. Yeah, that’s gonna be something that we put on a headline. Line, or put on a bumper sticker, put on a graphic t shirt, or put on a hat,

Caleb Agee 50:02
yes. Or, if you got band kids running around town, they put fun, stupid things on their shirts all the all the time,

Brandon Welch 50:09
stickers on their cases. They love it, yes. So for each of your pillars to establish tribal language, hold tribal meetings, dude, you got to have a trumpet clinic, a drum clinic, yeah, and some eat your face off, guitar solo clinic, right? Yeah, yes. You might have annual events that center around sales and things like that. But in between, you’re building these little micro communities. And yeah, it’s, it is a, it is a really, really, really cool thing, but a really laborist thing that you get to be the guy that does that, Alec. And last thing is, in the same vein, remind them of who they are often. I do think you need separate social channels. I do think you need separate video channels. I do think you need separate leaders and email lists. And the only thing I could say is from, like a from a social standpoint, probably don’t try to do all of the channels at once. So for guitarists, you might just, you might do a PMC guitar, Instagram or YouTube, which is kind of what you’re doing, I think. But you might find that the band community is more Facebook oriented, so you can create your community over there. Your community over there. That’s good. Email is a good constant between all of them, yeah, but don’t feel like, Okay, I gotta do all the things I did for my band community, for my guitar community, still go and individually, ask them, like you said, what are their needs, pains, hopes, fears, where do they hang out? What do they like? Who do they admire? How do they like to spend their time? What do they find convenient? Where they find cumbersome, and you’re building a tribe and reminding them who they are often. So, yeah, guys, we made another 52 minute episode. Caleb didn’t hold down the fort. We’ve started a bad habit. Great episode, go create a tribe for your business. Yeah, the outcomes are they gonna be? People are gonna come back to you because you’re you. They’re gonna spend more money without thinking twice about it. They’re gonna ignore your competitors, and they’re gonna bring their friends and family, and that is really like the best of all worlds, right? Oh yeah, invite them, give them a leader. Establish a tribal language, hold tribal meetings and remind them of who they are. Often, that’s how you do tribal marketing. Thank you so much for listening. We’ll be back here every Monday. Every Monday. Money, we’ll be back here every Monday. Money, we back here every Monday, answering your real life marketing and advertising questions, because marketers who can’t teach you why are just a fancy lie. Do that travel language? Have a great week.