In order to find a core group of fans who will become the smallest viable market for your product, you first need to realize a seemingly paradoxical truth: those fans already<\/em> exist.<\/p>\n They might not realize it yet, but there are already people who have the desires, needs and values that might inspire them to become your fans. They\u2019re just waiting for you to connect them into a new tribe <\/em>and lead them to your product.<\/p>\n A tribe is a group of people who affiliate with each other and share a similar worldview<\/em> \u2013 the set of assumptions through which they view the world around them. This worldview informs how they pursue their needs, desires and values.<\/p>\n Therefore, the next step of effective marketing involves creating, connecting and leading tribes by telling stories that resonate with their members\u2019 worldviews.<\/p>\n A successful story makes a promise in a language the audience will understand. Essentially, they say, \u201cIf you buy this product, use this service or visit this store, you\u2019ll receive fulfillment of one of your desires in a way that you value.\u201d That\u2019s the promise. And then comes the language: the symbols that make the promise feel believable by appealing to the assumptions underlying the audience\u2019s worldview.<\/p>\n Consider the discount American department store chain JCPenney. Originally, the stores were geared toward a particular tribe of shoppers: those whose desire for play and hunger for affordability made them love the game of bargain-hunting. JCPenney\u2019s promise to them was that its store was a rewarding place to search for deals.<\/p>\n And the language the company used to make this promise feel believable was a never-ending stream of coupons, discounts and clearance sales \u2013 all of which provided symbols that JCPenney fans automatically associated with bargains.<\/p>\n By leading their fans to engage with their store through things like coupons, JCPenney was also sending a second, implicit message: this is how people like us do things. For bargain hunters, \u201cpeople like us\u201d are those who clip coupons, scan the newspaper for sales and, well, shop at JCPenney.<\/p>\n Marketers ignore their fans\u2019 shared worldview and the symbols that speak to it at their peril. When Ron Johnson became the CEO of JCPenney in 2011, he thought the coupons and other bargain-related symbols were a bit tacky; they weren\u2019t how a high-end store would present itself. So he got rid of them.<\/p>\n The result? The bargain hunters fled, and sales dropped by more than 50 percent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Resonates with your audience’s shared worldview, which informs how they pursue their needs, desires and values.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":87746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/procure-media.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/procure-media.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/procure-media.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/procure-media.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/procure-media.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87671"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/procure-media.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87674,"href":"https:\/\/procure-media.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87671\/revisions\/87674"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/procure-media.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/87746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/procure-media.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/procure-media.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/procure-media.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}