tagging along
Tagging Along describes a smaller business riding on the strength, reputation or customer traffic of a bigger one instead of building its own pull from scratch.
In plain English
Here is the surprising part. Some of the smartest business owners you know did not build their first customers from nothing. They borrowed someone else's crowd.
That small provision shop that opens right beside a busy bank branch in Yaba is not there by accident. The owner knows that hundreds of people queue at that bank every day, and some of them will want recharge cards, biscuits or a cold drink while they wait. The shop did not create that foot traffic. It tagged along with it.
In Lagos, you see this with the small chops sellers who set up near event centres on wedding weekends, or the phone accessory hawkers who cluster around a busy market entrance instead of a calm street. They are not competing with the big draw. They are feeding off it.
It happens in the UK too. A small coffee cart parked outside a large train station in Manchester does not need its own advertising budget. Commuters are already walking past in their thousands, rushing to catch trains, and some of them want coffee on the way.
Tagging along is not laziness. It is a smart way to skip the expensive, slow part of building an audience, by placing yourself where an audience already exists. The risk is that you never build a following of your own, so if the bigger business moves or shuts down, you move or shut down with it.
Diaspora founders do this online too. A Nigerian selling shea butter products might list on an already busy marketplace app instead of building a website from zero, tagging along with an audience that platform already worked hard to gather.
A woman selling roasted plantain sets up her stand just outside a large office complex in Victoria Island. She spends nothing on adverts. The 3,000 workers who leave that building every evening at 5pm are her marketing, and on a good day she sells ₦25,000 worth of plantain simply by standing where the crowd already walks.
Questions people ask
Is tagging along the same as copying a competitor?
Not quite. Copying means imitating what a business sells. Tagging along means positioning yourself near where their customers already gather, even if what you sell is completely different.
Is there a risk in relying on someone else's crowd?
Yes. If that bigger business relocates, closes or loses popularity, the crowd disappears with it, and any business that never built its own loyal customers can struggle badly overnight.
Can an online business tag along the same way a street seller does?
Absolutely. Selling on a busy marketplace app or riding on a popular social media trend is the digital version of setting up shop beside a crowded bank branch.
Last reviewed