No business’ marketing techniques are complete without incorporating attraction marketing. Attraction marketing is more indirect than some other forms of marketing. This subtlety makes it a great strategy to supplement more direct marketing strategies.
Simply put, incorporating an attraction marketing strategy into your overall advertising plan will improve your ability to convert leads and make more sales.
What is attraction marketing?
You might’ve wondered what attraction marketing is as you’ve researched marketing techniques for your business. Attraction marketing is when you encourage customers to buy something without actually telling them to do so. So, instead of saying “buy this now” or offering a discount to buy something, you use other ways to convince customers to take action.
Another critical element of attraction marketing is giving potential customers important information regarding your products before you try to get them to make a purchase.
One of the most common attraction marketing examples is celebrity or influencer endorsements. The celebrity doesn’t explicitly tell you to buy the product. Instead, they tell you how much they love it and why.
That example highlights the most common angle behind attraction marketing. Instead of telling shoppers why they need something, you show them why others need it. It is a sales technique that is far from being pushy.
Another example of attraction marketing can be found in your various inbound marketing strategies, including your blog. If people read your blog posts, watch your webinars, or attend your workshops, they will be more attracted to your brand when they are ready to buy. This is part of the strategy behind companies offering classes and workshops for free, whether online or in person.
Attraction marketing can be a key strategy for local businesses. Whether that’s partnering with local micro-influencers or adding content online, attraction marketing can help educate your target audience on why your business is the best choice.
How to master attraction marketing
As you create an attraction marketing campaign, you can do a few things to help improve your mastery of this method. Remember that attraction marketing helps with lead generation, so you won’t immediately notice sales.
Incorporate as many of the following attraction marketing tips as possible to get the best results. You will notice an improvement in the results of your lead generation efforts.
Be authentic
One of the most critical parts of attraction marketing is being authentic to your brand and yourself. People are more likely to connect with you if you highlight yourself as a person in addition to just your brand and products.
This is one of the attraction marketing strategies that take advantage of the fact that people are more willing to follow people than companies. By making a personal connection between yourself and your company, you can attract more leads and customers.
Define your audience
As with any other type of marketing, it’s essential to take the time to define your target audience. You need to know who you want to appeal to. After all, if you don’t identify your target audience, you can’t understand exactly what their challenges or preferences are, both in terms of products and marketing channels.
Understand your audience’s biggest challenges
Once you know your target audience, it is time to think about their biggest challenges or pain points. This lets you create content that shows how your product overcomes those challenges. At this stage, it can be beneficial to develop buyer personas. Use these personas to define your user market share further.
Generate and distribute content
Earlier, we mentioned the role of blogs, ebooks, and webinars in attraction marketing earlier. This type of content can help you by addressing the pain points of your target audience.
Remember that, with attraction marketing, you want customers to be attracted to your products or brand without you directly telling them to buy it. One way to do this is by showcasing your knowledge. This will help by letting people know that you are an expert, which implies that your products are high-quality and among the best.
Content generation and distribution also help by getting your brand name out there while people are still in the early stages of the sales funnel.
When generating and distributing content, think outside of the box. In addition to the content, you can share via traditional means, like ebooks, don’t forget about content for social media platforms.
Just some examples of content that can be part of your attraction marketing plan include:
- Blogs
- Webinars
- Podcasts
- Ebooks
- Discount offer writing
- Banner images
- Photos
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Weekly emails
- Quizzes
- Online classes
- In-person classes
Remember that you don’t have to start from scratch with all of this content. You can repurpose content you already created by converting it to another format. You can also refresh or update old blog posts or infographics you’ve previously published.
For example, maybe you have a video with tips related to your product. See if you can turn the video into a blog post or an infographic.
Whenever you post this valuable content, include social media icons with links to your profiles. This will help make all of your web content accessible and let you gain maximum visibility.
Build a relationship with your audience and earn their trust
Think back to the typical example of attraction marketing of influencers or celebrity endorsements. The key behind these endorsements’ success is that the audience trusts the influencer in question. You want to do the same thing throughout your attraction marketing strategies.
One excellent way to build trust is to interact with customers, both in-person and online. Local businesses can offer workshops or other programs in their stores. Whether or not you have a physical store, you can also offer online classes, DIY videos, and more to help your online business. These provide the personal touch that’s necessary to build a relationship.
Remember not to limit your interactions to just the spaces that customers already expect you to be. For example, don’t just post on your own social media profiles or wait for others to come to you. Find groups, hashtags, or posts relevant to your business and join the discussion to boost lead generation.
To further build trust and attract leads, ensure blind users visiting your entire website or social media profiles get a similar experience. Check important screen reader requirements so screen reader mode can capture the valuable content you share.
For example, use accurate form labels and follow general tips for screen reader optimization, including those for the most popular screen readers. You want there to be a few limitations to your online experience as possible, as this helps you avoid losing customers.
Be social and responsive
As mentioned, building a relationship with your customers should be done both online and in person. This means that social media will play a significant role in your attraction marketing strategy. Using social media will amplify your reach and make it easy to share content. It will also help humanize your business and make it seem more authentic, which is vital for an emotional connection.
You also want to use social media to communicate and engage with your customers. Encourage them to send you messages on social media and answer when they do. Create posts that encourage sharing or hashtags. Of course, make sure that your interactions on social media are consistent and polite. Those are common customer service tips regardless of your interaction.
As a bonus, this is also part of what retention marketing is. In other words, being social and responsive can help you retain customers and attract new ones. After all, it’s cheaper to keep existing customers than to find new ones.
Attraction marketing vs. common alternatives
For many business owners, the concept of attraction marketing may not entirely be new. They considered it one of their marketing techniques even without knowing what “attraction marketing” is.
To help you better understand it, look at how attraction marketing and traditional marketing compare.
To start, there is some overlap in the channels you will use. Attraction marketing, for example, commonly uses Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and email. Those are likely all part of your digital marketing strategy already. However, while your traditional marketing methods may include buying ad space on those channels, your attraction marketing strategy is more about creating content.
Attraction marketing vs. pushing the sale
You can also contrast attraction marketing with the idea of advertising your product or service directly. In this case, advertising the product or service would show shoppers your product without providing much background information, and you would be looking for a quicker overall path to the sale.
By contrast, with attraction marketing, you teach shoppers about the product and your brand and hope that they eventually choose your product or service. The challenges with pushing the sale include:
- Shoppers don’t have enough information about the product or service.
- Shoppers don’t have enough information about your company, so they don’t know if they can trust you.
- You have to compete with hundreds of other ads every day.
- You need multiple touch points with shoppers before they will work with you.
But attraction marketing overcomes these challenges. With attraction marketing:
- You teach customers about the product or service before you ever push it by sharing how it has affected you.
- You create a relationship with them and let them develop trust in you.
- You interact with shoppers multiple times, creating those touchpoints and moving them along the sales funnel.
However, the important thing to remember is that you don’t want to use attraction marketing in a vacuum. Most businesses will be better off by combining attraction marketing with other marketing, including a sales push. You can think of attraction marketing as your strategy for earlier in the sales funnel when your goal is attracting customers and other types of advertising as the strategy for later in the funnel.
For example, start with blog posts and ebooks and end with our SMS marketing guide. Don’t forget to include search engine optimization so people can find your blogs in the first place. This is especially true for small businesses without much brand recognition yet.
Conclusion: Why you should care about attraction marketing
Attraction marketing should be one of several strategies you incorporate into your overall marketing plan. It helps you build trust in your brand and get your name out there. Your core audience will see you as human beings, increasing how much value they get from your content and their likelihood of buying from your small business.
It can be an effective method of gently leading shoppers toward your brand and products or services without being overly pushy. Think of it as just one of the ways of attracting new retail customers.
