Marketing

A Guide to Understanding and Using Attraction Marketing

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As you know, no business’s <a href="https://www.podium.com/article/what-is-local-marketing/">marketing techniques</a> are complete without incorporating attraction marketing. Attraction marketing is more indirect than other forms of marketing. This subtlety is what makes it a great strategy to supplement more <a href="https://www.podium.com/article/direct-marketing/">direct marketing</a> strategies.
Incorporating an attraction marketing strategy into your overall advertising plan can significantly improve your ability to convert leads and make more sales. 
<h2>What is attraction marketing?</h2>
As we mentioned, attraction marketing centers around implementing strategies to encourage customers to buy something without actually telling them to do so. So, instead of saying “buy this now” or offering a discount, you employ other, more “discreet” methods to convince customers to take action.
A critical element of attraction marketing is giving potential customers important information regarding your products before you attempt to persuade them to make a purchase. One of the most common attraction marketing examples is a celebrity or influencer endorsement. In every scenario, the celebrity doesn’t explicitly tell you to buy the product. They don’t have to. They just tell you how much they love it and why.
This example highlights the most common angle behind attraction marketing. Instead of telling shoppers why they need something, you show them why others need it. That’s the brilliance of it: it’s a sales technique that is far from 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’ll be more attracted to your brand when they’re 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, big and small. Whether it’s partnering with local <a href="https://www.cmswire.com/digital-marketing/social-media-influencers-mega-macro-micro-or-nano/">micro-influencers</a> or adding content online, attraction marketing can help educate your target audience on why your business is the best choice.
<h2>Benefits of Attraction Marketing</h2>
Along with its subtlety, attraction marketing has many benefits that make it particularly appealing to local businesses–especially those on a budget. 
<h3>1. Improves brand awareness.</h3>
Good content marketing and solid customer advocacy will spread the word about your brand faster than almost anything else–and in a way that will last. These aspects of attraction marketing also positively affect your SEO and online marketing, creating a self-sustaining marketing cycle that will keep marketing for you during and after hours. 
<h3>2. Provides a low-cost solution.</h3>
How much does it cost to share a story? Depending on the platform you’re using, not much–maybe nothing. Attraction marketing is one of the most powerful methods of marketing you can employ for almost zero cost, giving you more bang for your buck than most large-scale marketing efforts. With a large time investment but low resource requirement, you can source quality new leads and new customers without breaking the bank.
<h3>3. Improves customer relationships.</h3>
Done well, attraction marketing improves your customer relationships by collecting valuable information, offering quality content for free, and sharing testimonials that increase trust and brand loyalty. With the right attraction marketing formula, you can consistently show customers how much you care about their experience with you–both before purchase and after. 
<h2>Cons of Attraction Marketing</h2>
While the benefits obviously outweigh the costs, there are also some challenges that you should be aware of. 
<h3>1. May be time-consuming</h3>
Attraction marketing, especially inefficient attraction marketing, can take up a lot of time. Without the right tools and a solid game plan, you can eat up a lot of your day spinning your wheels online with ineffective posts and sub-par marketing. Even good marketing content takes a fair amount of time to produce, especially when you’re trying to rank for keywords and serve a target audience. 
<h3>2. Depends on technology</h3>
As we mentioned, the right tools make all the difference. Without a dependable platform that tracks data and routes efficiently, your attraction marketing can fall flat. And even when everything is working, sometimes the best-laid plans fall through. 
<h3>3. Requires continuous effort </h3>
Like most marketing efforts, this is not a one-and-done situation. Attraction marketing requires constant maintenance and upkeep to remain effective, especially when it comes to keeping up with customer expectations, competitors, and current trends.
<h2>How to Implement Attraction Marketing in Three Steps</h2>
Now that we’ve covered pros and cons, let’s get down to brass tacks. Here are three steps to help you start implementing attraction marketing. 
<h3>1. Share personal stories</h3>
When it comes to marketing, the more personal, the better. Create a section on your website where you share how you inherited your ice cream shop from your Austrian grandmother and expanded it in her name or built your bike shop from the ground with nothing but a wrench, a garage, and a mobile phone. 
<h3>2. Choose the right channels</h3>
Want to know a secret? The key to success in almost every marketing effort is selecting the right channels. Select your channels based on your customer personas, basing your strategies on where your customers actually spend their time. Learn how to use these channels well, including all of their benefits and side tips for optimum use. 
<h3>3. Educate your customers</h3>
You keep up-to-date with all of the latest research and trends for your services or products. And your customers want to hear about it. Share disruptive blog posts, podcasts, newsletters, webinars, articles, videos, DIY guides on related topics, presentations, and more to help your customers get the most out of your products/services and become fellow experts in the industry. This will not only increase your credibility and trust but also help your customers understand exactly why you are the very best option for the solution they are looking for. 
<h2>Attraction Marketing Tips &amp; Best Practices</h2>
As you put together an attraction marketing campaign, there are a few things you can do to help improve your mastery of this method. 
Incorporate as many of the following attraction marketing tips as possible to get the best results. Remember: attraction marketing helps with lead generation, so you won’t immediately notice sales, but you will notice an improvement in the results of your lead generation efforts. 
<h3>Be authentic.</h3>
One element that makes attraction marketing so convincing is being authentic to your <a href="https://marketsplash.com/attraction-marketing/#why-does-it-matter-">brand</a> and yourself. People are more likely to connect with you if you highlight yourself as a person in addition to your brand and products.
This attraction marketing strategy takes advantage of the fact that people are always more willing to follow people than companies. By making a personal connection between yourself and your company, you can attract more leads and customers. 
<h3>Define your audience.</h3>
As with any 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, and your marketing will fall flat. 
<h3>Understand your audience’s biggest challenges.</h3>
Once you know your target audience, it’s time to think about their biggest <a href="https://www.podium.com/article/marketing-basics-for-business-owners/">challenges</a> and pain points. This empowers you to 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. 
<h3>Generate and distribute content.</h3>
Earlier, we mentioned the role of blogs, ebooks, and webinars in attraction marketing. This type of content can help you address the pain points of your target audience specifically and thoroughly.
Remember: 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 lets people know that you are an expert which implies, in turn, that your products are high-quality and among the best. 
Content generation and distribution also help by exposing consumers to your brand name while people are still in the early stages of the sales funnel. 
When generating and distributing content, always think outside of the box. You can share via traditional means, such as ebooks, as well as your favorite <a href="https://www.podium.com/article/social-media-marketing-strategy/">social media</a> platforms.
Some examples of content that can be part of your attraction marketing plan include:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Blogs</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Webinars</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Podcasts</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Ebooks</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.podium.com/article/customer-retention-emails/">Discount offer writing</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Banner images</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Photos</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Videos</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Podcasts</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Weekly emails</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Quizzes</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Online classes</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">In-person classes</li>
</ul>
Remember: you don’t have to start from scratch with all of this content. You can<a href="https://www.jeffbullas.com/attraction-marketing/"> repurpose</a> content you’ve 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 valuable content, include social media icons with links to your profiles. This will help make all of your web content accessible and allow your business to gain maximum visibility. 
<h3>Build a relationship with your audience and earn their trust.</h3>
Think back to the typical example of attraction marketing via influencers or celebrity endorsements. The key behind these endorsements’ success is that the audience trusts the influencer in question. Unsurprisingly, you want to do the same thing throughout your attraction marketing strategies.
One excellent way to build trust is to interact meaningfully with customers, both in person and online. Consider offering workshops or other programs in your 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 efforts provide a personal touch that’s necessary to build a lasting relationship.
Pro Tip: don’t limit your interactions to 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<a href="https://fastmarketingminute.com/how-to-master-attraction-marketing/"> posts</a> 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 have a consistently similar experience. Check important screen reader requirements so screen reader mode can capture the valuable content you share. 
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 as few hindrances to your online experience as possible as this helps you avoid losing customers.
<h3>Be social and responsive.</h3>
As mentioned, building a relationship with your customers should happen online and in person. This means that social media should play a significant role in your attraction marketing strategy. Using social media can significantly amplify your reach and make it easy to share persuasive content. It will also help humanize your business and make you seem more authentic, which is vital for an emotional connection that tips the scales. 
You also want to use social media to communicate and <a href="https://www.podium.com/article/customer-engagement-platform">engage with your customers</a>. Encourage them to send you messages and answer when they do. Create posts that encourage sharing or hashtags. As always, make sure that your interactions on social media are consistent and polite. 
Done correctly, attraction marketing shores you up for excellent<a href="https://www.podium.com/article/retention-rate/"> retention marketing</a>. In other words, being social and responsive can help you retain customers and attract new ones. After all, it’s much cheaper to keep existing customers than to find new ones.
<h2>Attract &amp; Reach Your Ideal Customer</h2>
Podium’s messaging platform empowers over 150,000 local businesses to reach their ideal audience, generate more leads, and drive revenue via <a href="https://www.podium.com/text-marketing/">text</a>. With <a href="https://www.podium.com/texting-templates/">templates</a> and tools such as <a href="https://www.podium.com/reviews/">Reviews</a>, <a href="https://www.podium.com/webchat/">Webchat</a>, and Payments, you can increase transparency throughout your organization, make your website a conversation-starting machine, and offer a seamless, outstanding customer experience that will collect high-quality reviews automatically. 
Podium can help you reach the <a href="https://www.podium.com/webchat-in-action/">right</a> customer at the right time, every time. Try it for <a href="https://www.podium.com/google-review-link/">free</a> here.

A Guide to Understanding and Using Attraction Marketing

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