It could be considered quite easy to get lost in the vast world of marketing and the different ways to promote your business. But one key area that local businesses should be focusing on is Attraction Marketing.
This form of marketing predates many of the other popular strategies today such as online or influencer marketing, and while it lost favor for a while, it has slowly been making a comeback.
Attraction Marketing is simply a strategy whereby businesses provide value to their customers, aiming to grab their attention and draw them in towards their products.
Essentially, it involves you giving knowledge and information about the product without selling it. This means that when the time comes for a customer to purchase an item that you already sell, their mind will subconsciously think of your business because you have provided them valuable information or knowledge about a product which you already sell.
The best way to think of Attraction Marketing is to envision it as a five-phase process:
- Know Your Audience
- Know Your Product
- Focus On Channels That Work
- Provide Valuable Content
- Share Your Solution
This form of marketing is a great way to generate leads and build brand loyalty for your business. The strategy you take will completely depend on you, however, here are some attraction marketing tips for local businesses that can help grow your business:
Know Your Audience
Before marketing any good, you must first make sure that you know who your target audience is. This helps you filter out all the people who are unlikely to buy the product and focus on those who are most likely to make a purchase.
To help you know your audience, you should research what group is most likely to find your product appealing and take note of it.
It is not uncommon for businesses to use demographics to tailor down their target audience, e.g., age and gender. Once you know who your target audience is, you should then conduct further research about how best to reach that audience.
If you find that your product is most likely to appeal to younger audiences, then it might be more beneficial to market on online platforms. For an older audience, on the other hand, more traditional forms of marketing may reap more rewards.
A refined audience helps you to control the narrative of your product, allowing you to effectively spread the news to the groups that are most likely to increase your brand visibility.
There are many ways to narrow down your target audience e.g., through personas or surveys. However, it is not just enough to know your audience.
You must keep being engaged with your consumers if you aim to keep your business successful and strengthen your customer relationships.
Know Your Product
If your marketing aim is to provide information about a particular product, then you must have comprehensive knowledge about that product. It is unlikely that a client would make a purchase in the future if you do not provide the necessary information that would make them more likely to buy the product.
Focus On The Channels That Work
Not all channels are effective tools for attraction marketing for local businesses. If you find that a particular channel such as Instagram or YouTube is not generating the leads that you desire, then you should spend less time on that channel and dedicate more energy to those that are working.
Some local businesses often find that a key strategy might be focusing on a single channel, which is mostly the channel that their clients are most active on. Leveraging the channel with the highest level of engagement allows you to communicate a consistent message and control the narrative about a product.
Provide Valuable Content
Local businesses that struggle to utilize Attraction Marketing often ignore the phased approach, which is what leads to failure. Simply keeping your audience engaged with the content you provide is only the first phase. You must also tap into that engagement and use it to generate revenue.
For example, if an ice cream shop provides 100 free tasters but is unable to sell any regular-sized ice creams, then this can be considered a pointless exercise.
The free content you are providing aims to give your audience something of value before asking them for something in return. While your customer is being lured with this free content, you should find a way to attract customers back to your business.
If we think back to the ice cream example, rather than just offering free ice creams to everyone, you could offer it to only those who register for your loyalty card. On the other hand, if you are marketing online, then you could offer your clients free digital materials in exchange for their permission to receive marketing emails.
Share Your Solution
This is the final goal of attraction marketing and should be the aim for all local businesses. If you are selling a product, then it is likely that you are adding value to a client in some way or solving one of their problems. This should be your major selling point and any client should be aware of your solution.
How your product can better the lives of its users should be your go-to narrative. Regardless of what good or service you are providing to your clients, if you are adding value to their lives, then there is no point in being silent about it.
Businesses often frame their narratives with statistics or share first-hand experiences about how they have changed the lives of other clients.
It is also quite common to see before and after solutions being marketed to potential customers, showing them the amount of change your product can introduce into their lives.
Once you have engagingly framed your narrative and built a relationship with your customer, this is when you provide them with the offer that would help your business generate revenue.