Attraction Marketing: How to Get Customers without Selling

Unless you are a genius salesperson, selling stuff feels awkward.

But what if your products and services could sell themselves? Yeah, right, sounds realistic…

While you might think we’re writing this blog from some La-la-land, we’re not. We simply know how effective attraction marketing can be.

It’s an approach that makes the customers come to you. After mastering it, you can ditch all the sleazy marketing techniques everyone hates. Sounds too good to be true? Then, you are in for an interesting ride.

In this guide, we will talk about how to use this magnetic technique to get the clients to turn to you without selling. Let’s get started.

What is attraction marketing?

Attraction marketing is a type of marketing strategy where the main plan is to get your customers to like your product without actually selling it.

It is the opposite of aggressive marketing. Rather than yell, “Buy my product” or “Hire me, I’m the best!” you simply focus on sharing value. That value is what will become your bait to reel in the customers.

For instance, have you ever had a store offering you free product samples?

Source: Sephora

The idea is that you would like the sample enough to want to buy the same product another time. Another popular example is the cafe that offered free coffee to customers who danced into the store. Did it work? Oh yeah, it did.

Source: X

In that one short clip above, you see so many customers who took up the offer. And it’s safe to say that some of them (including viewers) will return to buy coffee another day.

Yet, of course, attraction marketing isn’t just about offering your product/service for free or giving out free samples. The value you offer can come in the form of:

• Useful content pieces;
• Fun stories;
• Real-life, memorable experiences, etc.

This then forms the basis of the different types of attraction marketing, which we will look at next.

Different types of attraction marketing (with examples)

Now that we have gotten the attraction marketing definition out of the way, what real-life examples do we have that show how it works? There are tons of them, so let’s see the most common ones.

Attractive marketing strategies come in different flavors depending on the business, budget, and preferences. This includes:

Useful content pieces

This may be one of the most common forms of the attraction marketing system out there today. As the name suggests, a company creates content that provides people with useful, helpful insights. Some examples include:

• Blog posts;
• Tutorial videos;
• Infographics;
• Case studies;
• Podcasts;
• Quizzes;
• Survey results, etc.

Semrush and many other SaaS companies are champions of this marketing tactic. Typically, they offer great educational guides and tutorials on how to DIY many tasks.

Source: YouTube

Product endorsement

Having a beloved public figure endorse your product or admit they like to use your services is one surefire way to generate buzz.

This puts your brand on the radar of many fans, some of whom will likely get curious enough to check out what the buzz is about. There are many attraction marketing examples on social media that show how this works in practice.

Recently, we have seen many people become obsessed with Stanley Cups after seeing their favorite celebrities (like Adele) use them.

Educational events

Some companies like to create free webinars, workshops, or even online courses. The idea is to position themselves as a credible resource with authoritative content.

See how, instead of selling their product directly, companies can show their expertise and prove that they care about their target audience’s success.

If you’ve ever ended up signing up for a free SEO course by Ahrefs or any of the other businesses, then you already know how well this works.

Source: Ahrefs

Partnerships with influencers

Influencers are experts at promoting brands using the attraction marketing formula. When businesses collaborate with them, the influencers can share videos of themselves using the products. If it’s clothing, the followers get to see what it might look like on them, too.

This is a very popular tactic most brands use these days. Many, like Gymshark, also select their brand ambassadors who regularly show up in their clothes without actually selling them.

Source: TikTok

This way, even without telling anyone to buy, they send the signal to followers that this is a product worth checking out. And if we know anything about marketing, it’s that influencer marketing works well.

Why choose this type of marketing?

You might be thinking, that’s all well and good, but how do attraction marketing posts help you make more sales since you are not actively telling people to come buy from you? Let’s look at the benefits more closely:

• Create real connections based on trust. People will naturally start seeing your brand as an industry expert thanks to the valuable content you churn out. Over time, you’ll become the brand that has solutions to their problems.

As a result, they’ll develop trust for your brand, making it easier for them to convert into your customers.

• Save costs. Compared to using PPC, the attraction formula actually helps you lower customer acquisition costs. It is simple, really — people go where there is value. You offer it to them for free, and they will flock to you.
• Improve brand loyalty and advocacy. If people trust your brand, they are more likely to become repeat, loyal customers. This also creates a ripple effect, as they are more open to recommending your services to other businesses.
• Get more organic SEO traffic. When you’re posting actually helpful content on your blogs, social media, and other platforms, your customers will start sharing it sooner or later.

This will lead to more exposure. And as more people come to check out your posts, you get more traffic. Besides, if your content is optimized for SEO, all that engagement can help improve your search rankings.

• Get higher quality leads. This type of marketing is perfect for pulling the right kind of audience — those who are already interested in your expertise, services, and products. As they know what they need, you won’t have to do much convincing.

Top 6 attraction marketing strategies

Here is the cheatsheet to the best attraction marketing strategies proven to work:

1. Knowing your audience is key to giving them personal attention

Generally, an attractive marketing strategy hinges on how well you can give your audience personal attention, and this is why it’s important to really know your audience.

For example, Samsung tried to target Apple users who were waiting for some extraordinary changes in a new iPhone but hadn’t received them. While those ads were met with controversy, they are still great attraction marketing post examples.

Source: Phone Arena

You want to borrow a leaf from their playbook. Take your time to understand potential customers' pain points and desires. What do they want? And how can you give them that?

What to do:

• You can hang around online forums and comment sections and use surveys to learn more about your clients. You can also do the same research for your competitors’ brands.
• Do keyword research to find what search queries people are using online to find products like yours.
• Build buyer personas from the insights gathered.

Source: MITSDE

This makes it clear who you are targeting, and you get to understand just how to offer the type of value they need.

2. Create content that matches their search intent

Content is at the heart of value-driven marketing statutes, including this one. After completing the previous step, you already have the insights you need to create the best content, so put that to good use.

But even more importantly, the content needs to match what your target audience is actually looking for; otherwise, it’s not going to work.

Source: Frase

What to do:

• Create blog posts and social media posts that show you understand your customers’ struggles.
• Diversify your content to match each search intent – articles, videos, guest posts, and more.
• Share your own experiences if you’ve had similar challenges – people love stories.
• More importantly, don’t just talk about the problems and not offer any actionable tips to help people get through their issues.

3. Be authentic (show your face to your audience)

Did you know there was a ranking for the world’s most authentic brands? Well, now you do. Why does it matter?

86% of customers believe that authenticity is important for brand support. It makes sense — after all, trusting faceless brands is hard. So, create a face and a personality for your business.

Of course, you can think of an actual face that will represent your business, like what Disney does, for example. But it doesn’t have to be that literal. Simply identifying your core values and consistently communicating them is already a great start.

Source: Business Insider

When you have clear values and mission, people start to understand you, relate to your story, and trust your business.

What to do:

• What better way to show your authenticity than sharing your journey with your audience — behind the scenes is a great way to show your brand personality.
• Be vulnerable about your challenges and triumphs — still, try not to be a hot mess, and don’t brag either.
• Do you have any success stories from clients who loved your services? Share these testimonials — nothing like real stories to show potential customers that you can be trusted.
• Made mistakes in orders or delivery details? Better to admit this and make it up to your customer than try to cover it up.

4. Go big on consistency

One of the best attraction marketing tips you’re ever going to get is to be consistent. Even the best content is going to need some time before it starts bringing the desired results. So, you will need to put in your best efforts for a long time.

Ideally, you have to be consistent when it comes to your posting schedule and the messaging you transmit. People will need time to remember your brand and associate it with some authority.

Source: Papirfly

What to do:

• Churn out quality content on a regular basis. This is one of the best ways to get people to recognize and share your content, which will lead to more white-hat backlinks and authority.
• As much as possible, try publishing on multiple platforms.

5. Use social media

Source: Instagram

Using social media has two big advantages — it helps widen your brand reach and creates an easy way to engage with your audience regularly. Both of these are absolutely crucial.

You want to get as many eyes as possible on your content —- the more people know about you, the better.

At the same time, if you hope to keep them around for a long time, then you need a way to interact with them and make them feel a valued part of your brand family. Social media is perfect for this.

What to do:

• Choose the SM platforms where your target audience spends the most time and create platform-specific content that will get them to engage.
• Use popular music, hashtags, and other trends to reach more people.
• Encourage your clients to drop reviews — attraction marketing reviews act like a magnet for encouraging people to try your products out for themselves.
• Respond to comments whether they are asking for more info, sharing a view, or even complaining about something.

Source: radarr

• Respond to mentions in followers' SM profiles when appropriate.
• Invite your followers to check out more of your posts and sign up for any newsletters where you can share exclusive tips and so on.
• Be professional and warm — the rule of thumb is always to treat your audience like people, not dollar signs.

6. Focus on building relationships

You must have heard the saying that we should all treat others the way we want to be treated. The same principle applies in marketing.

Keep in mind that a great relationship with your people is the goal here, so try to prioritize that. The more you do this, the stronger your relationship will get. And we all know that trust is the secret recipe to turning visitors or casual customers into lifelong brand advocates.

Source: PC Mag

What to do:

• Do you have free tools or resources that would be useful to your clients? Share it — this is another good way to score some attraction marketing formula reviews.

Source: Ahrefs

• Don’t have free tools? You can always create and share free templates.
• Answer the occasional customer questions in online forums or your own comment section.
• Follow up on complaints.
• Host the occasional live Q&As and webinars.

Conclusion

It is easy to hear about any attraction marketing example and think of it as a quick fix to slow sales and engagement sales. Yet, building trust is not a one-day process, so be patient and consistent.

For sure, it works, but you are going to put the effort in and then wait a while for the results to come in — this means you will be playing the long game.

So, focus on solving your audience's problems and creating real connections with them. This way, you will build something that creates a lasting attraction in your marketing.