When it comes to attracting more customers, we often forget that ATTRACT is precisely the keyword.

Instead of thinking about what interests the other and then what I can do to attract them from there, we focus more on what I want to sell and how I can make the other pay attention to me.

Traditional marketing –intrusive marketing

These are the ads that appear before a YouTube video that you cannot skip; TV advertising that interrupts you in the middle of your favorite show; the giant signs on the roads that distract you while you are driving; Facebook ads one after the other in the middle of your friends' photos and messages.

Usually, you have a product or service that you love and you go out to do marketing so that other people find out what you are offering and buy from you.

You do marketing to attract attention by showing your products, your services, your offers, or news.

Focusing Too Much On Yourself, Always Talking About Your Brand

Maybe when you started you thought that by having a different and good product, simply by showing it to the world, the visits and sales were going to start coming.

You were probably disappointed when you saw that this is not so easy, not so automatic, and increasingly difficult. You may have already noticed that the "organic" is increasingly rare.

In the end, it is as if you are screaming all the time to get attention and few people look at you or listen to you; few likes, few comments, few visits.

It’s frustrating.

That is why I want to introduce you to another type of marketing, the marketing of the attraction, the inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing

It is the marketing that does not focus on GOING OUT to talk about oneself to get attention, but instead seeks that potential customer ARRIVE alone.

It seeks to add value and guide your potential customer in their purchasing process from the moment they detect their need until they are ready to buy.

This type of marketing is focused less on you and more on the other, on your client.

What does this mean and how is it different from traditional marketing?

Attract versus interrupt: Being in the places where your potential client will be looking for you versus trying to get their attention everywhere at any time.

The focus is on the other, on your client: Adding value and sharing relevant and useful content, versus just talking about your products or services.

Guide you in your buying process: Share different content depending on the moment you are in the purchase cycle versus communicating the same to everyone.

Much more efficient: less traffic but more qualified leads, people who are already interested in the content you are sharing, who are looking for that.

The first contact is not to sell: Just as on a first date nobody proposes for marriage, here it is the same. The objective of this first contact is to obtain permission (email, telephone, site visit) to continue contacting them.

Let us look at an example. You are an event decorator.

In the traditional marketing scenario, you publish photos of your events on Instagram, make announcements on Facebook with your services, and perhaps even some advertising in a magazine of the field.

You talk about yourself (your services, your products) and the focus is on attracting attention.

In the best of cases, you segment those ads so that they only reach your target, based on where you provide your services, age, and if they are men or women.

Many of these ads will be seen by people who are not even thinking of organizing an event today. And for those who are thinking about it, your challenge will be to do something attractive and interesting enough to get their attention between the photos of their friends and the hundreds of other accounts on Instagram.

Now let us see the same example but from the side of attraction marketing or inbound marketing.

Someone is about to turn 50 and wants to throw a party. You know you have to organize it ahead of time, so start by looking for "fun 50th birthday party ideas."

In Google, several results appear, one of which is an article you wrote on your blog with "10 ideas to celebrate your 50th birthday." Perfect, just what I was looking for.

He enters the article and he loves what you wrote and all the photos you showed him of the events you organized.

When you finish reading the ideas, you see that at the end of the article you can download a checklist with everything you have to take into account to organize your party by subscribing to the email newsletter. You love it, that will simplify everything!

In this type of marketing, you are adding value and helping the people with the resources that are in immediate demand. In return, you are getting their contact details, where you can talk to the people and offer your services.

In many cases, they will want to know more about the services you offer since they loved what they saw on your blog. They will probably go to your services page and if interested, will contact you.

Here, they found your brand and contacted you. You did not go after them to get their attention when they were doing something else.

If after reading the article, they are still not convinced to contact you, a few days later you could send them an email asking them what they think of the ideas and if they need any help.

Start a conversation

They will be much more open to listening to you than if they had simply seen an advertisement for your services out of the blue.

It is a philosophy not only to do marketing but also to manage your business differently. It is one of the best ways to treat your customers more authentically and focused on the long term.

Marketing is one of the tools but the philosophy behind it is much bigger.

Surely, you are thinking that everything sounds very nice, but that type of marketing takes more time since you have to create all that content.

It is true. It takes more time and patience, but that is also, why the long-term results are greater, the investment is more efficient and, everything is much more rewarding because you are creating resources and content on the subject that you like and with which you can help many people.

Moreover, with that content, you are creating an asset that will be there forever enriching your business.

Unlike an ad that begins and ends on a date and where you are likely to communicate something very specific, your content will never go out of style and will help you continue to attract potential customers over and over again.

It becomes a magnet with no expiration date.

This is not to say that traditional marketing techniques no longer work!

Using Duplicate Content

Have you ever written a particularly great guest post that you wanted to share on your own site too? That's great. You should share it with your loyal readers, but you should do it in a way that prevents your content from being flagged as a copy by search engines. Sharing identical content across multiple sites makes you seem redundant to both your readers and the search engines.

Instead of copying and pasting, you can rewrite the post to say the same things in different words, or you can write a great intro on your site and then link to the original piece. You can reuse the image for the original content, or better yet, take a screenshot of the piece and use it. But never duplicate content.

The tools are not good or bad in themselves but it depends on how we use them.

With an Inbound Marketing philosophy, even if you make an interrupting ad (on Facebook, YouTube, or magazines), what changes is the objective.

The objective is not going to be to sell in the first contact but to get the first appointment. Maybe it is to get a phone call or that the person downloads some content by subscribing to your newsletter.

It is not the same that you make a paid advertisement of "look at my services", and if you advertise an article you wrote such as "5 tips to create your brand". In both, you will be interrupting and trying to get attention, but the goal is different.

The reception will be different and the people who come to your page will be different too because they will be much more targeted to that type of content that you are communicating.

Of course, you can also use these traditional tools to sell directly, but not on the first contact. Perhaps in the second or third contact segmenting the advertising so that people who have already read your article only see it, visited a certain page, or downloaded your content.

All that can be done and it is the magic of the digital world.

“The goal is to teach, entertain, add value to encourage that stranger to become a friend and once you become a friend, apply enough targeted marketing to turn you into a customer.” - SETH GODIN

Take advantage of the digital world to do a much more genuine and valuable type of marketing, attracting the right people with relevant and useful content.

Attract versus go out and sell loudly

When you stop focusing and make an effort to sell and put all that energy into helping and sharing your knowledge, you will see how the sales will begin to arrive but you will also enjoy what you are doing much more

In an age where we increasingly have more incentives, more information, more options ... this type of marketing appears as an alternative to generating relationships that are more authentic with your customers.

Building genuine relationships

In the end, it takes two for a relationship and without clients; there is no business, right?

What type of relationships do you want to build with your clients and what type of marketing are you going to apply for that?

I would love for you to tell me below in the comments if this is the type of marketing you would like to do and if you have any questions about how to carry it out in your business or any barrier that you feel exists today, to be able to help you.