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Attraction Marketing Defined, Once and For All

So What is Attraction Marketing? The concept of attraction marketing is now widely accepted as a systematic approach to deliver valuable content to a targeted audience for the purpose of building trust and credibility with the audience who in turn become loyal customers or business partners. The term attraction marketing was made popular by the network marketing industry. The main platform of delivery is the Internet, although it is not the only platform.

The exact definition Attraction Marketing varies depending on the source. The purpose of my definition here is not to sell you on what I think attraction marketing is or what products and strategies you should use to execute it, but rather to provide an unadulterated understanding of the principle, without a sales agenda. The reason I think this is important is because when doing research on attraction marketing, I could find but one source that provided what seemed to be a neutral, academic definition, which was on Wikipedia. Every other written piece I have seen is a direct or indirect attempt to get the reader to buy into their particular understanding of attraction marketing which is defined by the products they are selling. Not that these definitions are invalid, many are very educational and valuable. However, I don’t want my readers thinking that attraction marketing is a set of tools and products that comes neatly packaged in an affiliate link. It is actually a unique concept which deserves a definition on its own, independent of any particular product or method.

The Originator of Attraction Marketing

The original and still the best introduction to Attraction Marketing ever produced in my opinion is Mike Dillard’s Magnetic Sponsoring Book. The value in that book spans industries, even though it’s targeted to Network Marketing. The book does lead to an offer for other services and tools (as is inherent in all attraction marketing), but it teaches the core of Attraction Marketing as it applies to the individual. It explains what is necessary to make yourself attractive to other people so that they would want to join “you”, not your company or product. Magnetic Sponsoring could really be considered the bible of personal attraction marketing. It explains not just the concept, but how to transform oneself into a person whom other people will follow.

Is there an Objective Definition?

Now let’s look at the definition on Wikipedia, which is the only attraction marketing definition I found that did not have an overt agenda to sell something (yes, we are all selling something, but my goal in this writing is to provide an objective education on the concept). It’s worth looking at the definition of traditional marketing, advertising and branding first. In brief, Marketing is a process of identifying customer needs and delivering a solution for those needs. Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take a particular action. Branding is repetitive advertising to associate a certain product or company with certain qualities in the mind of the consumer. These are actually all the components of Attraction Marketing, and have been widely used since the late 19^th century with the advent of mass production. Attraction Marketing is a specific and distinctive concept which is built upon these components.

As defined on Wikipedia: “Attraction Marketing is the use of marketing techniques specifically designed to teach the customer what you are doing and how a service or product will benefit them well before they purchase it. Reverse Marketing is the same concept of Attraction Marketing. Reverse marketing is the concept of making the customer seek the firm rather than marketers seeking the customer. Reverse marketing works mainly on the basis of the Law of Attraction. While marketing mainly deals with finding the right set of customers and targeting them, Reverse marketing deals with strategies that would make the customer find the company offering the product.”

How Attraction Marketing Came to Be

Which brings us to Network Marketing, the industry some feel is responsible for coining the term Attraction Marketing. Traditionally, Network Marketing has been a “seek and sell” activity where representatives actively approach people in their personal networks and cold prospects to make a pitch, without any significant pre-qualification of the prospect’s interest in their product or opportunity. While not an efficient strategy, it has proven effective ever since Amway made network marketing popular some forty years ago. It was largely based on the credibility people have with their personal networks, similar to recommending a movie or restaurant, a personal referral has always been an effective way of getting new customers. However this type of promotion has many negative consequences on your personal relationships, which is a topic for another day. As Dale Carnegie said best, it’s like “fishing with strawberries and cream”.

Attraction Marketing evolved out of two phenomenon.

#1 – The pain and frustration of home-based business business owners, and

#2 – The growth of internet marketing.

In a way, Attraction Marketing is what you get when you combine affiliate marketing online, which has been established for some 15 years now, and Network Marketing. Lead Generation Online has been a welcome opportunity in Network Marketing to address the main pitfall of the industry, which is the lack of leads. Your personal network only goes so far, and then it’s on to cold calling, an activity that can take the wind out of your sails real fast. That’s where attrition starts to become a problem because no matter what any Network Marketing company promises, you can never stop prospecting and bringing new customers and reps into your organization if you want to thrive long-term.

Attraction Marketing is now being used in all types of marketing online. Any company that’s engaged in blogging and social media, is really practicing some elements of it already, even if they don’t realize it.

The Million Dollar Question

Which Attraction Marketing Strategy should I use?

So the million dollar question that drives nearly every definition of attraction marketing you will find on the internet is:

How is Attraction Marketing best accomplished?

My answer, is that it depends. It depends your goals, skills and preferences. Attraction Marketing is not limited to the internet, or any specific set of strategies or systems. To understand how it can be accomplished, just ponder all the ways a business can advertise. Because Attraction Marketing, if you want to boil it down, is simply taking the marketing, advertising and branding strategies long understood in the corporate world, and applying them for yourself in network marketing. The internet has now opened up this ability for anyone with a basic understanding of internet marketing. There are very low cost and effective methods online to market and brand yourself. And if you do not know the first thing about internet marketing, there are an abundance of tools and resources to let you get started in a relatively short period of time. In fact, too many some would say. That is one of the main challenges faced by anyone doing attraction marketing today.

Online it’s all about getting traffic to wherever it is you want them to go in order to see your content. It could be a blog, a capture page, squeeze page, or even a Facebook page.

Brief summary of online Attraction Marketing Strategies

This is just to give you a basic awareness of what’s out there, by no means is this exhaustive or will this teach you how to execute these strategies. That is what my blog posts, Insider Secrets Page and the systems I promote are all about.

1. Blogging – Develop and Maintain a personal website by regularly posting valuable articles and content that will engage and ultimately help your readers to build their business. This is part of a content based strategy, which many concur is the best long-term way to make yourself valuable to your audience.
2. Pay Per Click – This is a paid advertising strategy, although much more affordable than most forms of advertising and shown to be highly effective in the network marketing industry. This is all about copywriting and keyword research, which are relatively advanced skills to develop. So often you will find more experienced internet marketers using pay per click.
3. Social Media – Facebook, Twitter and other similar sites have become one the most powerful forces in consumer markets. There are many courses available all about building your social media networks and how to turn those connections into customers or business partners.
4. Article Marketing – Can be used to drive traffic to a blog or directly to a sales page or capture page. If you like to write, or can pay others to do it for you, submitting your articles to directories can be a great way to get backlinks to get traffic and help your search engine rankings.
5. Video Marketing – like article marketing but with videos. With youtube and many other video directories, you can create valuable backlinks. Plus, videos have become one of the most compelling ways to engage website visitors
6. SEO – This all about making whatever web page you are promoting show up at the top of search engine results for certain search terms. All the strategies above are part of SEO strategies.
7. Online Classified Ads, Ezines and Solo Ads – additional ways you can advertise online, each of these is a strategy unto itself, and again advertising is all about copywriting and keyword research
8. Email Marketing – this is perhaps the narrow end of the funnel where all other strategies lead. The ultimate goal is to build a list of targeted email subscribers, where you can automatically deliver valuable content , and links to your products, services and opportunities.

A couple offline strategies which are still used and highly effective:

1. Postcard Campaigns – this requires an advertising budget, and copywriting skills as well. There are courses available on Postcard Marketing
2. Automated Dialers – investment required for this as well. Essentially these systems will pull phone numbers off the internet from sites in your target market, i.e. network marketing blogs, and leave them a voicemail. When people return the call you are notified and have yourself a qualified lead.

The Funded Proposal Or Self-Liquidating Offer

A core concept of attraction marketing is the funded proposal. Essentially, it’s a low cost product that will deliver high value to the targeted customer. This will establish this person as high value lead, and allow you to generate revenue that pays for your attraction marketing campaigns. You gain traffic with the strategies above and funnel that traffic to your funded proposal product. After a customer buys your funded proposal, it is then recommended to have a more significant retail product, an attraction marketing system typically, that will create more significant revenues. At this point you have established a strong relationship with the prospect and they are likely to be interested in your primary opportunity, which is your network marketing business. The overriding goal is to have prospects want to join your team, however you can still produce a significant source of income from prospects that never join your team.

Attraction Marketing for a Sustainable MLM

Network marketing has always afforded great opportunities with very low upfront investments. But the industry has been plagued by inherent limitations of using your personal network as your customer and distributor base. Attraction Marketing changes this dynamic, and puts the marketing powers of a Fortune 500 company in the hand of individual network marketers.

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