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Location, location, location.
Virtually any book, article, or blog talking about starting a physical, offline, bricks and mortar business, emphasizes the important role location plays in business success.
BUT… what can you do to attract customers when your business is virtual? When it’s online?
Because, you DON’T have any:
- foot traffic or passers-by
- artfully decorated window displays
- way to be a bakery with the aroma of baking bread wafting out your door
- sign spinners to catch people’s attention
So what can you do to attract the right customers?
The solution is to use simple emotion to attract and influence your prospective customers and draw them in through your online front door i.e.: your website.
You’ll also want a point of difference, so you stand out from the crowd amongst all the ‘noise’ and distraction online. Be authentic, be attractive, and be awesome.
What you have to offer is worth their investment of time and money – otherwise you wouldn’t be in business as an affiliate marketer.
So there’s a million ($’s) reasons why you must leverage how our brains work in order to encourage your website visitors to spend some time (and money) with you.
Ready to start? Sure! You know when you’re onto a good thing.
You’ve always sensed it deep inside, even though you were hesitant to say it out loud. You’ve had times when you’ve fallen short of your goals. Who hasn’t? We sure have. Maybe you’ve even thought of giving up. But you kept falling forward. The fact you’re here reading this proves you’re not a quitter.
So, are these statements true for you?
a. I want to create financial success
b. I am willing to do what it takes to do that (within reason)
c. I am coachable
d. I want to learn ways to make my dreams a reality
Yes? Yes!!
You truly are a winner and we’re about to show you how to grab your audience by the eyeballs so you can show them why they need you.
Here's: 10 Proven Customer Attraction Ideas To Make You More Money
1. Grok Your Audience
You read that first word a couple of times with your face all scrunched up like “Huh?” But, if you’ve read Stranger in a Strange Land, by the incomparable Robert Heinlein, you’ll know exactly what we’re talking about.
To grok is to “empathize or communicate sympathetically; to establish rapport.”
You need to learn what motivates the people you want to draw into your online business.
- Before you sell them anything, you need to engage them
- Before you tell them what you have, show them why they need you
- Before you show them why they need you, figure out that answer yourself
“What motivates them?”
“What are their desires?”
“What problems do they need to solve?”
Where do you turn to learn the answers to these questions?
Simply ASK the people in your target market. Surveys will give additional insight into who your visitors are and what their goals are.
Go to forums where your target market is hanging out and see what questions people are asking, and what they want help with.
Go to Amazon and look at reviews on books that are relevant to your niche, and see what people are saying there.
Once you know their stories, what do you do next?
2. Cast Your Reader As The Star
There’s an old joke that ends something like this: “But, I’ve talked enough about me. How about you? What do you think about me?”
You’ll lose the interest and attention of visitors and potential clients if all you do is toot your own horn. My products…my services…me me me! After a while it all sounds like the adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon.
Yes, the end goal is to sell your products and be successful. But, be patient and pace yourself. First, let readers see themselves in your content. There’s something irresistible about feeling understood. Then draw them in with your consideration of who they are and what they’re about.
Always use ‘you’ language, and remember to have a spattering of inclusive language to include your reader in the article, like:
- Does that make sense to you too?
- Maybe you, or someone you know, has experienced that too?
- Perhaps you feel the same way?
Do you know what we mean? ????
3. Be Unique!
There’s a TON of competition online – blogs, websites, Facebook pages – which is evidence you’re in a profitable niche.
Your first instinct may be to figuratively create a better mousetrap than your competition OR to openly find fault and unprofessionally slate your competition (we see that a lot in the affiliate marketing niche – which is very underhand and immoral). Hold off a minute. Avoid lowering yourself into a mud-slinging match with them. Simply present yourself in a better, more interesting manner.
Carve out your own attractor factor.
Do you in a way that’s different from the way others are doing them.
Run rings around your competitors and encourage prospective customers to follow.
Being innovative and diverse will garner attention and publicity (we’ll always do a high five for free advertising!), and it’ll increase your chances that other players in your niche will want to work with you too.
Those connections will increase your visibility and your bottom line.
Meek and mild won’t cut it, child!
Stand up. Stand out. Show off and they’ll show up!
Doors will open and customers will flood to you.
For us, our best-selling, triple-award winning book sets us apart – it’s helped us change people’s lives – BUT… we’ve also seen others attempt rip it off (which is infuriating), but proves our competitors are in awe of it to want to copy us. However, copy cats aren’t authentic, and are only doing themselves a dis-service.
4. Engaging Emotion
Sit back and relax because number 4 is full of wisdom, insights and techniques you’ll want to commit to memory and take to heart.
We want this to make sense to you. Humans feel safer when things make sense.
But, most often feelings trump logic (that’s important human psychology to understand as a marketer).
When you want to get people’s attention and draw them in, simply appeal to one of their basic emotions…
What are these basic emotions and how can you use them to benefit your customers and your business?
LOVE
Love is a natural fit for fashion, dating, and beauty niches. But, love is also a motivator in gift giving and health-related companies.
Tell success stories about being loving, falling in love, feeling loved, and people will love you lol.
They’ll associate your website with feelings of warmth, security and caring.We’ve been married for nearly 30 years now, so happily portray ourselves as a loving, caring, middle-aged couple – hence our branded image…
ANGER
What makes your target audience furious?
Talk about it.
Tell them why they have every right to be angry.
Stir them up, then tell them how you can help make it right.
What pisses us off most is people who give up too quickly. They stumble at the first hurdle, think online business isn’t easy, and never really give themselves permission to keep failing forward. It’s sooo sad to witness, as we know they have what it takes to start and grow a thriving online business – they simply need to trust themselves.
This post was written as a bit of a rant to express our anger and people’s lack of resourcefulness:
>>How To Be Smart In A World of Dumb Opportunity Seekers <<
SHOCK
We’re not talking about shock for the sake of sensationalism. That’ll turn people off and send them packing. You want to shock them and show them how they can take action. This is a bit different from the “anger” aspect.
With shock, you are making visitors aware of a problem or injustice and giving them an outlet for their outrage.
We use shocking numbers and rapid pace of change in this article:
>> How Safe Is Your Job From The Bots <<
FEAR
Headlines like “The three ways you put your life at risk every day” and “Have you protected your family in case of an emergency?” grab attention.
However, be super sure you have answers to show customers how to alleviate the problems you highlight. You don’t want to bring them in and then have them look elsewhere for solutions. Make a clear connection between the need at hand and what you offer to help fill that need.
We generally use the fear of missing out (FOMO) in our emails as a real motivator to take action.
JOY
Can you read that word and not start to hum Ode To Joy?
Spread joy in your virtual world. Smiles and joy are contagious.
People love to share pictures and sayings that have a positive vibe, so include those attention getters on your site and Facebook page, and they’ll be shared over and over.
Viral brings more traffic, more people, and more sales.
HOPE
As the story goes, when Pandora’s Box was opened, and all the evils of the world were released, all that was left was hope. People need hope when things are dark. Be that light of hope and your visitors will grasp onto it and to what you have to offer.
This article gives hope – in that ordinary people like us can take consistent action and escape the rat race:
>> How To Actually Have Your Cake And Eat It Too <<
HUMOUR
According to a study based on a review of the 100 million most shared articles, the ones that caused laughter, joy and amusement accounted for nearly half of the total. Make people laugh, make them happy, and make them joyful, and you’ll make yourself well known.
DISGUST
There must be something the people you’re targeting get really disgusted about. Find out what it is and write about it. Get their attention by agreeing with them and find a way to address the problem.
We’re disgusted by scam artists and ponzi schemes – which prompted this post:
>> 7 Warning Signs When You’re Confronted With A Ponzi Scheme <<
SADNESS 🙁
It’s okay to make people sad IF you offer them a way to make a difference.
The emotion of sadness can be used very successfully in fundraising campaigns – and in meaningful videos like this (tears well in our eyes every time we watch it as Fiona’s Grandad was blinded in World War II)
ANTICI…PATION
Are you about to launch a new product?
Do you have a seasonal sale coming up soon?
Do you have a new e-book to release?
Capitalize on the countdown.
Stir up some excitement.
We use countdown timers to good effect in our emails…
PRIDE
People are proud of so many things. Their accomplishments, their heritage, their children, their homeland, their local community. They’re proud of their sports teams (except when the games take them back to that anger category!).
Shine a spotlight on what instills pride in the people you want to reach, and write stories that’ll endear them to you.
NOSTALGIA
Those were the days, my friend…
We never appreciate the good old days until they are long gone. But then, we can’t get enough of the memories. Appeal to those feelings of nostalgia and you will grab their attention in a big way.
Here’s a blast from our past – every kid from 70’s New Zealand can recall every single word from this Kentucky Fried commercial:
5. We’re Story Tellers at Heart
Our need for stories is built into our makeup. Stories go right to the emotional center of our brains, cutting through usual rational thinking filters. Long before our history was documented in written form, stories were passed from generation to generation by word of mouth.
Stories catch attention and hold it.
Stories make us want more. What next? What happens then?
Put your message in story form and capture the interest of your visitors by bypassing their conscious ‘sales’ radar.
Start using stories to sell.
6. Lead with the Unexpected
This feeds right into the emotion of surprise we talked about earlier. Say something contrarian or controversial. Say something that’s a misconception and prove why it’s incorrect.
Maybe we could have begun this piece with something like “Here’s why emotion plays no part in marketing.”
We received an email recently from a famous marketer, Neil Patel of Quicksprout and Kissmetrics. It read: “Why you should use boost posts on Facebook”. We KNOW and TEACH that boosting posts on Facebook is a very specific strategy, which needs to be executed in a certain way to be cost effective – so we wondered what on earth Neil was on about – and opened his email – and clicked through to his blogpost. Of course, the blogpost wasn’t condoning boosting posts on Facebook – but he’d succeeded in grabbing our attention and diverting us to his blog post for 5 minutes.
This article is an example of blog post on the same topic as this one, but using a contrarian approach by leading with a famous explorer:
>> Ernest Shackleton’s Top 3 Tips for Attracting Customers <<
7. Grab attention with your headline
It’s the first thing people see. If it isn’t great, they may not go any further. Don’t miss the opportunity to bring the traffic to your door because your headline is, well, sad and boring.
Spend time reading headlines other people wrote. Which ones catch your eye? Which ones have you hovering your mouse and clicking? And why?
Think about your target audience. Know your audience well. What’ll work for them? What emotions do you want to evoke in them?
What’ll move them?
Start a swipe file of the best headlines that moved you to click, and revise them to suit your needs. Now we’re absolutely not advocating plagiarism! Just inviting you to use the best as your guide. It’s what great copywriters do.
And use this handy tool to analyse your headlines to tweak and perfect them.
8. Write as the crow flies
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Be direct. Don’t start out by telling your reader about this great recipe for apple pie if it isn’t going to show up later in your story.
Promise to offer something of value. Build on that, focus on it, deliver on it in your content.
Bottom line: remain sharply focused to deliver one key message in your online content.
Every element of your content – headline, sub-headers, words, images, videos – ought to work together and deliver your single main point, as you promised.
9. Leverage Recognition
Want other websites to divert attention (and traffic) to you and your offers?
Start by focusing attention on them! People love recognition. Significance is one of the six core human needs we have. (The other five are certainty, variety, love and connection, growth and contribution.)
When you want another website to link to yours – write about that site. Send them a request, and ask if you can feature them in a post on your site. Stroke their egos bit, but not in a deceptive or phony way. Write about people, products and websites you truly find valuable. Remember, links from major websites means way more traffic or website visitors for you.
When we first published Living A Laptop Lifestyle, we approached various targeted authority sites to see if they would publish a review of our book. As they’re always looking for topical content for their followers, most readily agreed.
Click the image to link to a review of Living A Laptop Lifestyle published in FlyBe inflight magazine:
10. Inject Interaction
Have interaction on your website. Make it fun.
Engage your visitors. Let them do something more than read or watch.
Give them choices of ways to participate – encourage them to comment, share, take a quiz, or play a game.
It’s all about helping your website visitors make micro-commitments – the more micro-commitments they make, the more obliged they’ll be to buy.
11. Give more than you promise
We promised you 10 ways. Fancy a bonus extra?
Use a variety of media on your site. People learn in different ways, as in, they have different modalities of learning. They’re drawn to a variety of styles and methods. For example, Fiona prefers to skim text to take information on board, rather than being ‘held hostage’ to watch a video, yet Greg’s more than happy to watch a video. We’re all different!
Make the most of our human qualities and provide your prospective customers with a mixture of audio, video, and imagery (holiday snaps, cartoons, graphics).
Hedge your bets on a variety of numbers on the roulette wheel and you stand a better chance of being a winner. In other words, offer your visitors a number of ways to access your content and you and your visitors are winners too!
Still With Us?
Phew! There you go. A box full of emotional tools just for you.
Which will you use first?
What excites or intrigues you most?
What stories will you tell your visitors?
How will you draw attention to all you have to offer?
We can’t wait to hear back from you about what works for you. We’d love to hear your stories 🙂
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