How to attract new customers - 14 essential tips to create magnetic attraction

Your business can have a magnetic attraction to your ideal new customers. When you make a 5% improvement in each of the 14 areas I'm sharing with you below - you'll nearly double your business by increasing your magnetic attraction.

Here are the 14 areas that we’re going to cover in detail in this post. Do you think you could improve each of them by 5% or more?

There is a lot covered in this post. I recommend that you work through it in stages, create a plan and make at least a 5% improvement in each area before moving to the next. You’ll get results by taking action in each area.

Who are your ideal new customers?

If I asked you to describe your ideal new customer, I know that you will give me a good description. What I don’t know, is whether you’ll really describe your customers’ pains in detail and how you solve those pains. Most people I ask - don’t go deep on their customers’ pains.

If that sounds like you - you’re missing a big opportunity.

The better you understand and can describe your customers’ pains, the easier it will be to attract them.

I’ll give you an example of a chiropractor.

If I asked 100 chiropractors who their ideal customer is about 99 of them would say - anyone suffering from back pain.

Back pain is a very common problem, but it is also a very general answer.

1 of those chiropractors, might say

“My ideal customer is a middle aged woman, who spends her day working at a desk and is suffering from back pain. They are my ideal customer as I help cure and prevent their back pain by understanding and improving their posture at work. As our work involves a lot of touching, improving posture and related health advice I employ a team of women, who my customers relate to and feel comfortable with. This means we are in a unique position to offer a service that is completely focused on the needs of working women.”

In that second example, the 1 chiropractor has given me a lot of detail on their ideal customer and really described their pains, going a lot deeper than the surface back pain.

Can you see how if you meet the description of that chiropractor’s ideal customer, you would automatically be a lot more attracted to their business, than one of the other 99 chiropractors?

Action you can take. Describe your ideal customer. How can you get more detailed and specific on this ideal customer. What are their pains beyond the surface pain that all of your competitors will also describe. Can you identify pains that you are in or can create a unique position to solve?

What will your ideal customers find remarkable?

In the example above you can easily see the difference between the 99 general chiropractors and the 1 with a very well defined ideal customer.

Imagine you had recently met this chiropractor and a female colleague of yours sitting at the desk next to you mentioned she was suffering from terrible back pain. Do you think you would mention who you met and what she specialised in? I’d be surprised if you didn’t.

Being remarkable can be as simple as providing very well defined unique value.

You’d already be very likely to remark on and recommend this chiropractor. Now imagine that chiropractor had told you that she offered a free 1 hour consultation to any female office workers suffering with back pain or worried about their posture at work. With the option to have the consultation at the place of work, so that she could observe her patient’s posture at work and provide tailored advice.

I’m sure if you knew that, you’d be even more likely to recommend her to your colleague. Your colleague would be highly likely to take up that offer and on the basis the service solved her pain, recommend it to anyone else she knew with a similar problem.

When arranging the visit, the chiropractor will feel very comfortable to ask if the new potential customer will share the offer with all the women in the office in case any others would like to arrange a free consultation on the same day.

In this example the chiropractor has really understood how she can provide remarkable value, by identifying the deeper pains of her ideal customer.

These are some of the deeper pains that she has identified with her ideal customers.

You can see that this chiropractor has taken the time to uncover the deeper pains that her ideal customers experience, which has allowed her to identify unique and remarkable solutions.

The simplest of which is arranging the appointments at her customers place of work. She offers the significant value to her customers of travelling to them.

In turn she has created significant value for her business as she is likely to meet and be seen at work by a number of other women, who will either become a customer or will recommend her to other people they know.

Her unique service also gives her a very high conversion rate of visits to customers.

Action you can take. What small steps can you take in your business, to provide unique remarkable value to your ideal customers by developing a deeper understanding of their pains?

Create an inspiring and attractive Vision and Mission

For many businesses their vision and mission is all about them and what they want to become.

This might be attractive for you and your team, it isn’t very attractive to your customers. What’s in it for them.

Like you our chiropractor has the option of 2 visions and missions.

Option 1

• I have a vision to be the most well known female chiropractor in the country

Option 2

• My mission is to build the leading chiropractic service for office working women

In the information age no one should suffer from posture related back pain

My mission is to eliminate posture related back pain for all women who spend their days at a desk.

Which resonates with you?

Which of those visions and missions will inspire her customers to choose her?

I’m sure you chose option 2. As well as inspiring her customers to choose her, it inspires her and her team to do their best every day they turn up to work.

Action you can take. Use our free Vision and Mission tool to build an inspiring vision and mission for your business.

Make your product or service more remarkable

When you have followed the 3 steps above, the path to a more remarkable product or service becomes clearer.

Imagine when our chiropractor decided she wanted to focus on helping desk working women with their posture related back pain.

It made the decision to only employ female chiropractors clear. It also helped her realise that running free consultations at her prospects’ place of work made a lot of sense. Even though it cost her twice as much to run them, she received many more customer referrals from these visits compared with consultations run at her clinic.

By visiting their place of work, she helps her customers set-up their workstations correctly. She is able to advise on hardware, desks and chairs that help to reduce and prevent the causes of back pain - a simple and remarkable service that none of her competitors offer.

Her specialism also means that she can provide other related health advice to help her customers manage and eliminate their back pain. Another service that is unique to her.

Action you can take. How can you make your product or service more remarkable? What simple changes can you make, that will get your ideal customers recommending your product or service to more ideal customers like them?  

Create remarkable content

I’m sure you’ve already identified opportunities to make improvements in all of the areas above.

When you’ve taken the action steps I’ve recommended above, creating remarkable content will follow naturally.

Like you, our chiropractor’s excellent understanding of her ideal customers means that she is in a great position to create highly valuable content that attracts new ideal customers to her.

She creates a blog series on curing and preventing back pain for desk working women.

This series includes detailed descriptions of the different symptoms and explains the most common causes. For each of the symptoms and common causes she creates a detailed blog post and video.

Because the blog posts and videos are detailed and high quality, they rank very well on Google and YouTube. When people search for the symptoms and how to cure them, they find her blog posts and videos. As these blog posts and videos all explain things that are unique to women they naturally appeal to her ideal customers. All the content items offer a free consultation at your place of work.

As you can imagine, lots of women find these articles and request a free consultation.

Action you can take: Can you create informative content that answers the questions your ideal customers have? Can you give it your own unique spin so that even in a competitive industry, you can create unique content that stands out and people will share?

Develop your sphere of influence

When you create high quality unique content answering the questions of your ideal customers you naturally start to build your sphere of influence.

Think of journalists writing on the subject of back pain, they will search for the symptoms and cures, and will find our chiropractors excellent content. It’s likely that they’ll contact her for advice, interviews and ask if she can provide unique articles.

Our chiropractor could also contact womens magazines, blogs, websites and TV programmes, sharing articles she’s written and the videos she’s made, offering her advice and content if they think it would be helpful for their readers.

With her specialism it is likely that quite a few journalists will take her up on her offer.

As well as building relationships with journalists and relevant media, she also finds other well aligned businesses, who she provides content and advice to that gets her name out there to relevant audiences.

Before long she is being asked to speak at conferences and events, which helps get her name and her businesses name out in front of lot more relevant people.

When you’ve followed the steps I’ve outlined above, building your sphere of influence becomes much easier.

Action you can take: Before reaching out to journalists, it is important that you’ve taken the steps that I’ve already outlined above. When you’ve done this, build a list of high value publications that your audience are reading and watching. Write 2 to 10 interesting articles, contact the publications and journalists who write for them and share your ideas for articles. Keep at it and opportunities will start to come through.  

Support or align your business with a deeper purpose

Aligning your business with a deeper purpose has a powerful magnetic effect. I was recently on a business consultant’s site that gave 2 options for a free event they were running - option 1 was completely free and option 2 offered the same for a contribution of £20 to their chosen charity - to buy a years worth of school books for a child in Malawi.

I’ve just remarked on it here, included a screenshot and linked to their website. It also helped me understand that there is more to the business than making money. It helped me develop a deeper connection with this business.

In a similar way our chiropractor wants to have a bigger impact. She finds a charity that is preventing rickets in Africa, a disease that is close to her heart, because it is something that chiropractic practice alone could never cure. She decides that for every appointment she runs a donation of £5 is given to the charity, which funds preventative medicine for a child for a year.

It’s a cause that she is passionate about and lets her customers know that every time they see her and each person they recommend to her, also has a much wider positive impact in the world. It is just something that happens and there is no pressure on her customers to do anything more or different than they would do anyway.

She finds that each time she posts an update about the impact this charity is having and thanking her customers for the impact they are helping the charity make, it gets a huge response. Her customers share it far and wide.

Action you can take: Is there a cause that is close to your heart, that you can align your business with? As a starter here is the UN 17 goals for sustainable development.

Create valuable free gifts and reduced price offers so new people can get to know you

We’ve already touched on this in the examples that we have given.

Our chiropractor offers a free initial consultation at her prospects place of work. In addition she has created detailed free to access blog posts, video series and guides. All of which help her prospects and potential customers long before they have signed up to her service.

Valuable free gifts and reduced price offers come in a variety of different formats depending on your business. Many can cost you very little in time or money once you have them set-up. As long as they provide good value to your customers, they are highly likely to attract new potential customers to you.

When you create free or very low cost value for your prospects it is attractive. Many of the most valuable businesses today have been built on this model. Think Google and search, Facebook and social media, hotmail and then gmail for email.

Most of us won’t be able to provide these level of free service, but we will be able to create offers similar to our chiropractor.

Action you can take: What free or very low cost value can you provide to your potential customers? Can you combine the high value content you are creating into a higher value package such as a video or email series? Can you create a free tool for your customers? Can you offer a high value free initial consultation?

Maximise your existing assets

Often when you are working on increasing the attractiveness of your business, you look to new opportunities. When you do this you can miss the huge opportunity of your existing assets.

Your existing assets include things like your:

• Current database and email subscribers
• Brochures and sales literature
• Case studies and testimonials
• Frequently asked questions
• Internal processes and operations manuals
• Staff and internal experts
• Existing customers
• Website

This is how our chiropractor made the most of her existing assets.

She analysed her current database and split it out into different segments. These included ideal prospects, ideal customers, non ideal customers, non ideal prospects.

When she had done this she created powerful emails for each of these audiences, tailored to their specific circumstances. All the emails explained her new direction, including her vision and mission. Ideal prospects were given plenty of information they could relate to and the offer of a free initial consultation in their place of work.

Her current ideal customers were told about her dedicated focus on the services they had received from her. She provided them with a special offer they could use and also offer as a gift to anyone they met suffering from similar issues.

As well as providing her non ideal prospects a detailed explanation of her new direction, she provided them the details of a partner well suited to their needs, with a special introductory offer she negotiated with the partner to make their move more attractive.

She used her existing materials to develop the new blog posts and video series. She also asked existing ideal customer to give her testimonials and reviews. She then published these online to provide reassurance to new prospects of her track record of curing similar problems.

She also featured her team in her videos, so that new customers are happy to see any member of her team, knowing that they all follow the same process and are experts in their own rights.

Action you can take: Review all of the assets that you have currently in your business. Don’t leave anything out. Run through everything old and new. What can you use? What can you change and repurpose? Think of ways that you can use everything. Include your team as much as possible, how can you feature them to make what you are doing more scalable?

Create a referral or affiliate scheme

One of Amazon’s many successes is its affiliate scheme. You can use themes like these to give other businesses and individuals an added incentive to refer your business.

If another chiropractor receives a work posture related issue and they refer it to her, they receive a 15% commission on all appointments from this patient. It means that our chiropractor can get referred business from potential competitors. For these potential competitors, as long as they are getting enough business from elsewhere, the affiliate revenue is pure profit and frees their time to do what they are best at.

Action you can take: Can you set-up an affiliate or revenue sharing scheme? There is plenty of software available to manage this and it gives you an excellent opportunity to start building your partner relationships.

Work with partners

Deciding on your affiliate or revenue sharing scheme is a great step to take before actively building your partner network as it will give you a clear framework to work to.

When building a partner relationship, focus on the value that you can add to your partner and your customers from the partnership, rather than what you want from them. Taking this approach will build a strong partnership, that will be significantly more likely to generate long term results than a one sided relationship.

For example our chiropractor creates a partnership with a physiotherapist and nutritionist, also specialising in a very similar ideal customers, to create a package of services. Offering these services as a package, delivers a discount for the customers and creates a package of benefits, not least health benefits to the customer. Together with these partners she runs educational seminars for GPs, so that they can understand the causes of back pain for desk working women, giving them alternative solutions to pain killers and physiotherapy.

Action you can take: Identify potential partners for your business. How can you add value to them and by partnering with them create unique value for your ideal customers? Can you identify high impact partners, where this relationship will add significant value to both of your businesses?

Work with ambassadors

Ambassadors tend to be people who are known, liked and trusted by their own audiences.

For our chiropractor, it could be a customer who is also the CEO of a well known business. This CEO has then worked with the chiropractor to improve the postures of all her employees.

This CEO agreed to be an ambassador for the business and help spread the word through their social channels, video interviews and media interviews.

The benefit for the CEO as an ambassador is that she gets a positive story to tell about her own business and how they care for their staff. For our chiropractor, she has a prominent business woman spreading the word about her specialist service, which attracts customers to her.

Ambassadors can come in different form and how they are rewarded will vary in a similar way. It is typically best that ambassador relationships are developed after you have successful partnerships in place.

Action you can take: Create a list of ideal ambassadors for your business. Don’t hold back at this stage, put anyone on the list that would be ideal for your business. When you have done this, identify how being an ambassador of yours will benefit these people you have identified. How can you add significantly more value to the relationship, than the time it will take for them to be an ambassador of yours? Rewards are typically financial, profile building or a trade. An ideal ambassador is similar to the example I provided for the chiroprator, as this is a genuine customer, who receives a powerful but indirect benefit from being an ambassador.

Build your media channels

Throughout this example I’ve mentioned the media channels that have been built, so I’m going to keep this section brief.

Owned

For the owned channel, these are your own website, blog and social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.

You own and control these (as long as you stick within the rules of the platforms that they run on).

Just like our chiropractor, you understand how important it is that your customers can find you on all of these channels. So that they can interact with you in the space where they are most comfortable.

Action you can take: Claim your spaces on each of the key owned channels including your domain name, blog, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, podcast channels and any others that are relevant to your business.

Earned

The earned spaces are the media spaces that someone else owns and runs. Where the owners and journalists working for these channels will decide whether they will feature you or one of your competitors content, comments and expert opinion.

You saw from the examples above how our chiropractor did a great job of earning trust and inclusion in a variety of different media, that helped her to get her message in front of lots of her ideal prospects.

Getting these inclusions from highly trusted magazines and websites did a huge amount to build her credibility.  

The developing your sphere of influence section already went into detail on the action that you can take.

Paid

With all of these media channels there are paid for opportunities to communicate your message through advertising and advertorials.

These can be very effective when used properly. If you follow each of the steps that I’ve outlined above you’ll need to use paid promotion a lot less than your competitors who haven’t followed these steps. You can also use clever tools like remarketing that will make the most of the assets that you build and the natural traffic that you receive.

The main advantages of paid media opportunities is that they provide a very convenient shortcut, while you are working through the steps that I have outlined above. Use paid channels to build your audience faster and for testing messages. Building audiences organically takes time and commitment.

Action you can take: Calculate what you can afford to spend for each new customer you take on. Identify the ideal channels for your ideal customers. Price up the paid for advertising opportunities for these and your likely results from them. If you have good experience with advertising you can deal with it yourself. However, there are many subtle factors when it comes to advertising, so it is best to engage with a professional who can advise and help you get the best results.

Develop the 4 A’s of Positioning

This is the final of the 14 points and can be started at any point in your journey. Many of these 4 A’s can serve as shortcuts to help build your credibility and add a few percentage points to your attractiveness as a business.

• Awards

Awards are a great method of getting in front of the right audience and giving them a reason to choose you over the competition. They are also a shortcut to getting media attention. Many businesses are reluctant to enter awards because they don’t think they have enough to warrant winning. Entering awards takes time and winning them takes practice. Most awards provide detailed feedback on your entry or by putting yourself in the competition you learn the difference between the winning entries, the runners up and those that don’t make the cut. Learning these lessons provides you with valuable feedback to improve your business and your award entries.

Action you can take: Make a list of the awards you can enter and suitable categories. Decide on the awards that you will enter, create a budget and plan for your entries. Enter, get feedback and refine for the future. As long as you keep improving - you will win.

• Accreditations

Accreditations provide a framework and assessment criteria, that when passed you will receive a stamp of accreditation. The right accreditation are well recognised in your industry and will lead to business in their own right, as long as you are active in your supporting marketing.

Accreditations will give your customers confidence in your product or service and a reason to choose you over a competitor without the accreditation.

Action you can take: Identify the accreditation that are relevant to your business, product or service. Understand their recognition with your customer base and their value to your business, then make a plan to gain accredition from the highest scoring in both areas.

• Associations

Similar to accreditations good quality industry associations tend to come with various benefits. In many industries there are more than one association to choose from. As with accreditations it is important to do your research and choose the associations that provide the most value to your customers and your business.

Associations are a great opportunity to build you network, find partners, obtain support, get access to resources and provide 3rd party validation.

In some cases the associations provide industry accreditation, in other cases they are separate.

• Acknowledgement

Acknowledgement is capturing all the 3rd party validation of your business and the service that you provide. Examples include reviews, media mentions and case studies of customers you have or are working with. These are all assets in their own right. Collect them and sign post them for potential and existing customers.

Acknowledgement by 3rd parties is a pwerful method of validating our decisions. Make the most of it as a tool for your business. You’ll notice a trend that the best performing businesses continue to use all of these 14 points above, even when they are household names and may seem beyond needing them.

Making the most of this advice

You’ve read to the end of this post and have a great idea of the steps you can take to make your business more attractive. If this is the first time you’re here, go back to first step and take action on each step in turn, with the aim of improving your performance by 5% or more.

At the outset it may appear to be a lot of work - remember that the reward is that you’ll double the attractiveness of your business by improving each area by 5%. The biggest and best businesses in the world are constantly improving in all of these areas, so there is no reason that you can’t return to this list time and time again to keep improving your business.

Connect with me on LinkedIn and share with me how you get on.

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