Attract Customers Like a Magnet: Marketing Strategies To Grow Your Business+Brand (Masterclass 5/5)

Content Marketing vs. Direct Outreach

If you want to learn the ins and outs of how to make content that attracts the perfect person into your ecosystem, whether that’s for your business, for your product, or for just your creative process, we’re gonna dive deep with Christo on The Fifth Element of his business psychology series: attraction marketing. You want to stick around for that, so let’s just jump right into it.

Understanding Attraction Marketing

Chris, when you say attraction marketing, what exactly do you mean? What is it for you?

Attraction marketing is this thing that lives between a couple of different principles that you may be aware of. One is direct outreach and sales, which is how you do outbound sales strategies, and something that’s much more ambient, which is content marketing. Content marketing is where you create lots of content, and over a long period of time, it attracts the right kinds of clients too. Ideally, this is what I would recommend to every single person: to build your personal brand, your thought leadership, your authority. But people don’t have that kind of runway, so they need more tangible results. So they can’t afford to do this for three, five, seven years. So this is some hybrid approach that lives in between more outbound reach and sales approach versus more ambient content marketing personal brand building.

Classic Sales Behaviors

When we talk about sales and outreach, what are the classic kind of behaviors that you have to do to ensure that you get that kind of result, short of cold calling people or cold emailing or cold messaging people?

The next version of that is something like this, and you see this framework being used by a lot of people. “I do this, I help clients with this, and if you need help with this, talk to me now.” So it’s very clear, very transactional, it’s hyper-focused. We spoke to Richard Moore recently on LinkedIn on a live LinkedIn audio conversation. He teaches people how to do sales using LinkedIn, period. And the premise was how to go from creating content to getting customers. And he’s like, most of what I do teaches principles around direct sales via social media, more specifically on LinkedIn. Very rarely are you going to see a piece from him about a personal story, something emotional that he’s going through because he just wants people to know and associate him with the idea of direct sales strategies using LinkedIn specifically. So even while he’s making content, which we could argue is the inbound marketing that you said, he is using direct sales practices in that content. So as soon as you visit his page, you’re like, “I know what this man does, I know what he sells, and either I’m interested or not.” Am I understanding that correctly?

Yeah, and it’s not even on his page. It’s really if you’re on LinkedIn, one of the strategies he talks about is if anyone is looking at his profile, it’s a prompt for him to reach out. So he’s constantly looking at who is looking at his profile and saying, “Hey, I noticed you’re looking at my profile, is there anything you need help with?” And you know, this is a very.

Effective Sales Strategy

So, if you don’t know this, you can use the basic LinkedIn function or pay for the more premium version, which allows you to see more of who is looking at you and what they’re doing. This is the premise that Richard works with, which is no one’s going to look at your profile picture unless they saw something that you did either as a comment to another post or something that you posted, and then trying to figure out who you are. It’s not by random chance. It’s not like we’re scrolling through profiles randomly on LinkedIn. So, the minute somebody touches it, it means that for some reason, they’re curious, they’re interested, and they want to see who the heck you are. It’s a great, great way for you to turn a lukewarm person of interest into something that’s much warmer.

Content Marketing vs. Sales Outreach

On the other side of this coin is what you called content marketing, specifically, and you said it was a long game. Help me understand the difference because there was a little bit of content marketing in that Richard Moore example. So, how is content marketing different than sales and outreach that is more outbound-based?

This is more of an inbound strategy, which is more of what I do and what many content creators or designer creative types do, which is we create stuff. Sometimes it’s visual, sometimes it’s us demonstrating what it is that we do. For example, if I like to draw, James Barn likes to draw. So, he does this and he draws logos and he makes funny videos. Sometimes he dances in them and it just lets people know about what it is that we’re doing. There’s no call to action, there’s no hard sale, there’s not even a soft sale. And in presenting his work over time, you may gain followers and some of those followers might be people who want to buy a logo from him. And so, then the onus is on them to reach out to James saying, “Hey, I love what you do. How much is it?” And I’ll give you an example. This is a real-life example right now.

I was going through my Instagram feed, and I’m looking at this typographic animation thing. And Instagram knows that I like typography design and animation. And I see this thing, and it’s pretty cool. It’s an animated typographic poster on a bus board or something. And then it’s a tutorial on how to create this effect using gradients in After Effects. I instantly follow this person and I reach out in their DMs. I say, “Hey, how much does it cost to make that thing for something?” I’m looking at. This person gave me a price. He said three thousand dollars, three to four thousand dollars. I said the most I have is three K’s, is something we can do? And he’s like, “Yes.” He said, “Send me a proposal. Let’s go.” He wasn’t looking for me as a client per se, but by demonstrating what he does, his expertise is art, his skill.

Personality and Attraction

Personality, he’s able to attract people to you. There’s no direct correlation between that post and me seeing it, me reaching out. I want to just share for the audience the key distinction here is if you are doing sales outreach behaviors, you are inquiring to the end consumer, you are going to the client first. When you’re doing content marketing, if you were strictly doing it because Chris mentioned earlier, there’s a hybrid approach. The audience is inquiring because of all the goodwill that you’ve put out there.

Hybrid Approach between Sales Outreach and Content Marketing

Talk to me about what the hybrid approach would look like because like you said earlier, not everybody has the bandwidth or the runway to sit there and just make content without ever asking. So, what would the hybrid approach look like between these two if they were to coexist? I think that’s what we’re going to talk about in terms of what we’re planning on doing for the workshop because I realize people don’t have the luxury of creating content for the sake of creating content or perhaps they’re creating content with a poor strategy to begin with. So, you could create content for 100 years and get zero, zero inquiries for new work. We want to fix that.

I’m a big believer in building thought leadership and building up your personal brand, and I’ll tell you philosophically where Richard and I disagree, and I want to present this so that each person can determine where they live on the spectrum. If you look at our YouTube channel, presumably this is where everybody’s watching, we’ve created over 1800 videos. That’s a lot of freaking videos. In most of the videos, we don’t ask for anything. We’re not trying to get you to sign up for anything, and you feel the genuine nature of our generosity, and we build a relationship with you.

Richard’s approach is, “I’m looking for a client. I’m looking at the actions that I take that lead to the result that I want.” His whole thing is like, “I’m here to optimize my workday to generate money or clients for my business.” So, when you do a very targeted approach like this, “I’m looking for clients,” you’re going to be more successful at hitting those clients. And when you’re taking a broader approach like myself, like, “I’m going to broadcast content out there because I think I have an idea of who you are and what your struggles are,” I’m going to hit you, I’m gonna hit three of your friends, and people I didn’t even know I was gonna hit because it’s not as targeted.

Long-term vs. Short-term Gains

So, in the short term, if we’re to bet who is going to win this race, you’re going to put all your money on Richard. I would too because he’s going to make more money in the short term. But if we step back and say who’s going to make more money, who should be more valuable, who’s going to be a key person of influence three, five, 15, 25 years from now, it’s not so clear of an answer because what we’ve done is we’ve built.

Building Community and Value

The thing that you mentioned before is we’ve created a lot of goodwill, and when you create goodwill, people give you the benefit of the doubt. They’re willing to become, I prefer, lack of a better term, a super fan. They’re on the road to becoming a super fan where they’ll support you in everything that you do. Whether you drop a t-shirt, a poster, or where you show up to speak at an event, they’ll go out and they’ll buy tickets because they feel a personal connection to you.

So, one model is more transactional. “I do something. If you need help with this thing, I will provide this to you in exchange for your money.” My model is more transformational. It’s not transactional. I will not see money in a direct correlation between my efforts and what someone gives me on a one-to-one relationship, but I believe what I’m doing is building value.

Here’s where it gets real interesting. People like Conor McGregor, Kylie Jenner, The Rock have built up a lifetime of either content or goodwill or relation with someone. And then where they cash in is, The Rock has a tequila line which is worth a couple hundred million dollars. Same thing with Conor McGregor, Proper Twelve Irish whiskey. So, they’ve been doing something. We get to know them, we get to like and trust them, and eventually when they ask for something, you’re willing to buy. And they’re worth so much more.

I feel like you may have heard him say the word workshop. He’ll be going into a deep dive explanation of all of this across the European tour which will start in April. So, if you are interested in doing something like that and you’ve enjoyed these five video series, that is something that I would highly encourage you to look in the description on.

Choosing Your Marketing Approach

Before we go into the hybrid approach, Chris, the way I understood that is the first one is a strictly sales approach, hence the transaction. The next one is a brand approach to where at any point once you’ve given so much goodwill, you could technically sell anything if it aligns with your brand because the audience trusts your brand and the things that you deem worthy of buying.

My question is, what are the things that someone needs to consider when they decide which camp they’re in and how they navigate their marketing? And I want to be clear that you don’t have to pick one or the other. You could do both. You can actually create content that’s actually transactional and create longer-term content that’s transformational. But you start to muddy up the waters a little bit because sometimes you’re selling and sometimes you’re not. And I guess we do some version of that.

If you are in need of money like you can’t eat, you can’t pay rent, you owe money for taxes, your partner is going to leave you, your children are in rags, you need to focus on building a business and needing a sale. You don’t have the luxury of the runway that it’s going to take to build goodwill up with your community, your audience, and potentially some of your customers. You’ve got to take care of your business first, get your house in order. So, in that case, I’m going to recommend that you go for more direct sales approach, more outbound versus an inbound strategy.

What are some other things for them to decipher if they should go the inbound route aside from they don’t need money right now? Once you have your basic needs taken care of, we’re not talking about living a life of luxury and having fancy sports cars, but you have money for rent, for food, you can go out on a date, you have a little nest egg in case bad things happen, your rainy day fund, you’re good. So, really what you want to do now, you have to think about where do I want to be three, five, ten years from now, and you move into authority building. This usually is chronological, like in terms of how this usually develops, but not always is you’ve got some training, whether it’s self-taught or you’ve learned it in a university. You’re a.

Sharing Expertise and Building Authority

The thing that you learn, you’ve been able to do that for a period of time, and you might have branched off on your own at this point. So, we’re not talking about someone who’s 14 years old trying to build authority. That’s a little bit ridiculous. So, you’re maybe in your mid-20s, your late 20s, early 30s, somewhere in there where you start to think about, “Well, what’s my future like? I’m not always going to want to chase clients the way that I do, and it’s not long-term sustainable.” So, this is now you’re in the place where I have things I’ve learned, things that I can share inside. I have documentation, I have proof of the things I’ve been able to do. It’s a good time to start to share that. And the way that I would do it is I would start to share that with the younger version of yourself. And that’s a great way to frame it. So, we’re not thinking about clients, we’re not thinking about our competitors, we’re just saying, “What would the younger version of myself want to know? Needs to know that could save them a lot of heartache and pain.”

So, you start to distill those life lessons down. It could be resources, whatever it is. You’re going to speak to this person. The reason why I say your younger self is because you know this person already. You know their habits, you know their resistance, you know the way they think about learning. Sometimes we have a difficult time in writing and creating content because we don’t have a clear picture of who the person is. Well, this person, you know because you’ve spent the most time of your life with this person. It’s you. Maybe you could talk about a mentor or a teacher they have yet to meet and what you’re learning from this person, and you can send it down that timeline, if you will. And here’s the cool part. There is some younger version of you out there that is not named you, and if it’s a big enough audience, they’ll show up for you and they’ll get really excited, and they’re gonna get pumped up. They like your style, your tone, your delivery, your experience, your aesthetic, and they’re going to be hungry for the kind of content that you create.

I’m so glad that you answered that question the way that you did because I personally struggled in the early stages and only leaning on brand and never asking when I wasn’t in a position to only lean on brand. And the reason why I asked you that question is because there’s a listener out there right now who, whether you want to deem it fortunately or unfortunately, because I love this person as well, GaryVee, who says just give value, just give, give, give, never ask, even though he says ask it the third time, but it’s never really clear when I should ask. And then that person who’s listening scapegoats their fear of selling or their lack of wanting to ask something with, “Well, I’m just building my brand.”

You need money, you need to build your business, you need to make income. It’s not a bad thing for you to be transactional when you need to survive. And you are also giving value to the other person because then if you’re only giving value and never getting anything when you actually need something, I think Chris and correct me if I’m wrong, you can start to feel that disingenuousness when you’re like building a brand but you also want to transact. And then it just breeds resentment in the person who’s doing that.

There’s a lot that you said there, but the part I’m going to zero in on is this part. Some people mistakenly mix these two strategies. They think one they execute like the other. Give you an example. You really want sales, you’re transactional and you’re starving, but you’re playing the long content game, but you actually don’t behave like that. So, you’re actually not giving value. It’s a thinly veiled disguise and most people can see right through it. Yes. And I think it’s better that you recognize who you are, where you’re at in your life, and be super clear and transparent because you’re not fooling anybody. You and I follow people, and maybe some of them overlap, where all they seem to be doing is selling to you all the time. And if you need that service, if you want that piece of information, you’re gonna support it. You’re gonna say, “I want to reach out to you. Let’s do work.” I’m going to keep following you.

Oftentimes, especially I find it with myself, that you want to sell and I’m not here to buy anything, so I’m gonna unfollow you. I’m gonna tune you out for a while. I’ll check in with you in three, six, nine months. But from this point forward, I’m gonna tune you out. And that’s the danger of wanting to sell to people all the

Sales Strategy and Content Creation

It’s hard to argue against the person who’s selling all the time when they’re putting a whole lot of money away. You’re like, okay, I get it. I just have a different relationship with you. So let’s talk about this model that you’ve been exploring, which we’ve deemed the hybrid approach. Where do these two worlds coexist in your thinking?

Value Creation in Content

Number one, it starts with creating something that’s valuable to someone. It starts really there. And we say, like, create high-value content. Like, what does that even mean? Well, teach me something I didn’t know that I haven’t already seen a thousand times or share something I know but in a way that I’ve never seen or deliver in a way that I think is funny, interesting.

Here’s the example: There’s a guy who’s like hip-hop history, I believe, where he speaks in the language of like, “Yo, that cat said this girl,” or he breaks down movies or plays that are just like pieces of literature that are just hard for the everyday person to understand because the language is funky as heck. They’re using some like Old English, you know? And so he takes this. He’s an African-American, and he talks about it. I’m like, this is super entertaining. He’s really letting you understand. So he’s taking a story, but he’s presenting it to us in a way that’s new and novel and different.

There’s a similar concept too. It’s like drunken history. And these are experts, and so they loosen up because they’re having libations, and they’re like, “Oh, okay, so it’s like this,” and then, again, to arguments. It’s kind of funny to watch.

Packaging Valuable Content

So, first, spend the time to identify a resource, a tool, a guide, a study that you produce and package it in your voice, your tone, the colors and logos of your company, whatever it is that you do, and package it up. And that’s how you can determine if it’s a high-value piece of content. What is the market rate for this piece? Like, what would somebody literally pay to know? And if you could say zero, then that is worth zero. So your target is something about 30, a hundred dollars worth of value, that’s good enough. And some people might then underestimate and say, “Well, nothing I do is ever valuable.” Well, that’s not over-correct here. We just want to have an honest conversation.

If you were to ask a neutral friend to look at this thing and say, “Would you pay money for this?” and “How much would you pay?” and they gave you an honest answer, then you know, okay, so I spent a month and a half designing, figuring out something, let’s just say whatever it is, and now I want to share that with people because it’s going to help them, it’s going to make their life easier, it’s going to get them closer to their goals.

Now, I’m not going to just upload a PDF and say, “Download the whole thing.” I want to build a little rapport, and I want to use social channels to my benefit. So what I’ll do is I’ll extract some of the high-value nuggets from this guy, this study, this report, whatever it is. I’m going to write a post about it, and I’m going to say something like, for example, if you write email copy and you’re doing direct sales via email, you figured out the 100 subject lines that have the highest open rates and you’ve run 10,000 campaigns, so you have some evidence. Remember that part about you’re in this place in your life where you’ve done stuff, you have proof and evidence, okay?

You can then jump on a platform like LinkedIn and say, “Here are three subject lines that are guaranteed to outperform anything that you’re writing,” and you would give it to them and you would explain why. So you’re adding a little more meat on the bones. And then you would say something like, “I’ve actually just finished writing the top 100 highest-performing subject lines over a four-year period, ten thousand different campaigns tested. I’m going to give it to you for free, no strings attached, just comment this word below so I know who to give it to.”

The Hybrid Approach

This is the hybrid approach. This is also Richard’s approach, by the way. So now I’ve got something valuable. I’ve created interest. The way that you’ve written it is just super enticing, and there’s value already delivered to this. And so naturally, people are very curious, like, wow, these two are so good. What did the other 97 look like? I want the rest. And so now what you’ve done is you’ve asked the audience to self-identify. “I’m a person who writes emails, and I’m looking for clients, and I need to know what subject lines work.” If somebody’s not interested in that, they’re not going to read your posts. They’re not going to engage with you. They’re definitely not going to comment below whatever the magic phrase.

Permission Marketing and Small Commitments

Now, they’ve identified, and now they’re giving you permission to reach out to them, quite literally they’re saying, “Yo, I want the rest of this, please.” So you can say something like, “Hey, I just wanted to provide this resource to you. Thank you for downloading it. I’m curious, is there a problem that you’re trying to solve? It doesn’t have to be much more complicated than that. Or out of interest, was there anything that caught your eye? What part stood out for you?” And if it feels like they’re aligned with their problem, what you can do then, you should escalate, and you should ask for the next thing. And the next thing you’re going to ask for is, “I have three time slots available next week where I spend 25 minutes helping people just like you diagnose their email campaigns. Is this of interest to you?” So you’re asking them to make very small commitments where each time they engage, you’re going to give them increasing amounts of value. This is the classic structure of permission marketing by Seth Godin.

Modern Approach to Permission Marketing

What we’re doing in this modern age of social media is we’re asking for people to volunteer to enroll in a long-term marketing campaign where with each interaction, we go deeper, we get increasing amounts of value. So, the first piece of value is, “Here are the three highest performing subject lines for email campaigns.” Here are the 97 remaining pieces of value in terms of highest performing subject lines for email campaigns. And now, I would love to give you a diagnostic that’s free to you, to look at what you’re doing, to discuss what your goals and challenges are, to see if I might be able to solve them. Then, if they agree to that Zoom call or whatever meeting, then now you can sit there and diagnose, provide more value. And at this point, you can then tell them, “At the end of this, I’m going to tell you about a way that we can work together, only if it feels right to you.” So you’re telling them this is a sales call, but not applying any high-pressure tactics. “I’m just going to park it at the end, only if you’re interested.” And then that prospect, I think we need your help. What’s the plan look like? And that’s how you go from strangers to friends, and friends to customers. That’s the process. That’s attraction marketing.

Hybrid Approach Execution

So, if someone were to like, “Yo, the hybrid approach, I love it, I want to do it,” what should be their first course of action on the thing that they get right before they’re like, “Okay, I need a free sample, I need a funnel, I need to be able to convert in the DMs, like what do they need to get right first?” Well, get clear on your audience. Who is it that you’re marketing to? Do they have an urgent desire to solve a very uncomfortable pain point? Do they have the means to be able to buy a solution? If they don’t have the means, it’s not any good. So you can solve a problem for someone, but they can’t afford the solution, it’s not going to really work. For example, if somebody is in a lower-income bracket and needs to go from point A to point B to go to work but they’re on a place where they have great credit or they have a down payment or they’re even contemplating buying a car, they don’t really care how sophisticated your funnel, your marketing campaign is, they just can’t buy a car. Really what you should do is be solving other kinds of transportation problems for them, maybe a month-long pass that allows them to take any form of public transportation. You should be focused on that. Or what many industrial designers and urban planning people are trying to figure out is something called The Last Mile. So we can take public transportation, but it’s that last mile that kills us where we have to walk somewhere to work or park to a restaurant. So they make electric scooters, they make all kinds of devices to get you past that Last Mile, and that’s what they’re focused on because we’re not going to inherently change the infrastructure of public transportation, but we can make it easier for you from the stop in which you get off at to where you need to be.

Focus and Education

The energy that you need to focus for the hybrid approach of attraction marketing to work is to watch the last four videos so you can dial in your attraction marketing for it to be effective.

Challenges of the Hybrid Approach

I don’t see so many people taking the hybrid approach. We know many people on the one side of the spectrum or the other where they’re really about building, quote-unquote, brand or they’re just doing all sales all the time. We don’t see a lot of sophisticated things in the middle because the thing in the middle is very difficult because not only do you have to understand how to do direct sales, but you also have to know how to make content that attracts people to you that’s a fact that it’s going to be valuable. So they’re going to be inherently fewer people could do that because a, they’re not aware, and b, it’s not easy. So I don’t really have an easy answer for you there. I think that answer was sufficient. It is probably still not as long of a game as strictly building brand when you need money, but it is a sophisticated game that will be challenging at first.

Conclusion and European Tour Announcement

When you can master it, the upside is crazy. I mean, look at Chris, maybe the word is not “master,” but you have done an exceptional job in doing that, okay gang, that is the end of the five-part series of the five core Essentials to grow your business as a creative freelancer. If you’ve enjoyed this series, you can go back to the last four videos, binge them as many times as you want, ask questions in the comments. But I did want to leave some time at the end of this video if you’ve gotten value and are still here with us for Chris to just say a few words about the European tour that’s coming up for him to teach these principles very, very in-depth and for you to get as much value as possible. So, if you’re still here, check that out, and we’ll see you in the next video.

Chris’ Reflections and European Tour Announcement

First of all, I want to say thank you. Thanks for making all the way to the end. We know there’s a high drop-off rate, and the fact that you’re still here says a lot to me about who you are and that you’re connecting to the content. What a lot of people don’t realize about me, where I came from is before I made a YouTube video, I taught at private art schools for 15 years. Before I taught at a private art school, I ran a business for an even longer period of time. So, I was running a successful motion design business for five years prior to even thinking about teaching. What I’ve come to realize about myself is my identity. I thought was for a very long time a service provider, one who makes commercials, graphic design, visual things for people. But I was suppressing a deeper identity, which was one of an educator. So when people used to ask me, “Who are you, Chris?” I’d say, “I’m a designer.” I’d say that everywhere I would go. I took great pride in that. But today, when people ask me, “What are you? What do you do?” I don’t pause so much anymore. I just say, “I’m a teacher.” That’s connected to who I am. Over the last two and a half years, it’s been very difficult, not just on us but on every single person on the planet because of covid. And recently, when I went out and I was teaching again in person, I kind of reignited a passion inside of me that made me feel so alive. And so, when I was doing a tour, a workshop tour in Australia, I felt more alive than I’ve been in a long time. You hear me say things like, “My brain was on fire.” And I live to grow. So when I’m out there teaching, there was a quote here I was interviewed recently, and I was like, I really like this. Here we go, Craig Philip told me this. He’s like, “You teach for yourself, that you practice for your students.” I say to them, I think there’s this dichotomy with teaching that it’s simultaneously a selfish act and an act of generosity. So when I teach, I’m sharing my goods, if you will, to the people or the person is in front of me, right? I’m sharing it with you, like, here are tools, here are ideas, here’s a big reframe, or here’s how you would phrase this so that you have to deal with this friction point anymore. But in doing so, what the person who’s asking the question is unaware of, this they’re extracting or inducing something from me, which is a piece of information I didn’t even know I had. And in doing so, I learned something about myself.

And when you’re I slide up, I’m like, “Wow, okay, I have another way of explaining that to you.” And here’s the cool part of live teaching, which is one person will say something and they accept your answer, but another person’s like, “Uh, wait a minute, I don’t accept it. How about this, Chris? How about this? How about this?” And you’re getting hit from three different angles, so you’ll have a much clearer picture as to what’s not working. So you explain it slightly different ways or in a whole different way. It’s a very long way of saying something. So I feel most alive when I’m teaching people in person. And so, we decided to try a concept. We’re not an event production company, but if I was really filled with joy and delight and my creative soul was fulfilled in Australia, why wouldn’t we try this more often in more places?

So we’re like, let’s go to Europe, let’s run some workshops. And I don’t want these artificial time constraints to be put on us. I want to do a full eight hours of teaching on two different subjects versus smashing everything I know together in four hours or even 30 minutes. So we’re trying a theory. We’re gonna go to Europe. We’re gonna be there in April, and we’re gonna hit seven different cities. Tickets are selling out really fast now. So we’re gonna probably announce that we’re sold out in London and Berlin pretty soon because I keep seeing a steady stream of tickets. I hope to be able to see you there. I feel deep inside my heart that if you’re willing to show up and put in your best effort while I teach you, it will be transformational. There’s the transaction that’s happening. You have to buy a ticket, but the transformation that you receive will far exceed the amount you pay. So we’ll see you in Europe. Is that right? Ciao. All right.