How do I attract new customers?

Many years ago, the formula used by entrepreneurs and anyone starting a business to catch the attention of potential new customers was to bombard consumers with advertising, in which the product or service was the great protagonist, displayed as absolute ruler, shouting in desperation to "force" people to buy it.

You could see salespeople hired by business owners going door to door, asking people for a moment of their time to hear their pitch and unload a ton of features and logical reasons why the product in question simply had to be bought.

This was annoying back then, and it's still annoying now. To gain new customers, the first thing you need to understand is that you shouldn't sell. Forget about selling, forget about your product or service for a moment, and just think about what it does for the community.

Think carefully about what your product solves, what your service does for people, hold on to that, and use it to build a strategy that helps you — not to sell, but to earn the trust and attention of a potential new customer.

If you connect with the consumer by making them feel emotion, laugh, cry, sing along with you, dance, or shout, you'll have started selling without needing to sell, and people will begin to feel the need to buy without even realizing they were being sold to.

This isn't deception, it's empathy. It's socializing, yes, that's exactly it. You have to build a relationship with the community in order to win it over. Let them see your brand, your service, or your product as one more friend — the kind that listens, gives advice, brings out smiles, and is there through good times and bad. That's how you win new customers.

So today's strategy isn't to chase after customers, it's to have them chase after you — what's known as magnetic marketing. You have to create an attraction, you have to become appealing to the people who consume, and you don't achieve that by selling, you achieve it by empathizing.

Try to be the safe harbor everyone wants to reach to rest, the life preserver everyone will look for when they feel the water at their neck. Be the solution to the problem troubling people, be the aspirin that eases the pain.

Take these recommendations to heart and make the most of the advantages offered by the internet and social media. Use technology to get your message to your target audience so that those people feel drawn to your message — one that doesn't push them to buy, but stirs emotion and makes them come alive. Touch the right chords in your potential customers and they'll come looking for you when they need something.