Marketing and I have a troubled relationship. So, it’s with great surprise that I’m writing to tell you about how, ok, fascinating I found this marketing book.
I picked it up recently because I was beginning to suspect that the mainstream approach to promotion might not be a perfect fit for a witchy business.
Identify your target audience, they always say. What do they need? What exactly can you provide for them?
It’s not that I haven’t tried. I know exactly who my target audience is – witches, of course. What do they need? If they’re anything like me, more witchcraft! This is all very well, but not extremely practical demographically.
Anyway, a couple of months ago I decided to give up on formal marketing in favor of an all witchcraft all the time strategy. Vision statement? How about a vision sigil, followed by a page of channeled prophetic statements? I don’t know, I just got sick of it all. While there’s plenty to be said for holding down the details of daily life, business planning can easily go much too far in that direction. All the businesses I love practically ooze inspiration, and that kind of inspiration tends to come not from copying a business plan but from taking the magic seriously.
So, I set aside the seething mass of marketing strategies I’d accumulated as a content writer and made myself some business sigils. And then, just when everything was going so well, I heard about this book – Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation, by Sally Hogshead.
The idea is that some businesses aren’t based on filling a well-defined need, but on providing a compelling, pleasurable and most of all unique experience. We each combine factors like lust, intrigue, power, subversion and even dependability to create our own total experience that – if we’re lucky – the client just flat out desires.
Well, it worked on me; I had to read the book. When the first chapter opened with scenes from the Salem witchcraft trials and a history of the word “fascinate” as an occult term, I took it as a nod of approval from the forces of synchronicity.
This is still a marketing book. If you hate that sort of thing, you will probably hate it. As a witch who likes to think sometimes about marketing from a magical perspective, I have to admit I was fascinated.