How to turn your marketing into MAGIC (and what spells to avoid)

I’ve been on a fiction kick this summer, and right now I’m smack in the middle of The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow.

I won’t give any spoilers in case you want to read it (which you totally should, btw), but the book is essentially about reviving witchcraft, which according to the title characters involves rediscovering “the words, the ways, and the will.”

In the story, the “words” part of the equation has largely been lost. And I’ve been thinking about how that applies to us as herbal business owners (since we are, arguably, a pretty witchy bunch ourselves).

We’ve got the will — we want to have successful businesses and more autonomy in our lives.

We’ve got the ways — the plants, and the skills we’ve honed in working with them.

But what we often struggle with are the words — aka our marketing. How we communicate our ideas and messages with the world so that we can actually make the magic happen. So that we can take this vision and these skills and transform them into a livelihood that makes a positive impact on others.

And just like the “words” in Harrow’s book, the language we use in our marketing has the potential to be powerful spellwork.

With the noise we exist within, it’s not enough to just tell folks what you offer and hope that they understand it’s value. It’s not enough to say something once and then hope for the best — there’s a reason most spells contain repetition, after all.

Often, when I talk to clients, this is one of the biggest missing pieces. Everything is there, except for marketing messages that can — like a spell — cut through the noise, be noticed, and create change.

Now, I’m not the first person to make this connection — there’s been whole books written about it, and whole instagram accounts dedicated to it. But I want to bring in another important distinction here. Not all spells are the same. Not all magic has good intentions.

As an entrepreneur and a generally witchy human, I’ve checked out multiple influencers and authors who talk about marketing as spellwork — and the question they always seem to be trying to answer is: “How can we make people want to buy our stuff?”

That question has always made me uncomfortable, because frankly, I’m not into that kind of magic. I’m not particularly interested in pulling the wool over someone’s eyes and casting charms on them to do my bidding.

Instead, I want our words to weave magic that is liberatory.

I want the words we use in our marketing to awaken something from deep within the people who encounter it.

I want our words to draw them deeper into connecting with the things that truly want and need.

I want our words to dissolve shame. To dissolve the barriers and blocks that have been holding the reader back.

I want our words — our marketing — to speak into being the worlds we want to be living in. Worlds where people are more deeply connected to the earth. Where healing is possible. Where people are connected with the resources they need to thrive.

This, to me, is what good marketing does.

And it also makes sales. Because people want to support what makes them come alive.

In the next few months, I’m going to opening up a few spots for folks who are interested in working with me 1:1 to craft their marketing copy in precisely this way — if you want to be one of those people, comment below or shoot me a line at stephanie@budtobloomcoaching.com

In the meantime, though, I want to invite you to view the words on your instagram posts, your emails, your labels, and your websites as little spells cast out into the world. Do they feel potent? And if so, what kind of magic are they weaving?