Marketing these days is all about relationships. Gone are the days when people would buy from you whether they knew or liked you or not. There are simply too many unscrupulous people out there and too many newbies (and not so newbies) who have been caught out by them.

That’s why attraction marketing has become so popular, it’s about building relationships, giving something of yourself that is valuable to others.

We all have something to offer, you just need to identify which of your talents you are comfortable sharing and this will tell you which niche to focus on. Apart from anything else however, you need to develop your communication skills. A huge percentage of our personal communications are based on non-verbal aspects and these are almost totally missing or eliminated from written or audio communications. (It is possible to ‘read between the lines’ of written communication and to pick up nuances in speech patterns but most people skim or semi-listen so are likely to miss these when the person that they are ‘listening’ to is not face to face with them.

It is extremely important to bear this in mind when you are considering building relationships with your prospects.

You are never going to be able to please all of the people all of the time as that old saying goes, but you certainly can work hard on growing and showing (or being) yourself when you write to them.

Grow yourself by putting others first in terms of considering what it was that you needed most when you were in their position and then sharing that with them (for free, well at least in exchange only for their email address and maybe phone number lol).

Show yourself by learning to let your natural self shine through your writing, mean what you say, think it through and explain it in your own words, don’t simply regurgitate what you read in the ads or what your favourite guru has sent you. Share their knowledge with your prospects by all means but make it clear where that is coming from if you are going to quote them verbatim and then back that up with your own reasons for thinking that particular share is important so they still get a sense of the real you.

Always include a couple of alternate contact methods in your communications with your prospects so they can pick a method that suits them rather than be restricted to the one that you prefer.

Social networks and forums can be great ways to get yourself known and to build relationships with people that enable you both to decide if you would like to work together before you pitch each other (though unfortunately many people overlook this slower but surer method of relationship building in favour of a sledge hammer approach to pitching their business that ends up doing little more than sending them straight to the ‘people you most want to avoid’ list..)

You need to build respect for yourself, (your brand), before you can draw the kind of people in who are going to work with you rather than be simply a name on your list, or a drain on your time and resources, because they want you to do everything for them. The more you give willingly and up-front, the less people demand your time, reassurance and presence in order to find their own level of replication and duplication.

You need to learn to let your enthusiasm shine through whichever communication medium you are using and that’s one of the reasons that people are so keen on videos at the moment, because you can see the non-verbal communications and get the whole picture almost as well as if you were face to face with the person on screen.  Unfortunately this doesn’t work if you are not relaxed on cmaera because you won’t be sharing the real you if you are focussing on how you look or come across rather than reaching out to your imaginary prospects as if they were sitting right there in the room with you.

A good way to start out with videos if you are camera shy is to use the AVR software that allows you to turn your articles into nice professional videos, ok it doesn’t show you on the camera so people don’t see your non-verbals, but they do get to hear you and they have something very professional looking to watch while they are listening to you, that is reinforcing the important points you are making. I am pretty camera shy myself so I love this software, you can check out some of the videos that I have made with it on my YouTube channel if you want to see some examples

If you wish to make videos using what’s happening on your screen, like showcasing a particular site or explaining how to navigate a particular site etc, jingproject is a great piece of online software that allows you to do this in much the way that camtasia does and it only costs about $14 per year for the upgraded version. There are also examples of these videos on my YouTube channel

These are very simple to use softwares that even non-techy people can become comfortable with in a very short time. I am so pleased that I found them because it really has opened up a whole new communication avenue for me.

In summary then, the key to building relationships with your prospects is to develop your communication skills and to utilise to the maximum, the various technologies available to help you do this. Let yourself shine through so that people are able to relate to you on a personal level. Become someone that others want to be friends with because you have so much to offer, share willingly and gladly the knowledge that you have and never stop growing yourself. This way your brand will take care of itself and you will gradually become an expert attraction marketer.