20 Aug Tips & Tricks – Building Rapport in Marketing
By: Samual Burkett
When discussing marketing, we are often faced with different topics such as SEO, Analytics, Google Ad Words, Copy Writing, and more. These are all important factors to consider as a marketing specialist, however, what happens when we have these great ideas but are unable to communicate them to the people that matter?
Whether we are talking about the boss of the company you work for, a potential client, and even at the most basic level, your customers. If we are unable to sell our ideas, then how can we expect to market our brand, product, or service?
This is where understanding human interaction, and the ways we communicate to each other is just as important to a marketer’s job as understanding the topic of marketing itself.
One important element of human interaction is called Rapport.
Rapport is a powerful tool to use whenever you are having difficulty communicating with another person or people, and it is a fantastic way to build strong relationships. The term simply means that people like people who are like themselves, or people like people who they would like to be like. In other words, we like people who share the same values as us.
To explain further, let us imagine you have an important meeting with a client to pitch your marketing proposal to. You have thirty minutes to sell the idea, but as soon as you meet with them, you find that you are uncomfortable, the client is losing interest, and you are not sure if they are actually invested in the interaction.
In this situation, my first response would be determining if I am in rapport with that person. If you have not built rapport, any form of negotiation is extremely difficult if not impossible.
But how do we build rapport? The quickest way is to mirror that person. Say they are crossing their legs, but yours remain parted, it is perfectly fine to then cross your legs too. Perhaps they are tapping a pen against the table, you could then try to tap your hand in rhythm with them. Even breathing in synch with the other person can build rapport.
Now this may seem silly, and you want to avoid over doing it. Yet slight shifts in the way you sit, breath, even talk, can go a long way to helping your client, and yourself feel more comfortable in a meeting situation. Not only can you do these small things, but you can also discover if they have similar interests to yourself. You may not share that interest, but listening, and showing that you are engaged in what they have to say is another key to building Rapport.
There are many ways to build rapport, and we as humans do it naturally. The more you know about it, and how to integrate it into your day-to-day activities, the easier it is for you to do it without thinking on it. So if you ever find yourself feeling uncomfortable pitching an idea, maybe consider if you are practicing rapport, because at the end of the day our client wants to feel like we share similar values to them, and their business.
For more information, follow these links:
Tony Robbins on rapport
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9uHBEGpJm4
Article on rapport
Stock video used
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikiDS874uaY
