Over the years, the business space has continually evolved with ways of doing business gradually changing. As the world adopts a more digital space, every entrepreneur must understand how to make the most of it to build a better and more successful business.
What is personal branding
Creating a successful business today demands an in-depth understanding of personal branding. Personal brand refers to the qualities, value, and personal traits you communicate to your sphere of influence, potential clients or customers, people in your network, and the general public at large. These values are what shapes who you are in the mind of people. It tells them what is unique about you, how you do things, and what you have to offer.
Personal branding used to be a phenomenon commonly associated with celebrities, authors, speakers, and people of influence. Today, where a good percentage of the world’s population who make up the global market is tech-savvy, personal branding has become one of the golden strategies you’ll need to appeal to the minds of the people who make up this population.
To put it more simply, personal branding is your presence, your reputation, and what makes you credible. So, whether you’re an entrepreneur, intrapreneur a thought-leader, or an employee, you need to build a strong personal brand to showcase what you have and stand out to get your voice heard.
Why you should care about Personal branding
Unlike before, it doesn’t take too long for someone to find a product or services they need. With the internet open for everyone at the comfort of their homes. A few searches will reveal lots of people or businesses who offer similar services. However, making the right decision on the best choice solely lies in how the service providers can convince the potential buyer to key into their services.
What this means for you as an entrepreneur is that to make sales, you must find a way to write your name in the minds of your potential customers, separate yourself from the crowd of other similar providers and have your customers or clients come straight to you whenever they need your services.
Being able to achieve this is highly dependent on the values you’ve communicated about yourself or your business to your market. Here are few strategies you can employ to build your brand to stand out from the multitude and attract buyers directly to your business.
Discover who you are
We now live in a very busy world filled with professionals and unprofessional alike in the marketplace. Since we all are busy, finding out time to figure out who you are or what your business stands for is almost impossible for most buyers. It’s your job as the service provider to communicate your values in a quick way that captures the mind of your audience. Therefore, to do so, you must first discover your brand by figuring out who you are.
Make a list of your capabilities, separate your strengths from your weaknesses.
Focus on the capabilities that make you unique by clearly defining why people would want to come to you rather than the next person.
Discuss this with your closest allies (family, co-workers, friends, etc.) and they’ll provide you great answers when it comes to finding your strongest traits and unique capabilities.
Don’t make the mistake of branding yourself all by yourself without defining your value system and your strongest qualities. Invest your time in doing so before rushing into the market if you want to attract the right audience.
Position yourself
To stand out, you have to position yourself in the right way that makes you different from others. Don’t be like everyone else. Find a blanc space or sub-niche that is not associated with anyone else. Own it, communicate your specialization in a way that syncs with this new niche and people will get to know you as the right source for that area. For example, if you study the Rolex brand, you’ll discover that they’ve succeeded in setting themselves apart from other watch brands by positioning themselves exclusively as a luxury brand.
Show Transparency
To stand out from the crowd, avoid anything that makes your brand identity come out as fake. Show confidence in what you do, who you are, and your area of specialty. Create a balance between transparency and protecting your marketability and reputation. Be open with your content and also learn to handle feedback and criticism in a way that benefits your business. Although being transparent is important, it doesn’t mean selling your business secrets or putting out what will harm your brand. Therefore, be cautious of what you put out there about your business.
Get your name on everyone’s lips
Now that you’ve established an identity for your brand and also positioned yourself rightly, it’s time to showcase what you’ve got to the world!
Create awareness about your personal brand both online and offline. Develop strategies that will help you achieve your sales goals, employ social media strategy, build your presence online. Develop a marketing strategy for your brand using the 4 C’s:
Content: Creating a stream of contents that are sustainable and engaging
Connection: Connect with your audience in the best way they would want you to
Communication: Keep them engaged and always communicate changes with them
Conversion: Convert and makes sales by convincing them on how badly they need your product or services.
Standing out from the crowd has a lot with getting your name out there. Even if you have good qualities, as long as no one knows about your brand, you won’t make sales. Therefore, self-promotion is a very vital aspect of personal branding. However, it is important to note that self-promotion without providing your audience with useful information is almost useless. Therefore, always remember to focus on getting useful information for your audience and then capping it by asking them to contact you if they need more information or your services.
Conclusion
Developing your brand strategy is a good way to step into the path of building a successful brand. Understand who your audience is, position yourself in the right manner to cater to their needs, and create amazing contents that will keep them engaged. Monitor your social media channels and craft content that show you as authentic and transparent on your profiles, emails, blog, and promotional materials and you’ll be on your way to the top.