Re-invent your brand and dictate a successful future for yourself using these proven simple techniques
INTRODUCTION
What does Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs and Barrack Obama all have in common? If your answer was “A solid Brand”, then you’re right. Personal branding is a practice whereby individuals market themselves, their professions and products as brands. A brand could be a design, a term or an image that reflects an individual or a product. It could be described as a feature that makes one product distinct from the other.
Brand is a term used in advertising, business or marketing. Personal branding is a process whereby a unique image of a product is inscribed in the mind of customers. It is the way you market yourself to your customers or to the world. It can be described as what people think you are. What you have made yourself in the eyes of others. When people look at you, hear about you, they tend to mentally and involuntarily create an image of a brand about you. Whatever you do and however you do it, note that you are branding yourself. Calling customers or receiving calls from customers, you are branding yourself. Sending emails, talking with relatives or friends, the way you put on your cloths, you are branding yourself. Certainly every activity carried out that brings you out from the crowd is branding you.
Branding could be external or internal. External brand simply explains how you present yourself to others. Here you choose what to tell the world about you. This will give people a form of feeling about you. What you think about yourself is internal brand.
Building personal brand is not meant for entrepreneurs alone. It is also meant for individuals, like yourself.
Chapter 1
HOW TO BUILD A PERSONAL BRAND
One major concept in outsmarting your competitors is by building a brand. When you stand ahead of your competitors, you will become unique and outstanding and one way to do this is by creating your brand. In creating a brand, you should consider your mission carefully. This should be created from a strong desire to serve your customers or those who depend on you. There should be critical thinking about how and what branding will do to other people or your customers. To achieve this, do the following:
Create a beautiful look: In creating a beautiful outlook, you have to consider some of the following factors;
Making a mission statement: Offer an outstanding quality one which is different from every other producers of goods or services. Sincerely present what you think you or your organisation can offer. Your mission statement should be followed accordingly to gain confidence in your customers.
In the mission statement, you must ask yourself why you started your business, what you think you can achieve. How you want to go about it? And how you can achieve the result doing things differently.
Create how you want people to see you: project yourself or brand to be trustworthy. You need your customers to believe that when they have numerous choices to make about similar products, yours will supersede. You should be able to put up some twist in your mission statement. You should make your product to be seen as an opportunity to have a second chance and as a product that gives life after disappointment from other people.
You should make sure you utilize your product. When customers see you on daily basis using your product in different forms, clears doubt from their mind.
Be in your customers shoes. You should be able to ask yourself the reason you eventually buy someone’s product. There are points or factors you should consider before you buy somebody’s product. When you consider those factors, it could help you to build a brand of your product.
You should be able to prove the reasons customers should go for a product and use that to continuously build and optimize your product and make your product to be unique, stand out in a smart way and also it should be colorful.
Polish the language to you brand: You should have a distinct phrase about your brand that is unique to you, your slogan should be linked to you alone. The terms or key words that drives you should be linked to your mission statement. You should coin these words in such a way that it could stick to your customers mind. Terms like “be Outstanding”, “Feel at home” makes customers believe that your brand is different from others’ and unique. The terms and words should be kept in its basic form and as simple as possible making it easy for customers to remember.
Have your tag in your product everywhere to keep the same tone.
This is a way of being consistent in all platforms that your product appears. This makes people feel that they can depend on you and your product.
Get a Beautiful Design for your brand. You need to give your brand a look that catches the attention of customers. The design and message should portray the mission statement. Make sure the design is continuous where your brand or product is located. This should start with having a great logo design for your brand. Your logo should be unique enough that it sticks to your customers’ mind. It should be different from other brands because you want to stand out of the crowd. Let them think about your company or your products whenever they see your logo. When you see a check mark anywhere, you will think of Nike.
Make people and customers think of your product the moment they see a related logo or symbol like your logo. Let a professional logo designer work on your logo. Someone whose work is well-known to people. Let your logo appear everywhere and make it prominent. This way, your logo can replace your name. It can be used interchangeably with the name of your product. Some specific brands that are unique have colors that are associated with them. The color of your brand should represent you. They are used frequently in all locations or platform that your products are seen. It should form the background color of your website, the color of your logo, the color of your product package, the color of any ad placed on the internet.
When you have a color that links your mission statement, it can replace the name of your product. When people see the color, they see your product.
Wherever you see Mc Donald; you see gold and red. Whenever you see google, it’s red, green, blue and yellow appear alongside. Paint your business the color you want people to see and admire making you stand out from the crowd.
Make sure things remain as simple as possible. Remember whatever you want to do should make your brand to be recognized easily and quickly. Being unique is your watchword but be sure to remain simple in whatever you do.
Communicate with your workers: let your workers or employees know the importance of your brand. Let them know the reason you choose the features in your brand. You should explain the logo, color and the image of the product and how you came about them. Allow them to make suggestions about your brand, this makes your product to be successful.
Your employees can serve as the customers at that time.
They should criticize any features of the product that they do not find to associate well with the product. Ask them of better ideas that they have and make it clear what your purpose on the product is. Let your employees tell you how they believe your product will go in the market. Let them compare your product with your competitors.
GAIN THE LOYALTY OF YOUR CUSTOMERS:
Have a unique product that has the same language with the message you send out to your customers. A message that is good should be followed by a good product. Every terms in your message should be delivered in your product.
This means keeping promises and when customers are treated this way, they keep you in mind. They will spread the news about your products to fellow customers.
In this way, your product will catch fire and spread without a possible ad on any media. If other customers know that what you present is what you sell, they will come to you. Do not let your customers down when they feel they should try your product.
Transparency is very important in dealing with customers. When you are trusted also keeps your sale up and your customers keep coming back to you. Trust is built when you match your words with the right actions as promised customers do not like to be deceived because when they are, they lose the trust they had in you and your product.
Be consistent in the quality of your product.
This because when a trust built for several years can be broken in just one product that was not the same with what you use to offer. Trust cannot be bought but can be earned after several years of partnership with someone.
Do a survey in the market to know the buyers of your products. Research about the people who you think will patronize your product and how change in the brand will affect their response. Run a research on how people in different demographic region receive your product. The aim is to keep improving on their complaints and faults found about your product. They should be able to tell you about your product after use and give recommendations which you will act on. When you have learnt about who buys your product the important thing to do is to start narrowing your effort to deliver to them.
You should not keep trying to get the attention of the whole customers when you can make more profit with your effort focused on a particular demographic group.
If your product interests the teenage girls more, you focus on the teenage girls and advertise to them. By this, you will have a channel where your brand is sold.
Analyse about your competitors: Research about the companies offering the same products that you offer. Analyse their product with an aim of outsmarting them in the business. Look for a way to create a unique product one that is better that what they offer. You may find a product that has a large market in a demographic group. This is why you have to brand your product.
When you do this, you will take your own share from the market. Sometimes you may consider other demographic groups when it appears that with your brand you cannot break into the market and have large sales. You can also tweak yourself or your product all to make sure your product becomes branded and out sale others in the business.
Interact with customers: It is important that you always communicate with your customers. This should be done frequently and you will get important feedback that will help you tweak your product. Allow them to suggest how your business will be improved. Talk with them showing that you are representing your brand. Be open to corrections from your product users.
Do not be so strict or so stocked to your words that you cannot change them. You should respond to any feedback that you receive from customers. This should be done regularly but not with an automatic response means. Respond personally to every mails that you receive from your customers in a friendly manner. Let your customers feel they have a right in designing the product that is meant for them.
BRAND PROMOTION:
Build a strategy for your market: Make plans to get your product to your customers through any possible means. Having your product online in ads helps a lot. Ads could be placed on newspapers, magazines and in everywhere possible if you can find your customers there.
Have all your tools and materials of the same brand. Apply it to your messages, your packaging materials, your stationery and the background of your website. Have your brand displayed at different places for easy accessibility by customers. The ease of access of your brand will make it outstanding.
Tweak your brand by adopting some unusual form of ads like having your brand on the shirts of your employees, on every material used in your company, and radio ads. Give out pens and less expensive materials that you have your brands on. Doing this creates a unique and outstanding public image for your brand. This should not be done once in a lifetime, it should be done frequently.
Create an image on the social media platform: creating a profile on the social media is one of the things that people do these days to have a brand. Your accounts on social media should be visited regularly to update the information you have there. Take pictures and articles about your brand and use them to feed your page on the social media. Any niche that you are, take pictures of it and flood the media with them. Snap the best products and display them on the social media for people to have a view of them.
Do not use your brand to disturb people who do not have interest in an annoying manner. Make all your things real and keep them as simple as possible.
Create a website that publishes your brand. If you do not have a website, you cannot complete build what you want and what customers want. it forms a means to interact with your customers. Your brand will be assumed to be outdated when you do not have a website where you publish all the activities of the brand. Having and managing a website is done in two ways.
It is either you have a professional create and manage one for you or you can choose to use the website templates that are out there just to make sure you keep up to the demands of the brand you are building. The website tells us about your product, where they can be obtained and where your company is located. With the website, you can tell customers whatever story you choose to tell them.
CHAPTER 2
CHARACTERISTICS OF PERSONAL BRANDING
Being remarkable is how people want their products. In recent days, having your brand making waves out there is very important to manufacturers. Staying for some time before it actually gives way for other products can be accepted by some manufacturers.
Some people have built brands that did not fade away. They maintain the consistency of the brand. Their aim of having the brand is achieved. Some people have never created a brand. Having a brand, you need to have the following characteristics before you call yourself a brand, if not, you brand becomes short-lived. These include;
Being plain: You should make your brand simple. In plain terms, tell us about yourself, what your products are and what your interests are. You should be able to give us reasons why you have your product.
Being Authentic: People have the ability to tell when a product is good or bad from a far. Your message should conform to what you present as a product. People will like it when you reflect what you send to them in your day to day activities. In your communication, you should mention your values and match them with actions visible to your customers.
Being Remarkable: Your brand should be easily differentiated from others. It should not take much of a time to feel the needs your product can cover. When your product is remarkable, it is unique, it has out shorn others. This will place you above your competitors. Make sure you go an extra mile to do things that you competitors have not done. This makes you remarkable.
Consistency: having you brand meet its original standard always makes it consistent. A foundation of your brand should be developed properly before you begin to market you product. Your brand messages must have to conform with your brand. The way you present you brand and its features should retain the same form over the years or should have some flavor as improvement to become better.
You should not compromise quality.
Let the attributes of your product and your unique product sent the message out. You should speak the same language when you put out ads on different media. Your website should talk about your product the same way you blog will do. All your social media platforms should project your products same way radios and ads on the internet should do.
Being distinct: Have a brand that should be outstanding. Be differentiated from the others by your brand. The features that makes you brand distinct should not take hours to be seen. People will have to judge you product and it will take less time to conclude about it.
Therefore, present your product the way you would want other products to be presented and how you would like it. Let your design speak volume of your product.
The design sticks to their brain at first sight. You will not be there to speak of the product.
CHAPTER 3
BENEFITS OF PERSONAL BRANDING
The Will to Express Yourself: Personal branding gives the chance to express yourself completely. You do not have to pretend about your product. This gives you a great relief. You become what you want to become and go the direction that you want your life to go.
Becoming More Confident: Your confidence grows by the day as you begin to develop your brand. As you look at what changes you have made and the strengths in your product, you become more positive about yourself. The society knows how much you have to offer and this shoots your self-esteem to the sky. Your personal brand helps to cover your weaknesses.
Credibility: When your Customers confirms that you can offer what you promised to give consistently, you have ended up in building credibility. You must have matched your words with actions.
Specialty Presentation: when you brand yourself, it gives you the opportunity to showcase the special knowledge that you have you propel yourself to become special in your field. It gives you the chance to use your knowledge to outsmart your competitors. This is the reason why you should choose a niche where you can become an expert in no time.
Gives you a mark: in branding, you will get a mark which is well-known by the entire people. Your customers know you by that mark. You become known for that good product that you produce. This serves as a legacy you have left. They will keep remembering you for the legacy you left behind.
It brings you to your target customers. When you brand your product, you become well known among many people who value good thing. This ensures that you have communicated property with your customers. You get directly close to your customers. You must first build relationship, because a good relationship built on a solid foundation yields a brand.
Stands You Out From The Crowd: when you have a slight difference between your products and other competitors’ products, people do not tend to notice you and your product. A red dress tends to be outstanding among group of people wearing black dresses. Customers easily see the outstanding products among numerous regular products.
Available Support: People offer to help you. No one will help you if you have an unclear presentation of your product. Therefore, you can only get support from people when your message is clear.
CHAPTER 4
TOP REASONS WHY BUILDING PERSONAL BRAND WILL GET YOU NOTICED
DIFFERENTIATION: One of the ways to attract attention from numerous individuals from all over the world is to have a personal brand. Among many people in the same business with you, you tend to stand out. When you differentiate yourself, you are seen as distinct from the other people of your kind. You have a drive to produce results.
Differentiating yourself does not come in a day’s job but rather from accumulated experiences in the job and the passion to keep improving and be above everyone.
If you have the urge for personal branding, it means you have the urge to become original. Being original, this means being the best of the bests. You become advantages over your competitors. People need the best of the bests, the original product and an outstanding product. You do no need to be advertised, or place an ad of any kind to present yourself or product to the world. Your news spreads and
CONSISTENCY: When a product, an organisation or a person remains consistent, it becomes stocked or engraved to an individual’s mind. This is another reason why branding gets you noticed. People will notice you when your communication delivers the same messages at all times.
People will show so much trust and interest in any person, organisation or product that maintains it message whether favorable or unfavorable. Customers who browse your product and they like it, they would be disappointed when they order the product and finds out is not consistent with what they earlier saw.
If by the time they find out that it has remained the same or with some improvement, your product will sell itself without ads. When a customer sees how consistent you have been in your product, you will gain his trust. If we become inconsistent, customers will run away from us and no one seem to notice our product.
CHAPTER 5
Case in Point: Examples of very successful people using brand appeal to their advantage.
People who are well branded get noticed. Getting noticed in the world has been achieved by numerous individuals all over the world.
- Oprah Winfrey -
Oprah Winfrey has personal brand because she is well known all over the world for what she does. Oprah Winfrey capitalised on her personal brand making her very successful, visible, rich and popular. She has achieved all she would hope to achieve in life by doing what she knows how to do on daily basis. It cannot be disputed that Oprah is among the most strongly branded people living today.
Oprah has always challenged people to understand their potentials to enable them become a brand and be successful. She lives an authentic life, being honest. This shows that being yourself or remaining who you are pays off.
Never attempt to become someone you are not. If Oprah was noticed by being herself, you will be noticed when you become yourself.
- Steve Jobs -
Steve Jobs is otherwise called a perfectionist. He also have passion in design. He has made statements about branding and how people can achieve their brand. He always charge us to remain unique. You have little time to spend on earth, so why waste most of it being someone else? In whatever you do, what is most important is follow your heart. Steve Jobs personal brand determined his actions. He pursue excellence without regards to anything else. On the quest to be different, he can broke rules. He was never interested in making money, but he knew he would make something bigger at the end. In some of his quote, it showed how much he wanted to become a mark in the world.
“I was worth over $1,000,000 when I was 23, and over $10,000,000 when I was 24, and over $100,000,000 when I was 25, and it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money”.
“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me…. Going to bed at night saying we have done something wonderful….. That’s what matters to me” – Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs have proved that you can get noticed when you brand yourself.
- Lady Gaga-
Lady Gaga is said to be the queen of personal branding. There are some principles that she follows when it comes to branding. These I think helped her very well in the course of her branding. She urges everyone to completely be themselves. This is a characteristics that almost every brand teaches about themselves.
“You have to be unique and different, and shine in your own way” – Lady Gaga.
“Don’t you ever let a soul in the world tell you that you can’t be exactly who you are”. – Lady Gaga.
Personal branding is about a vision greater than who you are. “And now, I’m just trying to change the world, one sequin at a time’’. – Lady Gaga.
- Barack Obama -
Barack Obama is a great visionary who has built and maintained personal brand for a long time. President Barack Obama has successfully used some tactics and strategies in building relationships. This has built him personal brand. Hope, Change and great oratory are associated with President Barack Obama and helped him ride the wave into the White House. With the desire to fulfil the American dream president Obama has differentiated himself from the crowd by developing and using a very impeccable brand. He made himself unique and he got noticed.
Others like Richard Brandson, Lady Diana, Tony Robbins are all successful visionaries. These visionaries are branded. Each of them have a desire that is greater than their ego.
Conclusion
Thank you again for reading! I hope this post was able to help you to understand how to ReBrand and dictate your own future and legacy. Others have done it and achieved great success in the process…And so can you.
Like Oprah, Lady Gaga, Steve Jobs and Obama, you can have a very solid brand, and achieve great success in the process.
You can do it if you just form your thinking and practice the lessons listed within this book. The next step is to get a notebook and begin brainstorming on all sections in relation to the tips included.
Finally, if you enjoyed this book, please take the time to share your thoughts and post a review on Amazon. It’d be greatly appreciated!
Thank you and good luck!
This is a very in-depth article and you did a very good job writing it. Creating a brand can be very difficult but with hard work and perseverance it can be done. I have written some SEO articles that you may be interested in.
Thank you,
Spencer Coffman
SpencerCoffman.com