As a solopreneur, you are probably already aware of the benefits of establishing a personal brand and making sure your expertise is seen. Personal branding helps you to create a profile for yourself where you can better educate people about your work, reach a wider market of potential clients, and leave a visible impression on the community. Your personal branding has a huge impact on the consumers and thus you must do this correctly. Creating an effective personal brand marketing strategy will be the key to its success.
If you believe that you have the knowledge and skills in a particular field, then now it’s time to let the world know. Personal branding is about making your work visible to the potential customers while utilizing minimum resources. It is also about standing out in a crowd where many others have the same expertise as you. So how will you stand out? By creating a good personal branding profile and marketing it properly.
We have prepared this ultimate guide about personal brand marketing to help you devise a good strategy and why is it important to do so.
Why do You Need a Personal Brand Marketing Strategy?
Marketing your personal brand, no matter how big or small is important for connecting with your target audience. Through a personal brand marketing strategy, you will have more control over your narrative, your content, and your target audience. Personal brand marketing helps your business in many ways, let’s discuss some of the major benefits.
1. Recognition
One of the major aspects of creating a personal brand is to be recognized by the target audience. By creating a good personal brand strategy, you can create a solid presence in your field, be known as an influential person, and attract the right audience to your brand. This is also beneficial for your business and helps in generating awareness.
2. Highlighting Skills
You share your skills and knowledge through your personal brand marketing strategy. The more confident you are in what you do – How well you know it – how it can be done, the more people are likely to trust you and approach you. Personal branding does not only add confidence to your personality but it also assures you about your quality of work and helps you further improve it. When the community recognizes your skills confidently delivered, they are assured of their choice.
3. Increases Visibility
Personal branding increases your visibility. The more you market yourself, the more visible you become. When you highlight your skills and provide valuable content, people will share that content with others because they believe in your expertise. This lets you secure a powerful position in your field and welcomes more people to recognize your work.
Related Article: 10 Reasons Why You Should Focus on Your Personal Brand
What Level of Visibility Do You Want?
Another benefit of personal brand marketing is that you set the pace yourself. Defining your end goals and starting from scratch is common for all solopreneurs, but working towards it gradually is what turns it into a successful story.
In the book, The Visible Expert, by Elizabeth Harr, there are different levels of visibility defined. This will help you find your current position and provides possible means to reach your desired level. Let’s discuss these in detail.
Level 1 – Resident Experts
This is the basic level of visibility and is most common for solopreneurs. The Resident experts are well-acknowledged in their field of work or organization and are visible to their clients. But are not known outside of their community.
Level 2 – Local Heroes
The local heroes are starting to get recognized outside of their community. They are visible in the local communities and offer their services in the form of blogging or speaking.
Level 3 – Rising Stars
This is probably where you want to be after the first few initial weeks of starting your personal blog. If personal brand marketing is followed diligently, you can find yourself be labeled as a rising star. They are well known in their local communities. They offer valuable content and services in their field of work and are also offered good money for it.
Level 4 – Industry Rock Stars
These individuals have created a huge name across the nation regarding their expertise and charge a substantial amount of money for their services as well. They are a valuable source of information and skill in their field of work.
Level 5 – Global Superstars
Now, this is your dream level, your end goal, and the reason you started personal branding. These individuals are considered experts in their business and are recognized by global industries. They are provided the highest fees and are a valuable asset to a company or organization that wants to work with them.
A personal brand marketing strategy could get you to a level 5 visibility, but expecting to see the results overnight is a naive thought. Personal branding requires a lot of patience, effort, and time. First, you need to identify your level of visibility and work your way towards the end. The time and effort spent on your personal branding strategy will be for naught, as it not only helps you gain visibility but also lets you assert yourself as a valuable individual in the community.
We have a great Step-by-Step Personal Branding Guide for beginners.
Step-by-Step Personal Brand Marketing Strategy
Personal brand marketing strategy is all about standing out, reaching the right audience, and showcasing your skills. We are going to discuss the best marketing tools that can help you do just that – Shine out!
1. Make a Blog/Website
One of the ways you can create a dominant presence in the online community and showcase your expertise and work is by creating a website or blog. A personal website is a great way to attract potential new customers to your brand and introduce them to your skills and knowledge in your field of work. A website provides you more control regarding the image you want to show your consumers. It also lets you showcase all your work, awards, certifications, and skills in a themed format.
Through a website, you can let your customers know your skill level, how you can help them, and what you can do. Developing a professional website that is not only attractive to the eye but brings to focus the solution to the customers’ problem is a sure way to convert them.
It is also important that you optimize certain pages on your site, such as the “About Us” page. This page should include all your achievements and work history in a compelling story and let your customers know that you can help them.
Adding blogs to your website is also an effective way to gain followers and provide knowledge regarding your niche to build an authoritative position in your community.
2. SEO
SEO is a powerful tool and should be utilized fully through personal brand marketing. Creating a stronger position in the search engine ranking could not only increase your site’s traffic but also increase your brand awareness and credibility. Solopreneurs can use personal SEO to improve their site’s ranking and help create a profile that is easily searchable by consumers.
People are more likely to search for a solution themselves rather than seeking out professional help. Thus, you can use those keywords and phrases that are most searched and relevant to your expertise and field and include them in your content. This is a sure way for search engines and consumers to notice you.
SEO is a cost-effective marketing strategy for personal branding. It not only improves your ranking but also increases sales and traffic. Thus, the blogs on your website can help convert customers and let them know about your skill and knowledge regarding a problem they were facing. Creating relevant content improves user-experience and helps in retaining loyal customers.
3. Social Media Marketing
This is where personal branding thrives. Social media marketing has completely changed the marketing game and made it somehow easy and difficult at the same time. The accessibility provided by social media platforms cannot be ignored, but this has made standing out a lot harder. All solopreneurs are using the same platforms, following the same technique, and targeting the same market. Then how are you going to be unique?
Social media marketing also requires a strategy for it to work correctly. One of the most important lessons include trying to optimize and power a few high priority platforms rather than more than you can handle. High priority platforms can be recognized as areas where most buyers are available, where your consumers are active, and where you can communicate with your audience.
Currently, Facebook and Instagram are the most popular platforms for personal branding. And both follow a different set of rules when it comes to content. Learning and understanding each platform could be important in reaching out to the audience. Being consistent, using hashtags, and creating eye-catching content is a sure way to gain followers and build a solid client base.
Here are the 5 Best Examples of Personal Branding Success to keep you motivated.
4. Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most important and effective ways to attract and retain customers. And it works for personal brand marketing too! Once you have created a website, you can use that to collect customer information and target them with detailed and personalized emails to increase conversions.
Email marketing helps you target potential customers and organizations regarding your expertise and skills. This also provides you with a platform where you can interact with your customers in a personalized way. You can also attract potential followers with your valuable content and entice them to subscribe to your newsletter.
5. Marketing Through Media Kit
A media kit can be an important file for personal branding. A media kit is a document that contains all the vital information regarding your business and yourself so people are aware of your skills, knowledge, and mission. It is a quick and easy way to notify your customers about yourself and how to approach your business. A media kit is usually uploaded on your website and can be easily downloaded from there.
A media kit should contain a bio, photos, work samples, testimonials, information regarding your brand and business, and contact details. You can also send media kits to prospective recruiters or organizations to provide them with a pamphlet of your skills and work history.
6. Publish a Booklet/Book
Although this might not be an immediate action that you need to take but publishing your book or booklet is a good way to market yourself. If you feel that you have excellent command over your niche and can deliver content that is valuable to your consumers, then you should write blog posts or a book and give it away for free, if you like.
Publishing a book by combining multiple blogs helps in increasing your credibility and let your consumers know about your knowledge regarding a particular subject. Find keywords or phrases that are related to your niche and write blogs on it, once you have a solid client base and email list available, you can convert them into a book and offer it up.
Conclusion
Personal brand marketing strategy is important to make sure your business visibility increases and you can effectively showcase your skills and knowledge. There are many marketing tools available but you shouldn’t burden yourself with everything at once. Thus, we have designed this effective personal brand marketing plan so you can work at a gradual pace and still see substantial results.
Through personal branding, you can create a solid profile for yourself and increase your reach in your community. For this, you need a stronghold on your social media platforms and email campaign, places where you can reach out to your target audience. Invest your time, create attractive content, display your skills, and develop brand awareness, all through personal branding.