The term 'branding' must not be new to you if you have been running an online business for quite some time. It's something that differentiates your business from the rest of the crowd.
Building your personal brand, however, isn't as easy as it may sound.
Personal branding is a painstaking process that requires you to communicate your USP (unique selling proposition) to your target customers with a goal to highlight your strengths and build a reputation in your area of expertise.
You can think of a personal branding strategy as your story that helps you better connect with your audience and gain a competitive advantage in your personal and professional endeavors.
But here, it is critical to understand that building your personal brand isn't something you can achieve overnight.
There are so many strategies and tactics out there that it can be easy for anyone to lose track. That is why we have created this post to help you understand the basics of personal branding. We're also going to highlight 6 crucial steps to building your personal brand.
What Is Personal Branding?
Personal branding revolves around the practices that help you build your public persona for your audience. It's a multi-step process that needs a brand to accurately share its values, mission, vision, and goals.
What comes to your mind when you think of Nike? The American multinational cooperation has successfully established its reputation as a brand that focuses on high-profile athletes and comfortable and premium products that help consumers achieve active lifestyles.
You can spot Nike's personal branding choices in whatever marketing strategy they use. That's what exactly you have to do when you take a step forward to create your personal brand.
Interestingly, a personal brand exists for every business, whether or not they create it for themselves.
Every effort you make to demonstrate the personality of your business is part of your personal branding process. But the issue is if you don't try to refine your personal branding strategy, things will eventually go out of your hands, and you'll have no control over your branding strategy.
Personal Branding - Statistics
More than 89% of B2B marketers consider brand awareness as their top-most priority.
According to research, digital marketers who use blogging to build a personal brand enjoy up to 13% more ROI than marketers who don't give importance to personal branding.
Benefits Of Building Your Personal Brand!
Here are a few reasons why every ecommerce business needs a foolproof personal branding strategy to stand out in the crowd.
Attracts Customer’s Attention
An ecommerce world is already saturated with thousands of businesses. Even customers find it hard to choose a brand that will fit their needs. Also, it has become truly challenging for new brands to get recognition in the presence of multiple dropshipping giants like Amazon.
That is where a killer personal branding strategy comes in. By building your personal brand, you can better engage with people and attract more potential customers.
As mentioned above, personal branding involves communicating your unique selling proposition to your target audience. Doing so will enable you to offer something exclusive to your buyers that other businesses aren't offering at the moment.
Promotes Loyalty
One thing that differentiates brands from the rest of the businesses is it favors better relationships with their customers. Because of this reason, customers also prefer brands over other businesses as they can identify with them at a more personal level.
Today, many brands value their customers more than anything else. While each brand follows a unique strategy to maintain a relationship with its customers, most of them focus on creating a personal branding strategy that helps them better connect with their buyers.
From web design to typography and selection of colors, these brands maintain a consistent brand message and tone that resonates with their target audience and helps build a loyal customer base that stays true to their brand no matter what.
Improves Your Brand Identity
Businesses following a robust personal branding strategy usually have many loyal customers. Customers who are happy with your offers turn into brand advocates and spread positivity about your brand wherever they go.
Happy customers not only promote your ecommerce business within their social circles and families but also share positive testimonials across different social media platforms.
When you have a positive reputation on popular social media platforms, Google and other search engines also consider your brand reliable and rank it better on SERPs. That goes without saying that improved search engine visibility will automatically improve your site traffic and leads.
In addition to that, more visibility also leads to brand recognition. As a result, your business grows more quickly and generates better revenues over time.
Improves Customer Service
Brands that fail to maintain two-way communication with their customers witness a significant reduction in their customer retention rate than brands that take this aspect seriously.
Also, present-day customers do not compromise on customer service. Unlike other businesses, brands take customer feedback very seriously and always try to introduce innovative ideas to improve customer support to address their concerns in time. This enables them to have more faithful customers who always prefer their brand for their purchases over others.
6 Crucial Steps To Building Your Personal Brand
As discussed above, your personal branding strategy should highlight your brand's strengths and unique selling points. Here are 6 steps to building a personal branding strategy that attracts your ideal clients.
1. Build Your Foundation And Choose Your Niche
The first step to creating a personal branding strategy is to lay a solid foundation. There is a difference between building a personal brand and formulating public personas.
Branding is more about positioning your brand to depict your authentic self to your target audience. To create your personal branding strategy, you have to focus on your brand assets, including your credentials, interests, and core beliefs.
After identifying your brand assets, the next step is to find out factors that set your brand apart from others. Some of those factors include your brand mission, vision, purpose, and overall brand personality.
If you try to attract everyone, you'll end up attracting no one. So, instead of focusing on multiple niches, keep your focus on a single niche that you think is related to your interests and in demand.
Based on these factors, you can find a niche that is not too common yet has a high demand.
Here are a few questions you should ask yourself before you find a niche for your business:
What is your USP?
Who are your competitors?
Will your product address any specific customer pain point?
2. Choose Your Target Audience
As mentioned above, trying to appeal to everyone can cause more harm than good for your business. Remember, when we talk about business, not everyone can be your perfect client.
If you want to benefit from your personal branding strategy, you have to exclude those who are not your ideal clients. This means finding people who are genuinely interested in your offers. Yes, you guessed that right. We're talking about identifying your target audience.
For this, you have to create buyer personas based on demographics, buying preferences, interests, and purchase history. Remember, the more effort you put in to knowing your potential customers, the better you would be able to connect with them and convince them to accept your offers.
3. Create An Offer Your Customers Will Love
So, you have successfully identified your perfect clients and laid a solid foundation for your branding strategy.
What's next?
It's time to provide your audience with a solution that addresses their pain points.
The biggest mistake business owners make is they choose a product that they like. But when you're in a market, it's not about 'You'. It's more about what your target audience wants. That's why identifying the right audience is one of the essential steps of your personal branding strategy.
The first thing you have to do to create an attractive offer is to portray yourself as an industry expert. Do not promise anything you can't deliver. Commit precise results so that your audience can trust your offers.
A perfect offer is a fusion of what you do your best and what your ideal customers want. So keep this secret formula for success in mind before you create any offers for your potential customers.
4. Create Your Brand Identity By Optimizing Your Website
Another proven personal branding tip is to create your brand identity by investing in a fast and responsive website. Invest some time researching your competitor's websites (especially those who are doing great in their field) and see how they have designed their websites.
If you want to create personal branding that your target audience can remember for years, you have to think out of the box. Create a website that not only looks great but also delivers an impeccable user experience.
The first impression is the last impression. Take your time to think about your logo, colors, fonts, and overall branding on your site that you can use consistently across different online/offline platforms.
When your ideal clients visit your website, they should be able to identify what you do and how your business can help them out.
5. Develop Content And Social Media Strategies
Did you know content marketing can cost you 62% less than traditional marketing efforts?
There is no shortcut for this step. You have to work hard (read: very hard) to create content that drives your audience's attention and gets you the desired rankings on SERPs.
Instead of creating short posts with little to no information, try to create in-depth and detailed long-form articles that provide value to your users and represent you as an industry expert.
Again, there is no standard formula you can follow to create perfect posts. You have to figure out what works best for your niche. Connecting your content strategy with your social media strategy is also a good idea.
Do not try to do everything on your own. There are experts out there (both content strategists and social media marketers) who can help you devise perfect content and social media strategies for your business.
6. Create A Foolproof Visibility Strategy
There is no denying the fact that posting high-quality and relevant content on your own website can drive tons of traffic and conversions. But it takes a lot of time.
The best way to speed up the process is by creating a visibility strategy that enables you to increase your brand exposure by connecting with other people's audiences.
For instance, you can get yourself interviewed on public platforms, such as summits, TV, radio, etc. The idea is to get more and more people to see you and know about your brand (this can also help you out with your backlink strategy as you can ask those parties to provide a link back to your website while broadcasting your interview.)
Similarly, you can guest post on other people's websites to prove your expertise.
Local meetup groups and public speaking opportunities can provide you with a chance to talk more openly about your brand and spread awareness.
Last but not least, you can collaborate with other people to promote your brand through their websites and social media profiles.
Personal branding strategy can do wonders for you if you know how to get it right. We hope this post has cleared some of your doubts about creating a personal branding strategy that delivers great result
Ricky Hayes
Trisha Ballesteros