You’ve surely heard about personal branding multiple times, but do you know how it can help you grow your business? Let’s find out!
Many talented business owners view their enterprises as extensions of themselves, and for good reason. You spend a lot of time building a company, and you put all of your values, resources, and knowledge into it. However, since your business is a reflection of you, it’s influenced by your identity, whether positively or negatively.
Some investors, vendors, and customers will consider personal information about you while determining whether to work with your business or not. Ideally, when others research you, they’ll find out about how smart, hard-working, and passionate you are. Moreover, they should discover that you conduct the company with honesty, integrity, and professionalism.
Knowing how to properly share this information about yourself is known as personal branding (PB). We’ll go into further detail about incorporating personal branding into your marketing strategy and offer pointers for launching your own campaign. If you want to bring your potential customers closer to your brand, this article’s for you!
What actually is personal branding?
In simpler words, personal branding is marketing a person. Multiple factors make you unique: your experiences, personality, education, skills, and job titles. You can assess your PB by looking up your web presence. If you open Google and type in your name, what do you find? Is the information you receive suitable for your business objectives?
To better understand how PB works, here are the most important elements:
- Storytelling: yes, that’s true. A PB is a fantastic tool for sharing your story with your audience. While the main goal is to make your business more popular and attract clients, sometimes a PB outshines a company.
- Your online reputation: to put it simply, a PB is someone’s online reputation. Many CEOs have a personal brand by default; the only uncertain aspect is whether they choose to enhance it or not. As Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, once said, “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” So, what does your brand say?
- It can be your company’s face: If you have a B2C or B2B business, the good news is that your PB can also be the face of your company.
- Company trust: a team member’s branding—typically that of the founder or owner—can increase the organization’s legitimacy. Customers are more likely to trust the business if they have faith in the entrepreneur, so don’t neglect this tip.
- Marketing strategy: as you can already guess by now, PB is a useful tool for business, but especially for any small business marketing campaign. Even though several companies try their best to have an online presence, many of them overlook PB. But not anymore!
1. Competitive edge
According to experts, customers now anticipate personal branding from businesses. Studies say that over 70% of them are more likely to make a purchase when a company’s CEO uses social media, and more than 80% of respondents stated they are more likely to trust a company when its senior executives are active on media platforms.
Customers want feedback from the company’s executives. They want to see the people behind the product or the service. Therefore, if you want to increase your awareness and/or your sales, don’t miss out on bringing people closer to you and your business’ values.
2. Increased sales
Even though social media platforms are perceived as both good and bad, depending on your perspective, we can’t deny their usefulness. You use these platforms to connect with friends and family, seek inspiration, access educational content, and even make purchases. Social media also helps you become familiar with brands and their stories.
Just think about how much your target audience uses social media. Think about their preferences, interests, likes, and dislikes. Tell them your story, but be authentic, and don’t skip parts because they’re not perfect. Your potential customers want to be understood and they’re looking for relatable content and stories. The more you appeal to them, the more they’ll engage with your business.
Speaking of that, experts discovered that one of the most important advantages of personal branding initiatives is a rise in sales. LinkedIn reports that employees who incorporate social media activities into their sales process outsell their counterparts who don’t use social media by over 75% and are 50% more likely to meet their sales targets.
The B2B sales process is also a drawn-out one. Marketing strategists state that people usually recall a brand after five to seven impressions. Posting on social media and other personal branding initiatives are great ways to nurture and convert leads. Of course, it’s easier than it seems, because it can take a while to discover the “success recipe” in terms of content, but try different things, pay attention to your audience’s behaviors and reactions, and you’ll get it.
You provide potential clients with a “look behind the curtain” when you invest time in personal branding for founders and business executives. When someone uses effective personal branding, they authentically showcase their personality and highlight aspects of their background and ideals that positively impact the organization. In the eyes of clients and potential clients, it humanizes the business, which is one of the best things you could do.
Such familiarity and trust can tip the odds in your favor when a potential consumer has to choose between your business and a rival’s.
…Here’s a tip from the experts: set up a branded email address that includes your company’s name to build brand recognition.
3. Get in front of your customers
Social media personal branding promotes credibility and trustworthiness, two important factors in consumer decisions. According to studies, more than 80% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family more than any other kind of advertising, so if you convince someone of the quality of your business, they’re more likely to tell others too.
However, to believe a recommendation, a consumer needs to know the recommender. Here’s some food for thought: more than 75% of consumers read and trust customer evaluations before making a purchase.
Social media users follow amusing, intelligent, witty, and prominent people. When several employees at your company participate in personal branding, a far wider audience can hear your organization’s message as it’s filtered through each individual’s unique personality.
When employees publish brand messaging on social media, the postings receive over 500% greater reach than when the brand posts the message alone. Employee-generated content is also reshared 24 times more often than company-shared content, so don’t neglect the power of the people on your team!
The culmination of each employee’s branding speaks volumes about the organization as a whole, giving followers insight into the expertise and morals of the workforce. By giving followers the impression that they know the firm’s staff, personal branding might increase the possibility that they’ll do business with you rather than a company they know nothing about.
You can boost your personal branding journey by starting a blog or social media account to share tips or give your audience a peek into your workday. Another great option is setting up a website or investing in online reputation management—it all helps in crafting your personal brand! You have all the tools and the knowledge. Are you willing to take the next step to grow your business?
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