In today’s world with the advent of social media our minds are constantly sorting and filtering through multiple ads and marketing messages from brands, so the challenge for any business is how to cut through the noise, capture the attention of their target audience and how to establish a connection with their ideal client. Oftentimes entrepreneurs feel lost, stuck and unhappy because they get little to no results with their marketing activities and the content they are putting out, making them feel not good enough and eventually leading many of them to give up on their dreams.
Let’s look at the reason for this pain & how you can turn it around to drive quality leads & sales. The most common mistake entrepreneurs make is that they fail to stand apart from their competition as they choose to market themselves using traditional old school marketing e.g. distributing flyers, constantly discounting their products or services, choosing to hide behind their logo, using stock images, poor & inconsistent branding, not sharing their unique story & message.
We all know that people do business with people who they know, like & trust. The quickest & most effective way to build an authentic connection & relationship with your ideal client is by building your Personal Brand & be recognized as an authority in your industry. However, in order to build a strong personal brand, you need to uplevel your game by stepping out of your comfort zone and into your own power.
Key Steps to Build your Personal Brand
Here are 6 key steps to help build your personal brand: brand personality, brand colours, brand identity & brand guide, brand photography, video, value & content.
- Know your Brand Personality: Get crystal clear about who you are & how you want your brand to be perceived. List down what are your core values & how you want people to feel when they interact with your brand. Start by listing some adjectives that resonate with you the most e.g. integrity, honesty, trustworthy, warm, approachable, powerful etc. These words will guide you to define your brand persona & messaging that will make clients looking for similar values to naturally gravitate towards you & your brand.
- Know your Brand Colors: Colors represent & talk a lot about your brand personality & help determine the overall look & feel of your brand, having too many colors might overpower the look, whereas having too little or an extremely neutral palette might dilute the overall feel & make it look boring. Try and create a palette having a mix of base colors, neutrals & accents. Having a max of 5 – 6 colors is more than enough. Remember less is more!
- Create your Brand Guide & Brand Identity: This includes your fonts, logo, graphic elements & patterns which will act as a foundation while building your website or creating your graphics & marketing materials. These are key in maintaining a consistent look and feel for your brand across all marketing platforms. Working with a graphic artist that understands the design, aesthetics & vision of your brand will have a huge pay off in the long run as your brand identity will remain the same throughout the life of your brand.
- Invest in High-Quality Personal Brand Photography: People are visual, they buy what they see not what they hear and read & studies show that it takes 7 seconds to make your first impression, so make sure you create a great impression. Also, in today’s image savvy society people can tell the difference between a great image and a mediocre image so you want to make sure that your brand images leave a good strong impression. Another fact to keep in mind is that images invoke feelings, so it’s important that you & your brand are photographed in a way that conveys your authenticity, your brand personality reflecting the nature of your work. for eg. a lawyer might want to look strong & powerful, a mortgage agent might want to look reliable, honest & trustworthy while a healing coach might want to look warm, safe, approachable.
Your brand photography is one of the most important ingredients of your secret sauce to building your personal brand, if done wrong it can actually do more harm than good so you want to make sure that you choose to work with a photographer who specializes in brand photography & has a deeper knowledge about brand building. While choosing a photographer, work with someone who can guide & coach you every step of the way, remember that every photographer has their unique style so make sure you visit their website to see if their style matches your vision. Speak with them, get to know their personality, their process, their understanding of brand strategy & positioning, share with them your vision.
- Leverage the Power of Video: Video helps you build a personal connection & humanizes your brand. It educates, explains, entertains, engages & inspires action from the viewer in terms of social sharing or making a purchase. Video has been crowned as the new king of content marketing as stats indicate that it warms up your audience even before they meet you resulting in a 49% increase in revenue. Also, search engines love video & drive more traffic to your website as video reduces the bounce rate & increases retention. Dr. McQuivey in Forrester’s study, spoke about the power of video stating that if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a one minute video is worth 1.8 million words.
While there are many benefits to using video to help position your personal brand as an industry leader, it’s extremely important to take care of the quality & content of the video you put out, as poor quality & poor content can lead to the perception that your products or services are of poor quality, making your brand look unprofessional & tacky. Instead of trying to DIY it, choose to work with a professional who can guide you with your video marketing strategy to produce high-quality videos that will elevate your personal brand image, bring more leads to your sales funnel & speed up your sales cycles.
- Deliver value through your content: You are unique & so is your personal brand. Craft your messaging based on your core values & beliefs. Choose to work with a content writer to help communicate your message effectively. Create content that communicates with your audience who you are, your passion, your unique story, what you bring to the table as a result of your experiences in life & how you serve your clients and make a difference to their lives through your brand. Let your voice be heard, Be Authentic, Be YOU!
Blog Contributor: Puja Misra
Puja is a Personal Brand Strategist, she’s been in business for 9 years & is the founder of Zoom Into Life Studio that specializes in Brand Photography, Video Production & Video Marketing helping entrepreneurs build their personal brands, to take their business from striving to thriving. As a business owner herself, she knows the exact challenges an entrepreneur has at different stages of their business. Her mission while working with her clients is to position their brands as leaders & increase the Visibility, Credibility & Profitability of their brand. Her goal is to make them stand out from their competition helping them generate more leads, more sales and create a greater impact.
Connect with Puja Misra
Email: info@zoomintolife.com
Website: https://www.ZoomIntoLife.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zoomintolife/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zoomintolifestudio/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pujamisra/
Join us for an Online Personal Branding Discussion with Puja Misra on Thursday, April 30th at 11:00 am.
Register for the free Zoom call here.
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