Your Personal Brand: Entrepreneurs’ Most Underutilized Secret Marketing Weapon
As an entrepreneur, selling your product, service or ideas is an important part of what you do. But before you can sell any of those things you have to first be able to authentically and effectively sell yourself. Creating, crafting, and cultivating your own personal brand and then broadcasting it to your niche is essential to getting your business out in the marketplace.
Let’s face it—there is a LOT of competition out here, from fellow female founders, coaches, consultants, innovators, and influencers. How DO you stand out?
This is where your personal brand comes in.
Your personal brand is a blueprint for how you want the world to see your business. Many entrepreneurs overlook this process, because they jump right into the design of the logo and collateral materials, wrongly assuming that these alone are their branding. But if you look at your brand as the over-arching umbrella for your service-based business, you’ll see that the core pillar is you—your “Who.”
In a nutshell, if you are not marketing your expertise, experience, and offerings in a way that fully shows your distinct brand persona and why your niche needs it you lose out and your customers/clients lose out because they wouldn’t be able to distinguish you from your competitors.
Personal Branding is the foundation of ALL the marketing you will do in your business.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of confusion about branding and why it’s so foundational for your business’s success. Here are some common myths about personal branding:
1. It’s only relevant for media personalities and influencers like Beyonce and Oprah
2. It’s for executives in Corporate America
3. That branding and marketing are the same
4. Building a personal brand is not a critical aspect of building a service-based business
5. Branding only matters if I am selling a product
All these are myths! Here are just a few of the benefits of having an effective, powerful personal brand:
An effective, powerful personal brand helps you:
· Create resonance with your target audience
· Position you in your “right” place in the marketplace
· Establish yourself as an expert in your field and strengthens your leadership persona
· Reinforce a clear and powerful brand message that is consistent and enduring
· Establish credibility for what you do
· Engender trust and loyalty with your potential clients/audience
· Present a more authentic image of yourself to others
· Be more confident in your services and offerings
· Differentiate yourself as a leader
· Exert your ‘influence’ (your point of view, message, etc.) with those you interact with
· Market so much more effortlessly
· And so much more
The power of our personal brand is a secret weapon that so many entrepreneurs don’t leverage or underutilize because they think it’s all about marketing. Marketing IS important, but it’s only very effective when you’re standing on a robust personal brand
As a former market researcher, image consultant, and marketing consultant turned leadership coach, I have a perspective on personal branding that is robust, effective, and necessary. Do you need help building, elevating, or refining your personal brand so it fully aligns with all the brilliance you bring? Let’s talk.
In the meantime, check out my Leadership Brand Assessment Quiz.
As "The Brilliance Unveiler," Natalie Jobity leverages more than a decade of experience empowering hundreds of women as an image consultant and now as a leadership coach & personal brand strategist of The Unveiled Way. She works with trailblazing women to empower them to unveil their brilliance and maximize their impact so they lead unapologetically in their arena.
Natalie’s second book titled, It’s Your Time to Shine, Girl: Own Your Brilliance, Step into Your Influence, and Lead Like a Trailblazer, is a leadership and empowerment book that will not only inspire women the world over to step into their purpose, but also give them the tips, tools, and techniques needed to succeed and thrive as a woman of influence.
Discover your leadership brand by taking Natalie’s five-minute assessment, What Is Your Leadership Brand.