Personal Branding: The Missing Piece in Your Marketing Strategy

You know what drives me crazy? You've put together this whole marketing strategy. You've got your product. You've got your budget. You've done everything right - or so you think. But you're still not getting results. It's like ordering soup and not getting a spoon. What's the point?

Here's what nobody wants to tell you: you're probably missing personal branding. Yeah, I said it. Personal branding. Another thing we have to worry about now.

THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH ABOUT PERSONAL BRANDING

Let me ask you something - why should anyone care about your business? No, seriously, why? Because you think it's great? That's not enough anymore! Everyone thinks their business is special.

Marketing experts will drone on about how businesses need branding strategies to "stand out from competitors." Stand out? Most businesses can barely stand up! But one way to actually make a difference is leveraging a personal brand to communicate your particular brand of neurosis... I mean, your way of doing things.

Many business owners see their company as an extension of themselves. They pour their vision, hard work, and values into it. It's like raising a child, except this child needs to make you money. The problem is, when something happens to the "face" of the business, everything they've established becomes forgettable. The business suffers. It's a whole thing.

That's where personal branding comes in. It's communicating your expertise, reliability, professionalism, and integrity. Without effective personal branding, your business lacks that spark that builds your customer base. It's like showing up to a party without bringing anything. Who does that?

3 PAINFULLY OBVIOUS SIGNS THAT PERSONAL BRANDING IS WHAT YOU'RE MISSING

One requirement of your marketing strategy is to increase visibility. Visibility! As if we all want to be seen all the time. But your personal branding needs to align with your overall plan. Here are some signs that your marketing strategy is missing that final piece:

1. YOU NEED A MARKETING TOOL THAT ISN'T COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS

Storytelling and personal branding are closely related concepts. Personal branding creates a distinct identity, while storytelling uses narratives to convey a message. What, am I teaching a college course now?

People retain details better when they're structured in a narrative. With personal branding containing important aspects about what you stand for, you need to make sure your audience learns about them in an order that makes sense. Otherwise, it's like watching a movie where the ending comes first. Who enjoys that? Psychopaths, that's who.

When you combine storytelling with personal branding, a few things happen to your marketing strategy:

• Your content makes more sense because it's targeted since you're moving through a specific journey in your narrative. It's the difference between having a GPS and just driving around aimlessly hoping to find your destination.
• You have the chance to be more authentic about your marketing. Authentic! As if being ourselves is suddenly a marketing strategy! But it works, because you're sharing elements of your personal brand and content that lines up with it.
• You reach your audience better because your marketing is based on a journey that's built your relationship over time. It's like dating before getting married, instead of proposing to someone you just met at a coffee shop. Who does that?

2. YOUR ONLINE REPUTATION MAKES YOU WANT TO HIDE UNDER A ROCK

A notable online reputation is crucial for a business to succeed. If nobody knows who you are, how do you expect them to pay attention? It's like being at a party where nobody acknowledges you. Not that I'd mind that - parties are overrated anyway.

A weak reputation can hinder a company from achieving success. Nobody said your company has to be the pioneering leader in your industry, but if you're not even mentioned in conversations about new players in the field, it may be due to a reputation that leaves much to be desired. Like that restaurant nobody talks about. There's a reason for that!

Going further, a bad reputation can limit your visibility with key people who could potentially support your business's growth. You can be overlooked in favor of other companies if your interpersonal relationships, supported by your personal brand, aren't working hard enough. It's like being the last kid picked for the dodgeball team. Not that I'd know anything about that.

Attach a lousy deed and poor public reviews to your business, and your reputation is significantly damaged. When you haven't shown audiences why you're worth paying attention to, they have no reason to look past whatever cursory knowledge they have. Your negative reputation precedes whatever assessment they could have made. It's a whole disaster!

With a personal brand built on your values and communicated effectively, you can go back to core elements of your messaging to recoup damage. You know where your story can start from again. It's like hitting reset, except you don't get to forget all the embarrassing things you did.

3. YOU WANT TO ATTACH A HUMAN FACE TO THE COMPANY (FOR SOME REASON)

The average consumer wants to buy from another human being, not a shell of a company. It's why influencers have made such a killing online. What's the deal with influencers anyway? They're just people who decided their opinions matter more than everyone else's!

Personal branding can add that crucial human face to a marketing strategy. By sharing personal stories and what makes your brand trustworthy, you build better connections with audiences. Companies with a face to their brand are more easily recognized than those without. It's about creating positive associations with good stories, which is harder than it sounds.

Some people have made a living off their personal brand. They've communicated their strengths, values, and perspectives so well that audiences globally associate them with their specific field. You don't have to reach their level of renown, but they're examples of how to do personal branding well:

• Oprah built a media empire based on her straightforward and empathetic approach to conversations. She connects with her audience even with her body language in every show. Who has that kind of energy? It's exhausting just thinking about it.
• Bill Nye made science funny and accessible for most audiences. He combined that with objective thinking to get the general public more interested in science. Science! As if we need more reasons to feel insignificant in the universe.
• Steve Jobs was known for taking Apple to stratospheric levels of popularity. His enduring legacy was keeping everything simple, down to his uniform of turtlenecks, jeans, and sneakers at every product launch. Who has time to pick different outfits anyway? It's all a waste of energy.

These individuals mastered sharing the best parts of themselves, establishing enduring personal brands that lend credence to their businesses. This would have been more difficult to achieve if they were unable to associate a human face with their brand – one that audiences can recognize immediately. It's like seeing someone at a party whose name you can't remember, but you know you've met them before. Awkward!

HOW TO BUILD YOUR PERSONAL BRAND WITHOUT LOSING YOUR MIND

Personal branding has a major impact on your marketing, but the process itself is simple. It's how you promote yourself and differentiate yourself from competitors by creating and implementing a cohesive marketing plan to showcase your stories, values, and abilities. Simple! As if anything in business is ever simple!

While being yourself is important (apparently), personal branding needs to be consistent and unified to be effective:

• Complete your LinkedIn profile and be thoughtful about the images and text you add. As if we need another social media platform to worry about. But LinkedIn is where all the "professionals" hang out, so what choice do we have?
• Develop a positioning statement that summarizes what you're all about. What am I all about? I don't even know that myself half the time!
• Follow a consistent posting schedule so you build the habit of engaging audiences. Consistent! Who has time to be consistent? Between running a business and trying to have some semblance of a personal life, now I need to worry about posting regularly too?

When done properly, your personal branding boosts your visibility and credibility. You might imagine that only media personalities can benefit from personal branding, but apparently, anyone who wants to develop a good reputation can benefit:

Personal branding can help you cut through the competition because you communicate what makes you special. Special! As if we're all special little snowflakes.

You build your network over time with a personal brand that represents you accurately. Networking! Another thing we're supposed to be good at now.

Your personal brand helps you define what your future looks like because you determine what's important to you and what you need to do to achieve these goals. Goals! Who has the energy for those?

INCORPORATE PERSONAL BRANDING INTO YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY WITHOUT HAVING A BREAKDOWN

Your personal brand goes beyond just generating new opportunities for you as an individual. By incorporating personal branding into your overall marketing strategy, companies can effectively convey their values, tell their story, and establish their unique selling proposition. Unique selling proposition! More marketing gibberish!

There are ways to integrate personal branding into your marketing strategy, falling into two main categories: visual and conceptual. The first involves identifying distinct image and values and incorporating branding elements such as logos, fonts, and colors into marketing collateral. As if colors are going to make people suddenly care about your business!

Conceptually involving personal branding means leveraging storytelling to share experiences that resonate with the audience, and consistently being genuine and authentic about the messages you're sharing. Genuine and authentic! In business! That's a good one!

It's all a matter of combining visual and conceptual elements so you tell a compelling story. A compelling story! What is this, a creative writing class?

Personal branding is not limited to individuals and can also apply to businesses. By applying personal branding to the marketing strategy of a company, you can strengthen your identity, stand out from competitors, connect with audiences, and achieve marketing goals. Or at least that's what they say. I remain skeptical.

You know what? This whole personal branding thing is complicated. And frankly, who has the time? If you're as confused as I am (and you probably are), check out our ultimate guide to personal branding to make some sense of this chaos.