What is Personal Branding – Just a Buzz Word?

Amazed looking at a small child in a gadget store recently. The mother was happily browsing through the brochures.  The girl urged her mother to look where she was looking.

“Mama, Look there, Apple ipad”

What makes a five-year-old spot a particular product from thousands? It could be her parents talking about it with a pride or simple logo that catches the eyes or could be anything. 

But there is 'one thing' that made strong impression on her mind and we advice professionals and companies to create such strong image in other's minds.

Let's focus on Apple Image.

The apple brand stands inimitable not only due to its simple logo but also because of the man behind it, yes, STEVE JOBS.  Being a CEO, he uniquely represented himself in a jean and a black polo neck conveying the message that he was interested in simple and effective approaches. Not only his looks, even if you look at the designs of Apple products, the interface is so simple yet effective.

This is a brand every individual must focus on building. You need not build an empire to have a personal branding.

What is Personal Branding?

Personal branding is defined as the practice of people marketing themselves and their careers as brands. It is the process of developing a “mark” that is created around your personal name or your career. You use this “mark” to express and communicate your skills, personality and values.

Six Simple Steps to Create Such Personal Brand:

Personal Branding - SLN Brand Studio

Identify: The Key to a successful personal branding is to know who we are. Identify your strengths and weakness, passion and goals. Be realistic. Analyse what your friends/Colleagues would miss if u leave the job. 

Target - Know your audience: Define to whom you want to send your message. This will not only help you polish your message; it will help you deliver it to the right places.

Showcase: Show your unique features and talents to people wherever possible.

Relationship: Building relationship is very vital to promote your brand. The more it connects with people the more coverage and response the brand gets.

Promote: Go online. Facebook, twitter and other social media helps you connect easily. Have a website and a blog for easy references to your brand. Emails also help to reach quite a number of audiences at the same time. Getting offline by giving lectures and seminars also strengthens the subject knowledge.

Deliver: Get deep into analysing facts and be sure to deliver what was promised and within stipulated time.

Six Key Benefits of Personal Branding:

Stand Out From the Herd: A personal Brand sticks you out from a bigger lot. A classic example is of Jamie Oliver. His website name says it all “Jamie’s food revolution”. His personal brand extends beyond books and television shows to events, cooking school, kitchen and lifestyle making it a standout page for all the kitchen explorations. 

Understanding Self: We sometimes lack to know our reach. It is through this personal brand we identify our potential and worthiness of the skill set we possess.

Leave a Mark: Have u ever watched lady gaga perform? Her shows are full of energy and are viral which leaves the audience astounded even after the event. Such is the mark she brands for herself. It is also her costumes that speak to mark her personality. A personal brand repetitively turns up the target audience towards us.

Financial Upscale: Personal branding can really get you from starting out online to making over 100,000 dollars monthly within a little over one year in business. A classic example is of John Lee Dumas who definitely is inspiring to follow his success with a strong personal brand Entrepreneur On Fire.

Achieve Competition Advantage: Uniqueness is the tag to eliminate competition and a personal brand showcases one. Have u ever dreamt about holding a tab like product 10 years before? Today, they’re ubiquitous — and the iPad is the well-recognized of them all. Jobs was never afraid to try and be unique with his innovations which have made Apple stand to its own self.

Larger Domain: Personal brand envisage a larger audience. It helps you expands to various horizons like that of Paris Hilton who takes her brand from perfumes to cosmetics covering the entire beauty industry.

This success due to personal branding does not stop with them. Come and join the bandwagon?

EVERY HUMAN BEING IS THE CEO OF HIS/HER OWN LIFE!

Why Personal Branding is Important?

When you’re building your personal brand, be mindful of aesthetic, and ask yourself how you can create images that people will remember — and instantly associate with you. You know what, the corporate brand is thus inextricably linked to the personal brand.

Similarly, we would have come across many such people who have something unique in them. For example, a person might have unique bold voice or they may be an excel guru or they may have extraordinary oratorical skills. Be it an organisation or an entrepreneurial venture, everyone wants to prove their abilities and potential that are unique and niche.

This brings various questions hovering in our minds.

How do we stand out from the rest?

How do we represent ourselves?

How do we showcase our talent?

"THE ONLY SOLUTION IS 'PERSONAL BRANDING"

SLN Brand Studio offers personal branding sessions comprising of systematic processes that help in career and business growth through personal branding solutions.

Contact us now

4 Most Important Strategies to Build Brand Equity through Content Marketing

Brand loyalty can be obtained ONLY through reliable products and quality service, Am I right here? The market is like an ocean. It may look calm from outside, especially when a storm is building inside. It is not easy to predict when exactly such beautiful ocean creates a Tsunami impact.

How can content marketing help in building Brand Equity?

Digital era has created a paradigm shift in a way marketers develop strategies. Content marketing has taken over a higher position from traditional marketing strategies. There are four Prominent Ways we can create Brand Equity with the help of Content Marketing.

Content Marketing & Brand Equity Building
SLN BRAND STUDIO

1.       Building Brand society by effectively using Content Marketing:

Branding is not just a marketing tool to grow your business. Martin Kornberger, Australian Author has written a book on developing a Brand Society - How Brands Transform Management and Lifestyle. Martin has used ING’s brand strategy to explain his theory.

“ING was formed in 1991 as a merger of a bank and an insurance company. They position themselves just by using a single word then, ‘easier’, they just used ‘what they are’ as their brand value and built reputation all across the world. ING wanted to make the lives of their consumers ‘easier’ and that particular brand image pulled in customers from their competitors.

The best part of their brand strategy is not only for the consumers, ING wanted to build similar brand image inside the organization as well. The team focused on eliminating the barriers that can disturb the brand image and the rest all know….” (Kornberger, 2010)

Content marketing aids in creating such Brand Society where the brand management gives power to the organization which can transform the lifestyle of its consumers as well the people working for them and create a brand society. Content marketing can help in building such brand society to elevate the brand value.

2.       Supporting Brand Leadership Through Content Marketing

Among new businesses emerging as industry leaders, GE is still leading the race in developing brand leadership position. A GE manager is trusted as a thought leader, the best decision maker, competent mentor and subject matter expert worldwide (Norm Smallwood, 2007).

Content Management and Marketing can help a great deal in building such brand leadership to achieve competitive advantage and to grow business.

3.       Creating a service or product which is reliable and unique through content marketing

Content marketing focuses on company’s priority and client’s expectations. The content marketers plan and deliver products or services based on these factors. Content not only gives visibility to the product/service, but co-relates with the prospects and in turn enhances reliability. This process will lead to giving ‘unique identity’ which is nothing but a Brand Image.

4.       Creating Brand awareness through Content Marketing

Content will act as your voice to reach out to the potential prospects and leads. When we say content, it is not only the content you have in your website. Case studies make a great difference in creating Brand Awareness. Use case studies as a content marketing tool to create brand awareness.

Even if you see the market supporting you and business running smoothly, you can’t just sit back and relax. Social media is so powerful, your clients may take a different route suddenly and lean in towards your competitors, no one can judge when such incidents occur. Only by building brand equity through content architecture, you can retain the clients from reclining towards your competitors.

Contact us now

References:

Kornberger, M. (2010). Brand Society: How Brands Transform Management and Lifestyle. Cambridge University Press.

Norm Smallwood, D. U. (2007). https://hbr.org/2007/07/building-a-leadership-brand. Retrieved from Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2007/07/building-a-leadership-brand

Case Studies Help a Great Deal in Propelling your Brand Image

"If people like you, they will listen to you

 If people Trust you, they will do business with you"

- Navid Moazzez

Shopping....This word itself brings in lot of energy and joy in our minds, even if it is window-shopping. Isn’t it? Yes, it might be a scary thing for some thinking about a budget. But, be it ‘online’ or ‘in stores’, no one can deny the joy a shopping experience brings around. 

Ok, tell us now, what is the first thing you normally consider when you want to purchase something? Yes, definitely a ‘BRAND’. As you think of a product or a service, there is one specific brand that flashes in your mind, Isn’t it? The ability of the companies to bring in their products/services to ‘flash’ in our mind are known to have created the right ‘BRAND IMAGE’. For example, TCS, the leading consulting services company uses case studies as a great tool to market their brand by developing knowledge base to the stakeholders. 

Content Marketing helps a great deal to create such brand image. Now, with the same ‘joyful’ mode, read ahead to understand the analogy behind ‘Case Studies’ and ‘Branding’.

3PS MODEL TO DEVELOP YOUR BRAND IMAGE

The Brand Image must always keep up with the standards for better positioning and achieving competitive advantage.  Most of the businesses use 3Ps Model to develop Brand Image.

3P Model Brand Image - Case Study

 

Purpose: 

-          What is the purpose of creating this particular brand?

-          What is the range of customer this brand targets?

-          What are the value prepositions of the brand?

Potential:

-          What are the capabilities of establishing a brand?

-          What does it require to sustain the position?

Promise:

-          What does it take to fulfill what we promised?

-          What are promises to be offered in future?

It is important for an organization to do a thorough research in order to bring up the brand image to new heights. Cash Studies are the best ways to conduct researches and establish themselves as the leaders in the industry.

UNDERSTANDING CASE STUDY

Don’t we all find it easier to understand with examples or real life incidents? Yes, case studies typically offer the same. It involves analysis, application, reasoning and inferences to pinpoint strategies to be adopted for any given situation.  

Testimonials from clients open up and widen the potential new markets to the businesses. Case studies go beyond simple testimonials in branding. By establishing real-life examples of how you were able to satisfy your customer’s needs and help them accomplish their goals, the businesses can win many new customers. With great case studies, you will be able to highlight your success in a way that will make your potential leads to becoming your ideal customers. 

THE POSITIVE IMPACT OF CASE STUDIES IN BUSINESS BRANDING 

Case study and branding shares a beautiful analogy that flows to explain what it takes to make a customer get interested in that specific brand.

1.       Relate Business Context through Right Content

Once a potential customer reads through the case study, they will understand

• Industry Standards
• Specifications  
• Industry targeted results

2.       Tells a story from Start to Finish

Case study explains the purpose of the brand starting from the mission of the organization, goals, targeted customers and ideas to meet the needs of the customer. This would give the readers an opportunity to understand that the goal is not only to satisfy the current needs but also adhere to the future.

3.      Easy to read format

No one likes to read a big chunk of text. Do you? Case study offers info-graphical methods that adopt headers, sub titles, charts and graphs which make it easier and interesting for customer to read through completely.

4.     Real Time Data

Proving the customers whether the product/service is worth the money they spent with the evidence, that too, real time example, will greatly elevate the brand image. Yes, this is exactly what a case study offers. The customers are provided with tangible results both graphically and pictorially. This picture proof can envision the reader better to understand the worth of the brand.

5.    Testimonial

Still in doubt if a case study could offer what is expected? That’s a reason we recommend including testimonials to prove the authenticity of information provided in the case studies.

Nothing like a word of mouth from another user, right! 

FEW INDUSTRY LEADERS USING CASE-STUDIES

You will find numerous case studies published by the global giants on their websites. Have a look at some….

Few examples of market leaders who use case study as an approach to keep up their brand name. They connect to people through various forms of case study. 

To name a few:

• Southwest airlines
• IKEA
• VISA 
• NIKE  
• Starbucks

Are you ready to evolve your brand as a leader? 

Contact us NOW.