LESS IS MORE: HOW PERSONAL BRANDING CAN LAND YOU DREAM CLIENTS
LESS IS MORE: HOW PERSONAL BRANDING CAN LAND YOU DREAM CLIENTS
Monday, 05 March 2007 07:55
Distinguish yourself from the competition and work with the clients you prefer urges Peter Montoya in this article on personal branding. Great branding often repels as many people as it attracts. For instance, a beer commercial featuring a scantily clad cheerleader isn’t out to attract women. A mother and daughter talking about feminine hygiene in a spring field during a Lifetime movie-of-the-week isn’t going to appeal to most men. Any good brand is going to speak to a specific domain, not to everyone.
Great branding often repels as many people as it attracts. For instance, a beer commercial featuring a scantily clad cheerleader isn’t out to attract women. A mother and daughter talking about feminine hygiene in a spring field during a Lifetime movie-of-the-week isn’t going to appeal to most men. Any good brand is going to speak to a specific domain, not to everyone. Companies recognize the value of positioning, target marketing, and other branding concepts.
They spend millions of research dollars to find and exploit a market segment, and to position their products in crowded markets. By carefully picking a domain and speaking directly to its members, companies are able to attract the consumers they want. An exclusionary approach, you say? Not really. The best products strike a chord in the domain that wants them - and so do the best-branded independent professionals. They present a painstakingly crafted Personal Brand in the context of focused Personal Marketing - built around a leading attribute, appealing to a chosen domain. Beg, or Better Your Chances You have two choices in your career:
1) Beg for business from anybody, and hope somebody has a need for your services.
2) Market your value confidently to the domain that needs it, and start mutually beneficial relationships with people actively interested in your services.
When you select a domain, you take a big step away from stagnation. Independent professionals with single target markets have more credibility with their clients, and run smoother, more efficient practices than their unfocused competitors. The Perils of Vanilla Marketing Unfortunately, most people don’t use Personal Branding to speak to their domain. Most sales and service professionals confuse their products with their attributes.
It’s as if they were automatons, just flesh walking around enacting the capabilities of what they sell. Subsuming their personality and passion for their work, they rely on vague, uncreative, ineffective branding and marketing designed to attract anyone with a pulse. The (faulty) reasoning works like this: if I target my marketing to one group of people, I might leave out or even offend somebody. I better make my marketing vague. Vague marketing is applicable to everybody, and won’t offend anybody. In reality, vague marketing attracts nobody. It is bland, imitative, and exactly what your competitors expect. It says nothing that hasn’t already been said. Afraid to speak to the soul and emotions of the consumer - that would mean getting personal, or emotional - the vanilla marketer relies on logic alone, which is a straight route back to sales tactics.
And people want to choose, not be sold. The Value of Target Marketing Defining your domain is easy. Ask yourself: "Who are the people I want to reach with my products and services?" For the most part, you probably know of the kind of person you want to work with, and whether or not you are currently servicing that domain. A domain, for the record, is a group of people, organizations or companies with an interest in common. Focus for Success Generally, the more focused your leading attribute, the more efficient your Personal Branding and Personal Marketing will become in your domain.
The domain should be big enough so that you will be successful in cornering a small fraction of the market, and small enough so that your prospects will feel that your Personal Brand can truly affect them. You should like the people in your domain and feel some connection with them. Once you’ve selected your domain, look for ways to reach them. Newsletters, direct mailing lists, professional journals, website links, and dozens of other marketing channels are fairly easy to find with a little research. Once you’ve defined your domain, you should begin a consistent Personal Branding campaign that speaks to its population. You may be selling, but you should position yourself as a consultant and business partner to your client. Focus on the customer’s need, and how you can meet it.
Case Study A family counselor and therapist lives in a 3,000-home, upper-middle-class community of maturing families. She seeks to build her practice around her Personal Brand - she’s "one of them," and understands the family crises of the affluent - and target precisely this domain. She knows her domain well: the isolation, depression and anxiety a large, dispersed community can breed, the struggles and alienation of its adolescents, the distant fathers created by burgeoning careers. She markets to them by: Mailing a Personal Brochure, and then a topically focused Personal Postcard discreetly once a month to the community Sending out press releases to, and maintaining press contact with, regional publications read in the subdivision Advertising her Personal Brand, her inside knowledge and practice in local publications Networking in community get-togethers, sports leagues, and associations Encouraging referrals from those clients she has helped (neighbors) Cross-promoting her web site in all marketing Using her Personal Brand to step outside the counsellor’s shield and ingratiate herself into the community, she builds her practice with more than 20 new clients in six months - long-term clients that will provide real, steady income. Vanilla? Or a New Flavor? Through Personal Branding, independent professionals can become big fish in small ponds.
The lesson: use vanilla marketing and blend into the bland, or develop a strong Personal Branding campaign, and get the dream clients you want. Published with permission from Peter Montoya Inc. Peter Montoya is president of Peter Montoya Inc., the world’s only Personal Branding agency. For information on Personal Branding Magazine or his acclaimed book, The Personal Branding Phenomenon please visit www.petermontoya.com or call (866) 288-9300.
