Branding Pays

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Why a Personal Brand is Important

Personal branding—that is, creating your image and guiding your reputation—has never been more important than it is today because globalization and social media have made the world smaller, more connected and infinitely more competitive.

You need to be strategic. Reinventing your brand for new opportunities requires an understanding of market forces, your own assets and how you need to be positioned in the new world order. Think of yourself as a free agent—no one else is looking out for your best interests but yourself. You need to be crystal clear about who you are and the value you bring to a world where constant change is the only norm.

If you want to stay competitive, you need to ask: Do I have a personal brand that gives me an advantage in today’s world?

In short, brand yourself, or be left behind.

The BrandingPays System

The BrandingPays System works best when you have a goal. You won’t know if you have succeeded in branding if you don’t define what you are trying to achieve.

Cake = Your rational value Functional benefits, expertise

Icing = Your emotional value Personality, image

CAKE + ICING = STRONG BRAND

The cake foundation represents the rational value for your brand—your expertise, strengths, functional value and experience.

The icing is your emotional value—your personality, your smile and your style. It’s how people connect with you emotionally, such as your likability and whether they trust you.

The better you understand your current brand, the easier it will be to develop a strategy to change it for the better.

System
Positioning
Messages
Brand Strategy
Ecosystem
Action Plan

Positioning

Action List
Understand your goal and use the triangulation model to determine what your best positioning strategy is to achieve your goal. 
Fill out the positioning statement for your most important audience. 
Then, fill out the positioning statement again with a different audience. Note how the problem statement and value proposition change. See chapter 3 (Figure 3.6) for a template to develop value messages by audience. 
Visualize your positioning in a positioning chart (see Celia’s example in Figure 2.5) and place your competitors in the different quadrants. If the upper right-hand quadrant is crowded, you need to find positioning elements that will better differentiate you.

When choosing your goals, you need to be somewhat realistic.

The positioning statement provides the foundation for developing your elevator pitch and key value messages for different audiences.

Target Audience For...
Problem Statement Who needs or wants...
Category I am...
Value Proposition who provides...
Competitive Differentiation Unlike...

The beauty of this format is that it is a great way to ensure you understand your audience’s needs and message your value in a compelling way.

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