Promote Your Personal Brand And Compete In ANY Market

Today, I’m going talk about how you can use your own name and face, your own social media, and therefore your personal brand as a whole to compete with the big, imposing, faceless corporations that you may have to compete with along your entrepreneurial journey. The most important thing to remember in this whole process is that no large conglomerate can ever take the personal, one-on-one approach that you can when starting a new business or revamping your existing business for the 21st century web-based economy.

The Hidden Advantage of The Small Business

When a lot of newer entrepreneurs start a business, they look at the massive corporations of the world and think, “Wow! Well, THEY have all these fancy offices and brand names and carefully managed ad campaigns – there’s absolutely no way I can compete!”. I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong.

While these giant companies may have a lot of infrastructure and know how to spend ad dollars on the larger end – the one tailored to the unknowing masses – what these businesses CAN’T do is talk to every single customer one-on-one. They can’t give the one thing that is at a premium in the modern age – a highly engaged personal experience for every client. YOUR business can.

These companies are simply too large to have a single person be the point-of-focus. Think of the founder of a massive corporation being approachable, engaged in every customer’s experience, and actually talking to every single client in the company. It won’t happen.

Now, of course, there are companies who’ve tried to give the impression that this is the case. The most notable example of is Apple’s putting Steve Jobs in the forefront of every piece of their advertising and promotion, placing him as the figurehead and spokesperson. This definitely helped, there’s no doubt that Steve Jobs is a legend of business and technology, but even he could not go to every single Apple store the world over and sell every single iPhone.

Your Personal Brand Tells YOUR Story, Not A Corporation’s

However, in a small business, you can indeed engage every customer and personally endorse every single product to a client. Considering this fact, I encourage you not to act like you’re below this or that big business or massive corporation, pretending they’re big and scary and will swallow you up whole. Because they won’t. They can’t.

YOUR job is to be very personable in your business, deliver the highest quality of one-on-one service (in a way your larger competitors cannot), and to make every client feel a level of warmth and rapport that can’t be replicated. The market has changed, and people expect to be paid attention to. They expect to be given a level of respect that had been lost a bit in business for a while before The Internet revived it. Think about it – this is exactly what people are looking for these days. People are looking to buy from real people, not a marketing story.

People are looking to see their story in your product, not a regurgitated, focus-group tested corporation’s story. Tell YOUR story to your customers and both you and your audience will reap the benefits. If you can provide this level of authenticity, you can establish a real long-lasting business. You can create long-lasting relationships and build an empire based on the goodwill and honesty of yourself and others.

So, when you’re starting that business, use your real first and last name, use your own face, put the content out there, and don’t hide. If you’re doing YouTube, stand in front of the camera, start talking, and just be cool and be real. People will appreciate that. Maybe it’s not perfect in the beginning, maybe it’s not oozing with charisma, but people will appreciate that it’s honest. Just that fact alone is enough in a lot of cases to really push your business forward.

Your Personal Brand Connects Your Niche To Your Business

Engage with your customers. Prove that you’re a real person, not some guy in a cushy corner office putting other people in front of the camera to sell his brand while he pursues other interests. Don’t become The Wizard of Oz. To speak more frankly, if you have the real founder of the company (presumably you) pushing the products in social media and videos, it’s a much more satisfying and alluring experience for your clients.

They feel connected to your business, your personal brand, and more generally, they feel like a member of the community you are building. Your niche feel this because you yourself, the founder, the CEO, the spokesperson, is a member of the community themselves!

This is a level of personal connection in branding and presentation of products and services that the Apples and the Microsofts of the world simply can’t recreate, no matter how hard they try. Your ability to weave a personal narrative into your company, coupled with implementation and one-on-one services, will deliver dividends you never thought possible.

Use Your Own Social Media To Build Trust

So, when you’re starting your new business (or rebuilding your existing one) – use your own social media. Let everyone in your current social network know about what you’re doing. Consider using your own personal Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Give your customers the opportunity to do business with a real person, and they’ll appreciate you for that.

I’ve seen a lot of clients and students who are afraid to try this out. They’re afraid that people will judge them. That’s fine – let people judge you. Let them judge away as you improve your message, build more and more one-on-one connections, and establish an empire based on what your paying, engaged customers say. Random people on the internet are never a good metric of success.

Put yourself out there, and really, the world will reward you. You will be a face in a mass of face-less corporations and brands. This is the opportunity for you to compete in any niche and with any competitor just because you’re a real person who’s not afraid to put themselves on the line.