Why include personal branding in your marketing strategy?

Personal branding is the art of promoting your business through your personal brand. In other words: you talk about yourself to sell. It may be a divisive method, but it's nonetheless a highly effective one. In this article, we explain why and how to use personal branding.

Personal branding, a long-standing method

If you think that personal branding is a recent method, invented by start-up entrepreneurs in search of a better life, you're wrong. The term first appeared in 1997 in an article for Fast Company. In it, Tom Peters, ex-Mc Kinsey, author and consultant, depicts the beginnings of what, almost 30 years later, crowns any successful marketing strategy.

"You are a brand," Tom Peters tells us back in 1997, and he goes further to say:

"Whatever our age, position, industry, we all need to understand the importance of branding. We are the CEOs of our own companies. To do business today, our most important task is to be the chief marketing officer of the brand we call, that is, the brand we represent."

The explanations are somewhat haphazard, but the objective is clear: to promote our product, through our own person.

Why use personal branding?

In 2024, marketers are used to hearing the adage: "to sell, you mustn't sell at all". A crazy paradox, when you consider that the purpose of marketing is to sell. The idea behind this "almost" philosophy of life is to throw out has-been methodologies such as hyper-promotion, ultra impersonal mass e-mailing campaigns or the abusive use of technical information to justify the quality of a product or service.

Personal branding is based on the observation that human beings are emotional beings. This very foundation of who we are makes any attempt at emotional attachment to a company almost impossible. In most cases, it's only through the stories we create around products that they become indispensable to us.

Personal branding takes the sense of belonging to a whole new level, since it's no longer a question of being attached to a product, but to the product's creator.

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How to use personal branding?

The principle of personal branding is to revolve your communication around yourself. When you communicate on social networks, you must do so through your personal profiles and using the "I". Of course, we're not forgetting our underlying goal: to sell. To this end, there are three particularly effective personal branding methods:

The funnel method: Each of your publications starts from a very personal story, revolving solely around you, and then flows gently into your business. The appeal: the first hook is emotion, which makes any promotional act much more natural later on.

Small cat, small cat, serious subject: Small cats are topics for the general public, with no interest other than attracting attention and generating engagement. The serious subject, on the other hand, is all about your expertise. The right mix of the two creates an interesting balance between who you are, and what you sell.

The disruptive method: Asthe name suggests, we tend to be as divisive as possible. Communication must revolve around your opinion. In bold publications, you assume a point of view that diverges from your competitors, in order to promote your offer.

Personal branding: which platforms to publish on?

Most entrepreneurs and professionals who engage in personal branding prefer Linkedin, Instagram and TikTok. Depending on your target audience, your business and your strategy, it's up to you to decide which platform is best suited to getting your message across. It's up to you to perfect your choice of social networks.

Personal branding is an effective method, but one that requires a great deal of A/B testing and regularity. You'll need to create a lot, but also encounter a few failures, to understand which types of posts bring you the most results. As is often the case, it's only after several months that the first results will be seen.

However, if content creation proves too tedious, our team of personal branding writers can support you in your social networking communications. To find out more, click here.