How Can You Turn Your Name Into a Brand

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When developing your marketing strategy, your personal brand can be as important as your corporate one, and help you grow your business much faster. Personal branding can also help you get more clients, land you a better job or more sales. It can bring you recognition and respect, raising the odds of gaining more influence and more success. Still, to turn your name into a brand successfully, you will need a strategic approach. Here are the most important steps you need to take.

Know your purpose

A personal brand is a reflection of who you are. It’s what you will be remembered by and recognized for in the industry of your choice. Your personal branding efforts should begin with a serious assessment of your strengths and weaknesses, your interests as well as the skills you have mastered. Put a special focus on discovering your competitive advantages over all the others in your niche. Are those your marketing or social skills? Your personality?

This will be your unique value proposition – the extra value you will bring to the lives of your target audience, a particular answer to the challenges they face and the reason they will distinguish you from your competition. However, you won’t be able to offer an adequate solution to your target audience’s problems unless you’ve defined them. Make sure you have a clear insight into the characteristics of your ideal customer, their needs, desires and pain points so that you can address them with your branding campaign. 

Choose your name wisely 

If your personal name is unique, or you’re already well-known by it in your industry, you can use it as your personal brand name. It may be that you already have a reputation as a trustworthy source of information in your line of work, so you can use it to build on that reputation.

When using your personal name for branding purposes, there are a few more things you should pay attention to:

• Is your name unique? Would you benefit from using a differentiator, such as a middle name initial or a tagline?
• Is your name easy for people to spell and pronounce?
• Can you imagine the possibility of your personal name limiting the expansion of your business?
• Do you stand for the values your business stands for?
• Is there an available domain you can buy that corresponds to your name?

 If for any reason you find that it’s not a good idea to use your personal name for branding purposes, try to create a name that is a combination of your career direction and your name, which is simple and memorable. 

Establish your look

The visuals you use in your personal branding campaign are of extreme importance too. The advantage of personal branding is its human side, so don’t be afraid to show off and present a great photo of you. This will help you establish trust in your target audience and add credibility. It’s best to use a photo of you while working –facilitating a meeting or autographing your book, but a photo of you looking into the lens and smiling can also serve this purpose well. 

You should also decide on the logo, as well as the color palette and the fonts you will use, to make your personal brand recognizable and consistent on all platforms.

Have a website

After you’ve chosen your brand name and established your personal brand’s visual identity, the next step is having your own website. Building a website doesn’t need to be complicated or expensive. You can make a perfectly functional website even if you opt for a standard one, created with WordPress, Wix or Joomla.

Make sure your website is registered by your brand name. If you’re using your own name for branding purposes or want to add your business a more intimate feel, you should check out .me TLD domains and consider the most personal domain extension on the market. 

Create content

If you want your brand to become recognizable, you need to constantly and consistently create content that will show your expertise and reflect your brand. Your starting point should be a blog – websites with blogs have 97% more links and 434% more indexed webpages. It is also the best way to improve the SEO rankings of your website and bring more organic traffic.

Make sure the content pieces you create are focused on your target audience and not yourself. Your posts should add value to their lives, addressing their pain points and their needs in a way that is easy to grasp. You can also use social media channels to share the content you create in your social media circles or the groups you are a member of and engage with your target audience. Always look for ways to connect with people using your content, so make it diverse and use a variety of media types, such as podcasts, webinars, videos, eBooks, etc.

And remember, you can’t develop a personal brand unless it genuinely feels personal. Don’t be afraid to show your target audience your authentic self – your story, opinions and values, even if it feels a bit risky.