Corporate and Personal Branding

Corporate or personal branding is necessary to define yourself to a target market and position yourself in the marketplace. If you are visible but not really connecting with a particular audience, it may be because you haven’t defined yourself in a way that demonstrates to your prospects that you’re a fit for them. They don’t know that you have designed your offering with them in mind, that your values align. 

Once you define yourself, certain benefits inure:

• Your pricing strategy becomes clear, 
• The lead generation tools you should deploy to reach your ideal customer become evident, and 
• The content of your sales conversation, once you’re in a meeting with a prospect, will come to mind easily because you know what this prospect is all about. They are your type of person. They fit your client profile. 

For example, assume that you are a financial advisor, but you’re just starting out and trying to build a client list. You might be tempted to target professional athletes because you played college football and are a sports junkie. However, the connection between you and your prospect should be around your business, not your prospect’s business. You’re not selling sports, you’re selling financial products and services, and your youthful appearance coupled with your lack of experience with the types of financial opportunities that athletes normally buy may make it difficult for you to get the agents and business managers of elite athletes to give you a shot. 

Show that You’re the Best Fit

Thus, it may be wiser to target an audience with fewer gatekeepers and whose financial issues you better understand. For example, rank and file corporate employees—those saving for a house, balancing paying off their own student loans with saving for their children’s education, stuffing a few hundred dollars into a 401(k) each month—are quite interested in improving their financial condition. That’s why they’re working so hard. Therefore, they’re likely to be open to advice on how to achieve their financial goals. They can’t pay as much as elite athletes. However, there are many more corporate employees than there are rich athletes. More important, you better understand the financial issues of corporate employees because you’re dealing with similar concerns yourself. Thus, when you meet with them about a multi-year financial plan and engagement to carry it out, you will speak each other’s language because they fit your client profile.