How can you take advantage of a personal brand to grow your business?

We see celebrities, athletes even politicians doing it, but what does in involve?

A personal brand is built around you. In the modern social media era, there has been a rise in personal brands becoming easier to create with all the free online tools readily available.

An individual can simply start with a social media profile to build a profile or a reality tv shows and go from there. Reality TV and social media marketing has created a culture of talentless celebrity beings into brands.

Despite this, Personal Branding is a great way to launch a new business.

An individual or celebrity such as musicians, artists, authors, coaches, or those wanting to establish their credibility use a personal brand to achieve this.

When done right, personal brands have unbelievable pulling power and provide opportunities and collaborations with an end goal of offering different services or products.

When it comes to personal branding, celebrities such as Rihanna and Beyonce come to mind, taking their lead from earlier celebrity examples such as Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury.

The most powerful celebrities that are making the most money from their personal brands are:

 

As you can see, Rihanna is a queen of personal branding with a total net worth of $1.4 billion USD, making her the richest female musician in the world. Meanwhile, Kim Kardashian is the most influential celebrity brand on Instagram with 5 million followers averaging 52,503 likes on every post.

What can we learn from their success in personal branding? There are (4) rules you need to play by to achieve success.

PERSONAL BRANDING RULE NO.1 – AUTHENTICITY ALL THE WAY

First and foremost, your brand must be authentic. That means there is no room for faking it as you’ll be caught out or called out from your followers. As we recover from the pandemic consumers have gained a heightened awareness for ‘fakeness’ and bullsh*t. You must present and demonstrate your values in action, in a truly authentic way, as you ARE your brand. This includes owning up to mistakes and dealing with setbacks when they happen, all of this contributes to your branding. This also means showing up as yourself in situations and environments that others can relate to.

Authenticity builds trust and allows your audience to feel connected to you as a person. For example, one of Rihanna’s strengths in her branding is creating product lines that feel relatable to her African American background and style. She shares her childhood experiences, how makeup made her feel and how it inspired her to launch her makeup line. This is something that Rhianna openly shares and uses as part of her marketing strategy.

 PERSONAL BRANDING RULE NO 2 – BE INCLUSIVE

Another strategy of Rihanna’s branding is to seek true inclusion, a very important aspect in today’s globally connected (yet still disconnected) society. Her clothing line ensures the production of sizes for all body shapes, and her makeup line includes dozens of shades for all skin types, from dark to pale and everything in-between.

Ensuring inclusivity and longevity also expands your target market, giving your product the potential to reach far and wide, across the world for all ethnicities and ages. When a brand has longevity, it ultimately leaves to more sales, repeat sales and sales at a higher dollar value.

PERSONAL BRANDING RULE NO 3 – EXPLORE OPPORTUNITIES

Personal branding allows you to control the narrative of your brand regardless of factors such as formal qualifications or status. That means you can rise above someone who might have spent a quarter million dollars on a Tertiary or MBA education and expand your brand in a way that a business brand would be limited to.

Think about your favourite celebrity brands, do you care if they have a list of prestigious university or ivy-league qualifications? Of they were voted as ‘Best of Breed’ or ‘Top 100 XYZ’ – not really.

Most consumers done care about this anymore, because in a consumers eyes awards are about you the brand, and not about them, the consumer.

Not being tied to a specific product can also open ventures using a powerful personal name. For example, George Clooney’s Casamigos Tequila is considered one of the most critically acclaimed and successful brands, winning multiple gold medals in spirits competitions, and was listed as an Oprah favourite. In today’s world endorsements, reviews and testimonials are all the qualifications a brand needs to drive sales further.

PERSONAL BRANDING RULE NO 4 – NOT JUST A NAME

While personal branding certainly has its advantages be aware that “just” because you have built up a recognisable or well-known name, that you have license to launch any product and assume it will be successful. For example, Kim Kardashian’s beauty line KKW Beauty is one of the most profitable brands around.

Back in Kim’s earlier days the Kardashian Kard wasn’t such a big hit.

The prepaid Mastercard came with excessively high fees for usage while raising ethical concerns and legal questions around targeting a younger group of shoppers. Younger audiences that were targeted with the card were buying the ‘dream’ of ‘living like a Kardashian’ instead found themselves floundering in debt.

Not surprisingly, it was cancelled after less than a month of being in the marketplace.

Presenting a well-thought-out, strategically positioned Personal Brand can lead to great success and unlimited business opportunities.

While it may feel easy to get started, finding your authenticity, and offering the right product or service is key.

Have you thought about how you want to BRAND yourself? This is where our branding experts at Brand for Brands can help, we work with you to create a brand that will give your audience what they want, before they know they want it call now.

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