THE PERSONAL BRAND STATEMENT

Thursday, 30 November 2006 10:12

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Positioning is a cornerstone of Personal Branding. However, to many independent professionals, positioning and Personal Branding are hazy concepts. Here’s how to create a powerful position you can build your Personal Brand around - a Personal Branding Statement.Creating the PBSYour Personal Branding Statement, or PBS, takes the main components of your brand and puts them in a single sentence: Your specialty (who you are) Your service (what you do) Your audience (who you do it for) Your leading attribute

Step 1: Determine Who You Are
Write down your three greatest skills or abilities. Then, write down your target audience (your domain) and its greatest needs.

Combine your skills and abilities into a single idea, as succinctly as possible. If one skill or ability conflicts with the idea, discard it. If all three conflict, use the one that’s strongest. For example, if your three skills were illustrator, photographer and auto mechanic, you’d throw out mechanic and combine the others into "visual artist." This is your skill set.Your audience must need the skills you offer. Look at your audience’s greatest need, and adjust the description of your skill set to fit. Example: if your audience badly needs old-fashioned architectural illustration, change "visual artist" to "pen-and-pencil renderer." You’re not changing your skills, just how they’re packaged. This is your specialty - a skill set matched to the needs of your prospects. This is who you are.

Step 2: Determine What You Do
Write down your greatest area of professional interest or passion. This reflects the kind of work you want to do (not necessarily what you’re doing now). Define that interest in terms of the service you will provide to clients, such as "cutting-edge concepts for 21st Century architectural design."

This is your service, what you do. If you’re just starting a career, you may not immediately be able to pursue your most passionate professional interest; such things often take time. But you can still state your end goal in your PBS, because your prospects will never be privy to the information. This allows you to build your image gradually through marketing, networking and performance, while the PBS reminds you of your ultimate desire.

Step 3: Determine Your Leading Attribute
Write down your major personality traits and the key aspects of your personal style - how you approach your work, how you behave toward others. Write down the cultural characteristics of your target market (is it wild, casual, conservative?) and the qualities it values most. What you’re doing is distilling these ideas down to one leading attribute: the behavioral characteristic or personality trait that you want people to associate with you and your work. A leading attribute can be anything, from "brashness" to "hyper-organization" to "always wears Armani." The idea is to tell your audience what to think of you: to give people a starting point for forming beneficial perceptions and opinions about you.

Here’s a four-aspect method to find a leading attribute. Consider:

1.      Your dominant personality traits (charisma, impulsiveness, intelligence)

2.      Your personal style (irreverent, hyperactive, loves surfwear)

3.      The culture you will penetrate (high-pressure, creative, businesslike)

4.      The qualities that culture values (attention to detail, outside the box thinking, candor)

Take the last two lines and write a phrase to describe your audience. Here, it might be "creatively intense." Now look at the first two lines. Which responses fit best with that description? In this case, intelligence and hyperactivity seem to fit best, painting the picture of someone with a high-caliber intellect, perfect for a high-pressure environment in which ideas reign supreme.Now, express those two characteristics, intelligence and hyperactivity, in a single more descriptive phrase, like "high-velocity thinking." You’ve got your leading attribute.

Step 4: Add Your Audience and Write the Statement
The Personal Branding Statement equation looks like this:Specialty + Service + Leading Attribute + Audience = PBSYou’ve picked your audience, so add it to the equation and write the whole thing out, changing the order of elements if needed. This isn’t a slogan (a short, marketing-friendly statement), so don’t worry about length or cleverness. What matters is clarity and completeness. Following the formula, the PBS for our fictional illustrator would be: "A skilled pen and pencil renderer providing high-velocity, conceptual thinking for the cutting-edge experimental architecture community."Set your PBS aside for a day, and then look at it again. Rewrite it if necessary. Does it sum you up effectively? Don’t base it on the opinions of your current clients, since it may be written with a different domain in mind.Once you get a Personal Branding Statement that works, make it the basis for all your Personal Branding and Marketing. Your clients won’t see your PBS; it’s your internal roadmap that will direct all your marketing.

Some sample Personal Branding Statements: "The corporate retirement specialist who appreciates travel and the finer things in life, and works to help employees and executives enjoy them." "The Harvard-educated stockbroker who has worked as a corporate executive and turnaround specialist, and whose knowledge will help you invest in the right companies." "A divorced woman who specializes in helping divorcing couples find mutually acceptable financial solutions, and helps each get back on the road to independent financial growth." "The child of the ’60s who’s a regular volunteer, understands the principles of social responsibility, and helps clients make socially and environmentally responsible investments."

Case Studies: Leading Personal Brands and StatementsIf you had to write Personal Branding Statements for these Personal Brands, they might read as follows:Lance Armstrong - The superior athlete who used his personal energy and positivism to beat adversity and become a champion.John Wooden - The coach of impeccable character who turned young men into champions and inspired people in sports and business with his ethically rooted leadership.Tony Robbins - The mass motivator who uses his energy and positive philosophy to change lives.John Walsh - The anti-crime crusader who has turned personal tragedy into public triumph.Bob Vila - The "regular guy" who spurs thousands of other "regular guys" to start home improvement projects (and to buy his books and watch his TV show).Create Your MessageOnce you have your Personal Branding Statement, you can craft the message that will carry your brand to your prospects. The message is the essence of what you want to say about your skills, your personality and your leading attribute. It will be the compass that directs all your promotional efforts.

Your message should have the following components:
What you do How you do it (your style, your speed, etc.) How it benefits others Something to produce an emotional reaction (humor, sarcasm, etc.)

Make a Statement - and Build Your BrandIf you’ve done your homework (and a little market research), you should have a strong, valid position, and PBS, at the core of a compelling Personal Brand. Use your PBS as the basis for your marketing materials. Let it inspire your slogan, and graphics and copy for your Personal Brochure. Use it as a basis for direct mail messages - for example, if you’ve positioned yourself as an Internet stock expert, send out mailers with headlines like "Finally, stock tips that will really make you say Yahoo!" Put your Personal Brand into the marketplace consistently, use your Personal Branding Statement as your inspiration, and see how people react to it.Protecting Your PositionA Personal Brand establishes a marketing position. And once you’ve established a position, you’re a target. A strong position is like a strategic hill on a battlefield; everyone wants it.

Here are some tips for holding your position in the face of competitors: Be first. There’s no substitute for getting there before the other guy. Advertise consistently and aggressively. Your Personal Brand should always be "top of mind" to the members of your domain. When someone appears mimicking your position (saying the same things you do), look for weaknesses in his or her marketing and exploit them. Build a strong referral base. Once people know you, like you and are comfortable doing business with you, they’re unlikely to switch to someone else.

Published with permission from Peter Montoya Inc.

Peter Montoya is president of Peter Montoya Inc., the world’s only Personal Branding agency. For information on Personal Branding Magazine or his acclaimed book, The Personal Branding Phenomenon please visit www.petermontoya.com or call (866) 288-9300.