Why branding brings you closer to you
As a self-employed person, you will come to the point at some point and realize: Without good branding and professional brand design, you will not get ahead. If you then decide to go into a branding process, you will soon notice that this requires a strong commitment to yourself. In the following article, I would like to explain why this is so and what wonderful benefits you can derive from this process. But first a little bit about branding itself:
As a self-employed person, you need branding: it helps you to make your offers visible and to grow your business!
As a self-employed person, you live with enthusiasm for your business. You are passionate about your idea, your heart project. But that alone is often not enough to be successful. You have to make yourself visible with your offer. And finally, you have to be able to successfully market it.
You have to provide your prospects with a comprehensible reason why they should work with you. Why you should choose your services from a plethora of other offers on the net. It is often not expedient to simply point out facts on your website and list the key points of your offer. There are probably many different providers on the net who – if we only compare the pure facts such as price and content – offer the same thing. So you have to provide your target customers with other arguments for their purchase decision.
The key to successfully marketing your offer is relationship and emotion! Because we make the largest part of our purchase decisions not with our minds, but with our emotions. Your brand, your branding is the perfect tool to build a relationship with your prospects and your target group and arouse emotions. It builds up a relationship with the consumer and is usually emotionally charged, meaning that certain feelings and associations are associated with it. For example, we associate with the Apple brand: technical lead, pleasure in technology, high design standards. When you order a device from the same brand, you expect these aspects and emotionally anticipate this before you buy it.
Unlike a product or a company with thousands of employees, you stand as the only fave for your business. Your personal brand is the first impression that others get from you. What do others think when they hear your name or see your face? What associations come to mind?
Since you cannot control people’s thoughts and opinions about you, you can only use targeted branding to influence how others perceive you and your business. Through your visual appearance, the way you show yourself, speak, or write, you can create a certain expectation and arouse certain associations. See your brand as your professional, public image.
Your branding embodies the values, the vision, and your goals behind your company. You as a person are the linchpin and nobody could replace you. Because you do your work in your way and way, so individual and unique! So it makes sense to build and strengthen your brand – your brand – as a personal brand, as a personal brand, around you as an entrepreneur. This process is also known as personal branding.
Why branding is always personal development
Branding as a self-employed person is always an intensive commitment to yourself. It takes a lot of introspection and works with yourself and yourself to become a personal brand. Before you start thinking about how you want to affect others, you must look inward. Because only if you know your inner drive, your strengths and weaknesses, the thing you want to share with others, your branding can be authentic and genuine.
On the way to your authentic branding you will deal with the following aspects:
Confronting your values: You will find out your values. Which one do you want to share with others? Which are the most important to you? And you will deal with the question of what values you have in common with your customers and whether there are overlaps.
Your past: What has shaped you in the past? Why are you at this point in your life now? What nourishes and strengthens you? What are your roots? These can be private experiences and experiences as well as vocational training, further education, and expertise.
Willingness to work continuously: With branding, you make the promise to work on yourself and your business. To improve, optimize, and align it to the needs of your customers.
What is important to you: You deal with the things that are important to you. With your visions and the message that you want to bring into the world. With your statement, which you want to show publicly. What do you want to leave in this world?
Use your “superpowers”: You will recognize your strengths and deal intensively with them. Which of your best and greatest features can you use as a selling point? Which should be reflected in your branding?
Know your weaknesses: You will also get to know your weaknesses. What is slowing you down? What makes it difficult for you with your offer on the market? And how can you balance these points with your strengths again?
What’s your why You use the branding process to research your inner drive. What is it that drives you? Why do you do what you do Why do you want to help others? Recognizing this takes a lot of insight, but is at the core of everything you do and do.
Your visibility: As part of your branding, you need to be clear about which aspects of your life you want to share with others and which you don’t. How personal do you show yourself? How approachable? Where do you see the line between personal and private? These are things everyone has to find out for themselves.
Just as important as exploring the aspects mentioned is to accept them and give them space. Stand by yourself and your idiosyncrasies, traits, values , and visions! You build your brand around it. Branding is always a bit of personal development. The more intensely you engage in this process – the deeper you go – the more mature and transparent your brand, your brand will be for others later.
