How to build a personal brand as a marketer

How to build a personal brand as a marketer: 7 effective tactics for personal brand building

As a marketer, building a personal brand can have a great impact on your success.

Even if you work for a company, building your personal brand will prove a great benefit to your company as much as it will be to you.

With a trusted personal brand, you have a unique position in your industry, the ability to influence a bigger audience and turn many of them into customers.

As former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, "Brands are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out the cesspool."

But how do you build your personal brand as a marketer? In this blog post, discover 7 effective tactics you can start using today.

1. Understand your target audience

Trying to please everybody is the fastest way to pleasing no one. Therefore, you have to understand your ideal audience before you can build a strong personal brand.

This means you have to spell out details about your audience such as:

• Age group
• Marketing challenges
• Conversation tone
• Favorite marketing channels
• Favorite social media channels
• Ambitions
• Favorite topics

With all these details and more, you'll understand the messages your ideal audience needs for better marketing. This way, you're likely to build your influence with the people that matter to your brand.

2. Build a functional website

Undoubtedly, your website is your office online. Here, visitors will find all the details they need to know about your expertise as a marketer.

Also, it’s a platform that’s totally in your control. Having said that, important pages you need on your website include:

• Homepage:

On this page, visitors will get an overview of your work as a marketer. What's your unique selling proposition? Which companies have you worked with? Which site have you featured on? Here’s an example from my own website:

• About:

Here, you can go into more detail about yourself and how your work will provide value to your audience. Ramit Sethi has a detailed “About” page that tells his story and how his audience can benefit.

• Contact:

People need to communicate with you and this is possible on your contact page through a form.

• Blog:

Apart from telling people, you're a marketing expert, your blog is the place to show them. With your blog, you can tackle important marketing topics that your audience is looking for.

• Portfolio:

Here, you can show your audience the important works you've done in the past.

• Testimonials:

What do your clients think about your work? This is a page where other people promote your brand and it represents a great form of social proof. See an example from Lilach Bullock:

Depending on your niche, other pages might be necessary. When your ideal visitor lands on your website, they have to see all the elements of your brand and understand your brand message.

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3. Hone your voice and brand message

Whether you're speaking at an event, writing a blog post, or posting on social media, you need to have a consistent voice. As a result, your audience needs to easily recognize your messages.

Having said that, your voice will depend on your audience. Will your brand be casual or formal? What aspect of marketing will you focus on? Small business or mid-size business or big businesses?

A popular example is Gary Vaynerchuk who uses casual language while talking to his audience. Whether on his blog or social media, you can see him using language that many consider "juvenile."

Meanwhile, someone like Ann Handley shares messages with marketers, but in a different tone.

Whatever type of voice you want to use, you have to hone it and be consistent.

4. Leverage social media

With 3.8 billion users, social media is a great platform to reach your ideal audience. However, you only need to reach a small percentage of social media users.

That's why it's pointless and less effective to be active on all major social media channels. By understanding your ideal audience, you know their favorite social media channels.

You'll get better results by focusing on a few social media sites and posting consistently. For instance, here's Lilach Bullock's Twitter account where she's very active:

Also, Gary Vaynerchuk is very active on Twitter and Instagram:

Meanwhile, Ann Handley uses LinkedIn to reach her audience:

To build your brand on social media, you have to focus on the few social media channels where you can reach your ideal audience effectively.

5. Exploit content marketing

Without content, it's impossible to build your personal brand as a marketer. After all, the content you produce will attract more followers on social media, more visitors to your website, and better brand awareness.

Beyond that, the content will help you show up on search engines for important keywords. With Google’s EAT (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) update, your qualification now affects your rankings.

In light of this, here are platforms to exploit content marketing:

• Blog:

Your audience has marketing issues and they're looking for solutions from you. On your blog, you can tackle these issues and provide value. A great example is the Neil Patel blog:

• Guest blog:

No matter how big your website is, there's a much larger audience on other big marketing blogs. You can reach a wider audience and improve your credibility through guest blogging. Apart from valuable content, an important part of your branding is your author bio. Here's an example:

• Podcasts:

Apart from written content, other content formats are growing in popularity. Pat Flynn is a marketer who has grown his brand through the smart passive income podcast:

• YouTube:

As the second-largest site and search engine, YouTube videos allow you to reach more people. For instance, here's Brian Dean, an SEO expert on YouTube:

Content marketing is key to building a brand. Unsurprisingly, there's no expert marketer today who hasn't created a lot of valuable content.

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6. Attend industry events

While building a personal brand takes a lot of effort online, you can consolidate your effort through offline events. First, attending marketing events is a way to connect with other experts and rub minds about current marketing trends.

Furthermore, the publicity around these events could lead to more publicity for you. If peradventure, you're one of the speakers, this boosts your credibility as an expert even more.

Some popular marketing conferences include the Social media marketing world, Inbound, MozCon, Search Marketing Expo (SMX), Dreamforce, etc.

Here’s an example from an attendee at Inbound 19:

7. Align your brand with your company’s

If you currently work for a company, your personal brand-building efforts should be in line with your company's. Consequently, you can get better results for both yourself and your company.

In most cases, people want to interact with other people rather than official company accounts. According to Edelman trust barometer, employees are the most trusted source of information about a company.

While you build your brand, you can become an employee advocate for your company.

In another sense, even if you own a company, your personal brand could be bigger than your company's. As a result, this can rub off positively on your company.

For example, Gary Vaynerchuk has more followers than his companies VaynerMedia and VaynerSports combined. Whether as a part of a company or its owner, building a personal brand that aligns with your employer's brand can lead to the company's growth.

Conclusion

The best time to start building your personal brand as a marketer was years ago, the next best time is now. By building your brand, you can improve your credibility as an expert and increase brand awareness.

Use these 7 effective tactics to start building your personal brand today.