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As a child, I loved Pop-Tarts. I’m not talking about the grocery store value brand; the real Pop-Tarts made by Kellogg’s. And like many kids, I also liked Cheerios, the ones made by General Mills. However, I can remember a time in my life when money was tight, and our family bought the “no frills” brand from time to time. Maybe, just maybe, the generic brand tastes the same (I doubt it), but no kid wants a no-frills brand cereal, or any other food. Everyone wants the cereal, or other product, that looks delicious, that looks inviting, that looks amazing. Right? This is what personal branding is all about.
Personal branding is the art and science of being so irresistible and so desirable that your target market wants to buy from you, work for you, be around you, or hear from you. They are chasing you. Frankly, they don’t want anyone else.
A strong personal brand is more than just about people knowing you’re a website developer. That’s easy; web developers are a dime a dozen. It’s about the right customers knowing you’re the best web developer for their needs. This most likely includes not just your technical competence to design websites but your customer service, your design process, and more.
To reiterate, large companies have big budgets to spend lots of money on advertising, sales, and marketing campaigns. They can spend $50,000 or $50 million on advertising to ensure everyone in the USA, or the world, knows who they are. We know their logos and their corporate stories. Even smaller businesses can spend some money to promote their corporate brands. However, a personal brand and corporate brand are two different things.
A corporate brand is about the brand’s promise, represented by its logo and imagery. Think Tesla, Polo, McDonald’s, Nike. A small business, like you and me —it’s all about our personal brand and how the customer feels about us as individuals. For you, a very small business owner, your corporate brand has some importance. Indeed, you want people to know your logo and your brand promise. For most of us, our customers are buying us; they’re buying our smile, our trust, how we connect and make them feel as individuals. Think of the local graphic design shop, the orthopedic shoe vendor your mother-in-law needs, the copy repair company. For these small companies, for you and me, it’s primarily all about us as individuals, about us as people.
It’s not about having a flashy business card or a sleek, modern logo. First and foremost it’s, how does another human, who has a need in his business or personal life, feel about you, and is he even aware that you have a solution for his need?
This is the essence of personal branding. This is what it means to be a celebrity CEO. McDonald’s has its golden arches. We have our handshake and warm smile. Dell has its TV and radio advertising campaign. You have your constant desire to educate customers and showcase how amazing you are for them. Starting and building a strong personal brand is not easy. It takes time and commitment to excellence and the art of self-marketing, promoting yourself like crazy.
In order to do this, you don’t need to spend a lot of money—in fact you don’t need to spend any money. Most businesses are plain vanilla. Nothing is wrong with vanilla ice cream, but for a business to be plain, to be boring, to be unremarkable, is deadly. It hurts the business. They’re not remarkable; they’re not special; it’s hard to tell what’s different about them. It’s hard to tell why you should connect with one business and not another.
Do this small test: Who are your top three competitors? Write it down.
What can you do, or what are you doing, to be just a little bit better than your competition, and hopefully a lot better? Entrepreneur and author Peter Shankman often asks attendees this in his speeches: When you go on a flight, you’re happy if the plane lands safely and you get some peanuts. Right? That’s all you expect. But companies like Virgin do their best to make it an experience. They’re doing things just a bit better or a bit differently than the competition. While being a celebrity CEO takes a lot of work, effort, persistence, and thoughtfulness, part of it is pretty simple. While everyone else is just okay, you need to be a bit better than okay to make a difference in your customers’ minds.
Let’s unpack this a bit more: I’ve been told by brand executives and others that they love my style of interviewing. It makes them feel comfortable during the interview, and they’re able to freely talk with me in a natural conversation. There are a lot of people who do interviews; however, my interview style is different than others’. It’s fun, high energy, and very conversational and relatable.
Think of your business and your brand. What’s that one thing, or many things, you can do just a bit differently than everyone else?
Here’s another tip from “Ramon’s playbook” of being a celebrity CEO: I like to wear bright colors. It’s not a gimmick, it’s me, but it works. There is a picture of me wearing my signature bright-blue sweater on my Twitter.
You want to be different and stand out in two main areas. First, before people even speak with you or hear about you, what does your visual and nonverbal brand tell people? If you have a business card, what does it say? How does your website represent your expertise? Second, when people do connect and interact with you, what are you conveying to them? How do you make them feel?
Since much of your competition is either so unremarkable or provides a terrible customer experience, or both, you have to be more proactive and mindful to build a better personal brand and to get the attention of customers who need what you sell!
Going back to my earlier example about Pop-Tarts—the product inside the box was essentially the same as the off brand’s; however, one brand added color, design, and excitement to their product and the other didn’t. Your personal brand must stand out, pop, and sizzle, at least in a way that sets you apart from your competitors and that is in alignment with the integrity of your brand’s values. Let’s try an example.
Maybe you’re the owner of a local upholstery cleaning company and you’re looking to be a celebrity CEO. You ensure that all of your employees say please and thank you, and cover their shoes with booties before walking onto a client’s carpet. Maybe after each job you visit the client, say thank you, bring a fresh bouquet of flowers, and take a selfie with the customer. Over time, your celebrity CEO status, your overall brand, is going to increase because you’re doing something another company doesn’t do (like leaving fresh flowers). On top of that, it’s part of your mission to go above and beyond for your customers!
A strong personal brand conveys two things to your customers and potential customers: (1) you have the solution they’re looking for, and (2) out of all the places customers could buy from, you stand out as the best option for their needs. A strong personal brand makes YOU pop, sizzle, bling, and sparkle. A strong personal brand helps customers see you in a crowded and noisy marketplace and choose YOU (and your business) as the solution to their needs.
A large part of the success of starting and building your personal brand today is about your digital marketing. It’s how you educate your customers over time and consistently. This is the power of personal branding. Let me share another illustration of the power of a strong personal brand: I travel around the world, and I am often in unfamiliar locations—be it in the USA, India, or another place. When in doubt about what products or services I should purchase for my personal needs, I tend to look first for familiar brands. For example, if I’m landing in another country, with no hotel recommendations and not sure where to stay, I prefer to stay in a Hilton, Marriot, or another American brand because it’s what I’m most familiar with. Does this mean a local hotel chain is no good? Not at all. It just means that when I’m not sure what to do, I’ll default to what I do know. This is the mind-set of almost every consumer out there.
If you have a strong personal brand, those prospective customers who are not sure who to choose will choose you over your competition. This is how your personal brand works with your customers and potential customers. The market for your products or services is crowded, noisy, and unfamiliar. Your potential customers are often not sure what to buy or who to turn to. By having a strong personal brand, you reduce their uncertainty and fear while increasing their confidence in buying from you.
If someone is looking for accounting services and you are the accountant she’s heard the most about and seen the most of, you have a greater chance of being chosen instead of your competitor. In a sea of unknown brands, the brand with the most credibility and trust will win the business. If you don’t win someone’s business today, do not be discouraged. Stay consistent in the value you offer to ensure that you’re at the top of her mind and will get her business at some point in the future.
Why do companies spend billions of dollars on advertising? They do this to ensure their brand is at the forefront of the prospect’s mind. On the radio, where I live, I hear ads for Bob’s Discount Furniture quite often. When I’m looking to buy furniture, don’t you think Bob’s Discount Furniture is on my mind? All of this advertising is to build brand recognition. With personal branding, instead of advertising on the TV or radio, it’s about doing specific actions to get attention and showcase yourself using events, books, social media, and tools. This is the power of personal branding.
What about your current customers and those who are very familiar with you or know a lot about the products or services they’re looking for? A strong personal brand is still essential. For educated customers who already know you, they’ll still choose you, as your brand appears most credible, most experienced, and the most desirable. For sure, all customers are not for you, but you’re not aiming for all customers, right? You want those customers who fit a particular profile.
When you raise your hand, take a stand, and have a specific point of view, you attract people to you who identify with your message. Remember, as Seth Godin often says, “People like us do things like this.” As you seek to start and build your personal brand, remember that you can’t reach everyone in the world, nor should you want to. You couldn’t service everyone, at least not as a very small business.
As you build your personal brand, show how unique you are, and showcase your version of the world (like the Pop-Tarts example), you attract people to you who are a perfect fit. Large brands can amass large groups of people to be their customers—thousands, millions, hundreds of millions. They can also sell to the masses. As smaller businesses, as smaller brands, we, for the most part, want to sell to a much smaller segment of the market. A powerful personal brand helps us to not just sell stuff to the market but also to enable potential customers to self-select to work with us.
Let’s take music for example. I love a certain type of gospel music. I don’t like all music and certainly not all types of gospel music. Those musicians who create the type of music I like use all the channels they can to ensure they get my attention. Your business is no different.
Maybe you’re a local computer repair technician in Orlando, Florida. Let’s pretend you have guaranteed-on-time service, your team wears crisp-looking uniforms, and you give each computer a free cleaning. One more thing: you charge premium prices. You are not for every business in Orlando that has computer troubles. Some might want really cheap technicians, and maybe they’re not as good as you are. But those who want the best service, which you offer, are going to be attracted to you and pay for it.
This is the power of personal branding. It’s not just using social media to educate your customers and get their attention, although this is a vital component.
Those with a very strong personal brand are incredibly clear on who their ideal customer is. They’re incredibly clear on who their target market is. While national brands are targeting broad swaths of customers, we small business owners do best when we go narrow, very narrow, and then expand from there.
We do our best when we’re a fish in a very small pond, as opposed to being a fish in a very big pond. The more you can narrow down and get very specific on who your customer is, the smaller your pond will get and the bigger fish you will be.
Let’s say you own a local hair salon for women. Sure, in some ways you want every woman who needs her hair done to be a patron of your salon; however, here are the benefits of catering to a much narrower clientele than “women who need their hair done”: You can specialize your service to women with a certain type of hair. You might think, “Ramon, I’ll lose the business of the women who don’t fit into my profile.” That is correct. However, you will begin to gain so many more women who have the type of hair that you do cater to. More and more women who have the type of hair you cater to will spread the word to their friends and encourage them to come to your salon.
The narrower the audience you cater to, the more specialized you and your team become. If you need a heart transplant, do you want surgery from a general practitioner, or do you want the expertise of a doctor who focuses only on heart surgery and has done many more such surgeries than the general practitioner?
You can quickly get rid of the maybes and get to the yeses. When a woman is considering getting her hair done, she has three considerations to make regarding your salon: she might come, she won’t come, or she will come to your salon. By being very specific in the type of hair you work on, you will help women make fast decisions about your business. This is good. Honda owners don’t sit in front of a Mercedes dealership wondering if they can help. They don’t even give it consideration. They instead seek out a Honda dealer. Make sense?
As a family, we’ve moved a few times, and wherever we end up, there are always hair salons. However, my wife always looks for Dominican hair salons because she likes how they do hair. Sure, there are hair salons that just say “hair salon,” but the Dominican ones are doing really well. Why? They know there are plenty of women who are looking specifically for Dominican hair salons. They’re always packed and have a steady flow of business.
It’s immensely helpful to build one or more customer personas of the type of customer, or group of customers, you best serve. Let’s say you have a carpet cleaning business. Who is your ideal type of customer? Is it “everyone who has a home”? No! Instead it could be something like this:
Does this mean that you won’t or can’t serve those who don’t fall into this category? Of course not. But it means that you can begin to create marketing that best speaks to this type of customer. You can create surveys that might help to identify this type of customer. To create a great survey, first understand what information you need to segment your customers. The shorter your survey is, the more likely it is to get a response. You can use a tool such as SurveyMonkey, Typeform, Google Forms, or Zoho to ask a question.
Maybe you ask for first name, email, and two or three questions to place your customers into “buckets,” or segments. Maybe you ask a demographic question such as gender or age. Maybe you ask a psychographic question, like what kind of music they listen to or if they like sports or not. Now that you have this intelligence you can begin to target people like this and market to them. Make sense? As you get more and more people as customers, you can keep using surveys to ensure you’re always serving the right customers.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t have a few target audiences, but start small and then grow. Don’t just rely on demographics to target your customers. Demographics refer to how we look on the outside: black, white, Spanish, Chinese, etc. What’s just as important, or more important, as demographics are psychographics.
I bet those people in your town with household incomes of $250K or more and four-bedroom homes might work in similar places and have similar social circles. They’ll begin to refer your company to their friends.
So now, instead of being a business that cleans the carpet of “any home” or “any apartment,” you’re a BIG FISH in a SMALL POND and a specialist in cleaning carpets for certain homes owned by certain people. You might start off by building one type of customer profile. As you get better at this, you might end up with two or three distinct types of customers you can serve.
When I go to a big event like SXSW, held annually in Austin, Texas, a few people know me. I’m a small fish in a very big pond. However, when I attend an even like the B2SMB Conference, an event for large brands who are selling to small businesses, about half the room knows me. Why? I’ve invested a lot of time in this niche industry and know all the players. Sure, McDonald’s needs to sell billions of hamburgers, but for most of us, we just need to be known by a lot of people in a particular industry. Don’t try to be Google or Hulu. Instead, aim to be the best and well known in a very specific and narrow market.
By narrowing your target market, you’ll also be able to fine-tune your marketing and advertising messages. If you make watches, your advertising copy is going to be quite broad and varied. However, if you make watches for law enforcement officers and the watches have lights on them, are super durable, and include a lifetime warranty, you’ll be able to create marketing copy that specifically addresses this audience. Language used to sell something or get someone to take action is often referred to as copy. Content is what you use to educate your audience, such as the content on your blog or the content of this book or the content written by an accountant to educate her customers on how to save money on their taxes.
Adam Bluestein writes on Inc.com3 how Fun and Function, a company that makes items for special-needs children, had to radically change its marketing catalog. The catalog was designed for parents and spoke to them in a colloquial tone rather than a clinical tone, which is better suited for institutions. The biggest market for special-needs solutions are buyers such as hospitals and schools, not parents. Therefore, Fun and Function had to change its catalog to better communicate and speak to the customer base that was best for its business.
As you go narrow in a particular market, you become even more of a specialist. You get to know the market better, you speak the language, and you know the needs of that narrow market. I live in the New York City area; I can tell you how to get uptown and downtown, etc. However, someone who lives in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, can tell you about a lot more streets and restaurants in that specific area of New York City. That person would be a specialist; I’m a generalist.
In 2014, I interviewed4 business growth expert Casey Graham about this concept of going “niche.” What he said back then is worth repeating now:
Niches are where the riches are—instead of marketing broadly and serving a large segment, focus on going more niche and more focused.
Dominate your market and nail it before you scale it—instead of adding more products and services, focus on dominating and adding value to a smaller market segment.
People will pay more than you think—if you offer intense value to your customers, they will pay a premium. If a customer spends $10,000 with you, ensure they get $50,000 (or whatever your numbers are) value from it.
Focus on Engagement, Not Followers or Likes
I catch myself glancing at how many followers I have on Twitter. As I write this I have about twenty-seven thousand followers. (By the way, do follow me @ramonray on Twitter!) Some days I look at my follower count and wish I had fifty thousand or five hundred thousand. I glance at how Gary Vaynerchuk gets eighty thousand likes on an Instagram post, and I’m happy if I get five or ten!
Sometimes we get caught up in the wrong numbers. How much do we weigh? How many calories did we consume? What’s our annual revenue? What’s our quarterly profit? How many parking tickets did we get? How many USB cables do we have? What numbers matter, and what numbers don’t matter? If Joe, a technology consultant, has seven thousand LinkedIn followers and Steve, another technology consultant, has ninety-seven LinkedIn followers, this does mean something, right?
It is likely that Joe is doing something right in regard to sharing on LinkedIn and building a following. Still, it’s important to remember to not get caught up in the numbers and not to obsess over follower count. It can be a dangerous obsession. Instead, focus on regularly educating your customers.
Steve, our tech guy with ninety-seven LinkedIn followers, should instead focus on providing great content to his followers, tagging relevant people, and using hashtags. Over time his follower count will grow, and people will begin to engage with him. By staying true to his core message—whatever that may be—his follower count will grow.
But more important than just the raw number of his follower count are the relevant followers that “get” Steve’s brand and his version of the world of tech. Those looking for expertise in technology consulting for their businesses will want to work with him. It’s more important that among your followers on social media there are those who engage with you.
The New York Times wrote a substantive story5 exposing how many celebrities feel so pressured to have a huge following that often they do the unthinkable: they buy followers. Don’t do this; don’t even think about it. Buying followers is not authentic. Often, they’re not even interested in what you’re sharing, and over time this will hurt your brand.
Having a large following is not the priority. What’s important is having the right fans who are truly interested in what you have to say. If you educate and serve your customers, invariably you will get more followers, more engaged followers who will want to buy from you.
In fact, I’m getting comfortable with a smaller audience. Every time someone unsubscribes from my email newsletter, every time someone chooses to unsubscribe from me on Twitter, I’m happy. This is because I only want to share the “Ramon Ray” version of business growth with those who want it. I’m also excited because that means there’s a higher percentage of people who want to hear from Ramon! It’s a waste of my time and their time if I’m sending a message to people who aren’t interested in it!
The real number you want to understand is the level of engagement people have with your content on social media. Sure, if you have ten million followers and 1 percent of them buy your stuff, that’s one hundred thousand buyers. Much better than having ten thousand followers and 1 percent of them buying your stuff. But this is rarely the case in business or in life.
Consider this: If you have five hundred followers who are maddeningly in love with your message and thus highly engaged with you, you’ll have a large engagement rate. Maybe 30 percent of them will engage with you. That’s a lot better off than five thousand followers who are just groupies, are really not all that in to you, and of whom probably even less than 1 percent engage with you in any meaningful way. Instead of seeking a huge number of fans (or followers), seek raving fans who are in love with your message and want to engage with you.
These are the people who will be paying more attention to your message, who will do what you ask them to do, and who will tell others about you. Stop looking over your shoulder while trying to catch up with the gal ahead of you or racing to stay ahead of the business that has just a few less followers than you.
Seek to do the best you can to provide value to your audience, to educate your tribe. Let it grow organically and passionately.
Joe Escobedo writes in Forbes:6
Engagement can tell you how well your content resonates with your audience. If your goal is to build a relationship with your audience, then you should definitely look at engagement. . . . That’s why you need to look at not only your engagement but also your competitor’s. By benchmarking their performance, you can determine which content resonates better—yours or your competitor’s.
Jenn Deering Davis gives some advice on Union Metric’s blog.7 She shares:
The size of your audience on social media doesn’t matter if no one is paying attention. In fact, we’ll go so far as to say that how many followers you have doesn’t really matter at all. So it’s time to stop paying attention to your follower counts on social media and instead spend your time focusing what really matters—social media engagement.
While follower count does have some meaning, it is so much more meaningful to know who your followers are and how engaged they are. That’s more important. Furthermore, work on getting followers who have influence. Who would you rather have: ten thousand fans who don’t really care about your product or services, or one thousand fans who share your content with other people and comment and engage with you? Is this an audience who cares about your products, services, and solutions? Do you have followers who are rabid fans of the product or service you’re selling? Focus on who is following you, not how many are following you.
Engagement refers to the attention these followers will give you. If they are highly engaged followers, you will have much more of their attention. A few highly engaged followers are a lot more important and meaningful than a lot of followers who are not engaged or whose attention you don’t have.
Influence—it’s all about the engagement level and the type of people who are following those who follow you! There’s another thing to remember: it’s easy for people to follow you, to “like” you (as in a social platform). However, when someone engages with your content it is a much stronger commitment and indication of your influence.
The term influencer, which has gained popularity with the rise of social media, refers to an individual who has a community they influence. Maybe it’s a fashion blogger who shares tips on casual business wear for men. He has a community that reposts, shares, and comments on what he publishes across social media platforms. This is engagement.
Also, engagement is more long term. If you just seek to “go viral,” that’s a flash in the pan, one-hit wonder. But if you seek for deeper engagement with your community, you are building a relationship that lasts.
Secret Sauce: Fans before Customers
As you seek to start and grow your personal brand and be a celebrity CEO, keep in mind the importance of building your base of fans, or as Ted Rubin8 would say, your community.
Fans are not your customers. At least not yet. Fans are those people who have raised their hands, metaphorically, and said, “We like you,” “We want to hear from you,” “We enjoy being around you,” “We like your content,” etc.
It’s a challenge to sell to strangers. They don’t know you. They’re not sure they like you. In fact, you really don’t know them. But it’s so, so much easier to sell to fans. It’s even easier to sell repeat products and services to fans.
As I travel around the United States and the world, I’m humbled and blessed by the fans who come up to me and say, “Ramon, I read your emails,” or “Ramon, I love what you post on Facebook.” Many of these have never bought anything from me, and that’s okay. They do share my content, recommend me to others, and sometimes buy something from me.
I post quite a bit to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. I also have an email newsletter and other channels. Through these channels and platforms, I’ve amassed a base of fans, people who have indicated in one way or another that they want to hear from Ramon. These include Hanna Perry,9 owner of The Giggling Pig Art Studio; Adrian Miller,10 owner of Adrian Miller Sales Training and Adrian’s Network; Vikram Rajan,11 founder of phoneBlogger.net and Videosocials.net; Beth Silver,12 CMO for hire; Faith Kinslow,13 branding consulting; Irina Smirnova, branding portrait photographer and speaker;14 and so many others. These were all fans before they were customers. They signed up to my emails, liked my posts, commented on my videos, etc. Over the years when I’ve produced events or offered other things of value to them, they’ve become customers and bought something from me.
Instead of trying to find “a customer” to sell to, first offer value and seek to build a base of fans. If you build a base of fans, of people who know, like, and trust you, over time they’ll buy from you again and again. When you build a base of fans, you’ve established trust. Trust is what makes influencers on social media so successful. Their communities trusts their opinions and recommendations.
Recently, I presented at an event about an hour away from my home. In the audience was one of my fans. She and a friend drove about ninety minutes to hear me speak that day. Why is this important? A follower will do the minimum to interact with you and your brand and your message. A fan will do much more, and this is what Seth is encouraging in his blog:
A blogger might convert 2% of readers to buy a book. (I’m aghast at this.) And a Twitter user with a lot of fans will be lucky to get one out of a thousand to click a link and buy something (.1%).
Likes, friendlies and hits are all fast-growing numbers that require little commitment. And commitment is the essence of conversion. The problem with commitment is that it’s frightening (for both sides). And so it’s easy to avoid. We just click and move on.
I think there’s a transparent wall, an ever bigger one, between digital spectators and direct interaction or transaction. The faster the train is moving, the harder it is to pay attention, open the window and do business. If all you’re doing is increasing the number of digital spectators to your work, you’re unlikely to earn the conversion you deserve.
When you have a customer who buys from you, he or she is just a customer. It’s transactional. When you have fans, they’re lifelong customers and ambassadors for your brand.
Seth has launched a number of courses: altMBA, the Marketing Seminar, and the Bootstrappers Workshop. I signed up for the latter two courses. Thousands of people have each paid a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars for each of these courses. How did Seth do this? How did he essentially convince all of these people to purchase the courses he has offered? Because, over the years, he’s built a fan base of highly engaged fans, people who read his blog (for free) and buy his books. The books are often twenty dollars or so each. Now that he has this fan base, he’s able to monetize it even more by offering them something of even more value.
You can do this too. This is why building a base of dedicated fans is so important.
I spoke with Ted Rubin, a well-known social marketing strategist and keynote speaker, about his views on personal branding, and he said one of the most important things a business can do is to build a community instead of just building a network. If you build a community, or a fan base, you have strength, you have traction, you have people who will refer business to you and people who will tell others about you.
I’m not advocating that you get rid of your sales team or top sellers. Instead, I’m advocating that you start community building and fan building. It’s ironic how fans and communities are something we use in the products-and-services world of business, but my guess is that it first became popular in the world of music.
With a music band, it’s about having fans attending their concerts and buying their vinyl records, CDs, and, now, digital downloads.
Ditto Music helps bands distribute their music to various platforms, such as iTunes and Spotify. They wrote a blog post15 giving advice to bands in how to build a large fan base. Coincidentally, most of the advice is appropriate for traditional business owners like you and me too.
Creating a fan base is NOT about selling to customers. It’s about providing value to a community. It’s about raising a flag that identifies who you are and what you stand for while giving your community and fans the opportunity to rally around you. Here’s another perspective of fan building: we often ask for the “sale” too soon.
I’m advocating to seek fans first. Seek to build a community of people who are excited about you, who like you, who cheer you on. It’s easier to get someone to clap for you and say “good job” or be appreciative of your work than to get a customer. As you build a fan base, you can then work toward converting fans to customers.
Let’s pretend you’re a local bookkeeper. Each week you put together events, volunteer at the local chamber, and help seniors better manage their money. You now have a fan base of people who know, like, and trust you. With a few purposeful inquiries you’ll bubble up those who might want to pay for your services and hire you to help them. This has worked for me for over twenty years.
I don’t need to sell or beg someone to buy from me. I have a growing fan base of admirers. The curious ones begin to ask me questions, then ask for a few minutes of my time, and they show further indications of interest than if I had given them a cold sales pitch. The next thing you know, I’ve just turned a fan into a paying customer. This powerful concept will transform your business.
I’m not advocating that you should not sell. Of course, you should sell. What I am advocating is that you focus your marketing energy on building a fan base and engagement. Selling will be much, much easier when you’re working to convert a fan to a customer.
To build a fan base involves a long-view mind-set. The result does not come quickly; it’s going take some time to plant the seeds to grow and attract an engaged audience.
Fans are comprised of just about anyone who likes someone. Being a fan does not mean you have to buy their products or their T-shirts or anything. Without fans, however, the next part of the equation will never happen, which is customers. Think about any good music band or performer. They have passive fans who may listen to them on the radio, active fans who follow all their interviews and announcements, and paying customers.
Customers come from fans who have such a desire for you that they want to take the next step and buy from you. Either they like what you have to offer and want it for themselves, or they like you so much they simply want to show their support. This is the power of being fan focused and not only sales focused.
An interesting twist on this aspect of fans (or followers) is a community member. Community members are even more engaged than fans. While fans want to get your email newsletter or attend a few events you may have, community members are all in. They want to wear your T-shirts, attend every event, put your stickers on their notebooks and computers, and more.
Melinda Emmerson, known as SmallBizLady on Twitter, interviewed IBM’s social business manager, Alex de Carvalho, for a Twitter Chat,16 and he said that since people like to do business with companies they like, if you build a community, you can develop a group of customers and fans and bring them together into a community. This community will boost word-of-mouth referrals, encourage repeat visits, and more. People talking with other people about something they have in common builds engagement.
I didn’t realize that I had a “community” until a few years into producing my Smart Hustle Small Business Conference. As I looked out at the attendees for the event, I started to cry. These were not just attendees buying a ticket. No, these were members of the Smart Hustle community. Throughout the day some people were tearing up with good emotions; some were screaming with excitement. Their emotional connection with the Ramon Ray, Celebrity CEO brand touched me as well. I bet you’ve been to a concert, church service, or other event where you could feel and experience the energy. This is the power of building a community (or fan base) and enabling them to get together in real life. You and your fans feed off of the energy of each other. Over time, with an email newsletter, a Facebook group, phone calls, and more, I built a community. You can do this too.
In the case of the Smart Hustle community, we are grouped by the type of businesses we run and how we run them. In your case, you could group people by geography, by common experience, or by a variety of things. However, I do believe that stronger communities are not grouped by demographics but by shared experiences and mind-sets.
Building, nurturing, and growing a community is not easy. You’ll need someone to be a community manager and be purposeful and tend your community, just like you would a wonderful garden in your backyard.
Look in the Mirror: Are You Magnetic?
One of the reasons, I’m told by clients, that they enjoy working with me is that I’m easy to work with. I’ve been told by clients that there are people they don’t like working with because they’re difficult to work with— prima donnas.
As you seek to build your personal brand, it’s not just the “speeds and feeds” that are important, such as getting TV appearances or engaging on Twitter or speaking at events, it’s also how you are as a person. If you don’t have a magnetic personality that attracts people to you, if you’re not likeable, it makes it so much harder to build a strong personal brand.
Here are some tips on being magnetic. While some of these may seem obvious to you, it’s important to ground yourself in these tips to make an authentic impression:
I think of my dear friend Shashi Bellamkonda, an early adopter of social media and content marketing. Over the years, he’s shown me what a magnetic person is. When we’ve been together walking the halls of SXSW, for example, he knows everybody and everybody knows him. Shashi is a giver. He’s always seeking ways to connect one person to another.
What about Phil Gerbyshak, a marketer, professional speaker, and social media consultant? Sure, he has a killer smile, but he’s always in the mood for a big hug and a hearty laugh. You can feel Phil’s warmth a mile away.
David Newman is another magnetic person. He’s a trainer and consultant to some of the best speakers in the world. He hosts dinners and lunches for people at events. Sure, he’s got a huge laugh and ready smile, but anyone who invites friends to dinner has to be magnetic.
Can shy people be magnetic? Someone who is naturally outgoing is going to have much more visibility and can quickly capture attention better than someone who is not. It’s like having a flashing neon sign in Times Square versus a dim night-light in a dark room. Of course, the neon sign gets more attention.
However, if you’re shy and more reserved, you can still have quiet magnetism. Your creative branding can still pop and stand out. When you do speak to someone, you can make that individual feel great and feel your energy, care, and concern. You might not get the instant attention of someone who is a bit louder and more outgoing, but you can still be magnetic in your own way, and most importantly, you can make a difference.
My wife and I speak together in public from time to time. She’s shy (she says!) and doesn’t readily go out of her way to shake a stranger’s hand like I will. She’ll probably never be the loudest person in a room. Although I have more humor and audience engagement, she’s a much deeper and more thoughtful speaker than I am. Whereas I may speak for ten minutes on a topic and half the time people will be laughing, she’ll speak for fifteen minutes on a topic and people will be taking notes and deeply hanging on to her every word.
There are many ways to be magnetic!
Does Physical Appearance Matter?
Let’s digress for a minute and talk about how you look. I find that those with strong personal brands oftentimes, but not always, have a way they look that stands out!
If you Google “Ramon Ray” and observe how I’ve dressed over the years, you’ll see three things that stand out:
This is ME.
Your brand must be authentic. You should be true to who you really are; however, as you begin to build your personal brand, think about how you look. For good or for bad, how you look means something to other people. They form opinions about you just from how you look—BEFORE you even open your mouth.
If you’re investing time and money into building your personal brand, it may be in your best interest to invest in the expertise of an image consultant who can guide you in how to look like the best version of yourself.
I happen to wear pocket squares with my suits, but maybe you wear a special tie clip with your suit. I prefer stylish brown shoes, while you may like wearing funky patterned socks that show your personality even when you’re dressed for a business meeting. Whatever style you gravitate toward, try to aim to have a look that fits your personality but that looks sharp and polished.
Kimra Luna, personal branding and online business strategist, has blue hair. How many people do you see in business with colorful hair? She’s definitely memorable. My friend Alfred Edmond Jr., executive editor-at-large for Black Enterprise, is known for his dapper suits, including his bow ties. Ted Rubin, digital strategist and speaker, is known for wearing snazzy vests and playful socks.
Jess Todtfeld, founder and president of the marketing training company Success in Media, dresses sharp and distinguished. His pocket squares and fitted suits look great. He credits our mutual friend Sylvie di Giusto for consulting him on how to enhance his public image.
While you don’t have to dress fancy or interestingly, it helps to authentically stand out, every way you can.