The three elements for growing your business in the roaring 2020s that you should focus on is your personal brand, your content marketing strategy, and your inbound marketing strategy.
You might think you don’t need to be thinking about these buzzy marketing terms.
You might not need a personal branding strategy. But the good news is that your personal brand can simplify your content marketing and inbound marketing strategies.
If you are wanting to increase inbound leads and traffic, increase your business’s credibility, and cultivate a sense of community around your business, a personal brand is a great place to start.
Before we dive in, let’s bring some clarity to these buzzwords.
Personal Branding
I define a personal brand as your reputation in the marketplace and elsewhere. Humans are social animals. We don’t only make purchasing decisions in the marketplace. Sometimes we’re referred to a business by a friend at church or a bar.
It's amazing how fast people forget you in this busy world. If you don't show up consistently on people's feeds, they will forget you when it's time to make a purchase or refer you to a friend.
Sometimes people don’t want to see content from a business. They want personality. They want to be entertained. They wanted to be educated by someone they trust.
Your personal brand is a great way to stay top of mind for your audience.
At the end of the day, your personal brand is your legacy. It’s the unspoken promise of quality service and personalized touch you have to offer. It’s an emotional connection with a consumer.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is an approach focused on creating and distributing content that drives customer action.
According to PPC Protect, the average person is now estimated to encounter between 6,000 to 10,000 ads every single day. You must have a content marketing strategy to break through the noise and be remembered.
It’s a process of creating valuable, relevant content to attract, acquire, and engage your audience.
Attraction your desired audience is the goal with content.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t…push a rope. You can’t push consumers to take action. They make their own choices. However, you can influence them to make a decision through branding and content marketing.
A well-crafted content marketing strategy places your business in the position of a thought leader, building brand preference as you inform and educate buyers. Providing helpful and entertaining content can form a strong bond between your brand and customers that continues to grow and strengthen over time.
Your personal brand can be a vehicle to distribute content. Your personal brand plays directly into your top-of-funnel marketing strategy.
I always say… Content creation is king, but distribution is queen. And she wears the pants in the relationship.
Creating a personal brand to being a public figure head for the company is simply about using their social media channels to share authentic content, instead of just sharing content on company social media pages.
Personal branding is content distribution.
If consumers like you, then they’ll listen to you. But if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.
Every business has a figure head. It’s usually the CEO. A personal brand is simply an approach to share stories and educate through a human and not just company pages. A personal brand makes a business more approachable and accessible.
Before we dive deeper into the distinctions between inbound and content marketing, we must understand start an essential truth: quality content achieves these important business goals:
It grabs the attention of targeted audiences
It helps companies establish relationships with prospective customers
It’s designed to be shared widely
But on its own, even the most valuable content can’t keep your inbound flywheel spinning.
Sure, consistently publishing content generates attention. But content alone can become an island. Content alone can come up short for qualifying leads, moving them along the buyer’s journey and converting them into loyal customers.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is a methodology for understanding the changing buyer’s journey and the variables that go into consumer decision making.
With inbound marketing, you’re looking at how your buyer will be attracted through your full funnel. Content marketing is top-of-funnel marketing while inbound marketing ensures you have relevant places to send your traffic.
The Digital Era and the expansion of the internet has given consumers more power to find the information they are looking for, when and where it suits them best. Digital channels have not only become increasingly used in all stages of the buyer’s journey, but in many cases digital channels have become the buyer’s journey.
Consumers are smart. They control how they interact with businesses. Being found or helping people to find what they want is the key to success in the digital era. That’s the idea behind inbound marketing.
With Inbound Marketing, your personal brand is something that is of much importance. By establishing a well thought out personal brand, you are allowing yourself to be known in the industry, and in some cases become a well-known thought leader.
Recap and Conclusion
Your personal brand is how your prospective customers come to like you and trust you.
Content shared through your personal brand is how they find you and stay engaged with you. A brand is simply a delivery system for content and stories.
With a proper destination to send your audience towards, combined with an email marketing strategy to help guide them, you have a strong marketing strategy with an inbound approach.
Attraction. Engagement. And Conversion.
Personal Brand = The Attraction
Content Marketing = The Engagement
Inbound Approach = The Conversion Cycle
The three cornerstones of online marketing.
Subscribe to my Rocket Fuel newsletter.
Helping creators & brands scale by adding rocket fuel to their content strategy.
Own your corner of the web.
Writing about the future of the internet, brands, and the creator economy.