3 Keys: How to Build a Profitable Personal Brand in 2019
The tools and resources needed to build a personal brand have never been more accessible, but the path to building a profitable, sustainable personal brand has never been more difficult.
Advancements in technology has brought the barrier of entry so low that anyone can put up a website, create a lead page, build an automated marketing funnel, create a membership site, and connect all the API’s – all without needing to know how to code.
The barrier of entry is so low, even grandma can “click, drag, and drop”.
Less than 10 years ago, in order to do all that, you either needed to pay expensive developers a lot of money, or needed to know HTML, CSS, and javascript to get your pages up, and code all of your tools to work together.
Now for under $300-$500/mo you can have world-class software that – when implemented correctly – will do the work of 3-5 full-time employees!
This is exactly why building a personal brand in 2019 has never been easier, but at the same time has never been harder. ANYONE can create, market, and sell their own products and services without spending their life savings, or having to raise money.
As a result, there’s so much noise in the marketplace that you must not only master your topic, but also master the art of cutting through the noise if you want to be successful.
Which is the perfect segue into what you’ll need to do in order to build a profitable, sustainable personal brand.
Here are three things to focus on in 2019 that will help you cut through the noise.
The Year of Messaging
This is something that we’ve preached to our private clients for the past 5 years, messaging is everything. As the marketplace gets more and more cluttered with marketing noise, it’s now absolutely critical that you create messaging that stands out.
Messaging is an iterative process that is not pretty, and often times very tedious. It requires having a foundational knowledge of human behavior, psychology, adult learning theory, and copywriting to be effective.
The great thing is that when you invest your time into learning in those arenas, your knowledge will never become obsolete. It’s not like investing in a Social Media course where a social media platform makes an update to their algorithm, and now half the stuff you just learned doesn’t work any more.
When you invest your time into mastering messaging, your skill and knowledge transcends tactics and tools.
Marketing hasn’t changed in the past 200 years. It’s all about right message, right time, right person. Technology has created different ways for us to get our message in front of people, but at the end of the day, it’s all about messaging.
Simple, Systematic Business Model
In order to build a sustainable, profitable personal brand in 2019, you must have a sound business model.
If you’re new to our philosophies about personal branding, this is where we stand apart from others on the topic of building a personal brand.
We approach the objective of building a personal brand from a business perspective, not a creative perspective. The brand image side of the equation is what most people think about when they think of personal branding. Anyone can elevate their image by snagging a couple nice outfits, hiring a photographer, and a great web designer, but building a personal brand that has long-term impact takes time and a whole another level of strategy and thought.
Don’t get me wrong, the creative side of a personal brand is very important, but a great looking website doesn’t automatically mean you’re making money. You can make a lot of money with a sub-par brand image if you have a sound business model in place.
Where most people make a mistake, is they create a business model that is too complex, where they are spread too thin. Most people try to do too many things at once, they feel like they are spinning their wheels. They can’t consistently get world-class results, and can’t easily scale because they have to keep 7 different plates spinning.
Your business should operate more like a well-oiled machine, and not a circus juggling act.
The answer is establishing a simple, systematic business model that provides direction, clarity, and focus.
Variety & Quality of Reach
There’s so much noise out there in the marketplace. In 2019 you’ll need to make the decision on whether you’re adding to the noise, or cutting through it.
Building a successful personal brand isn’t about being known by every person, it’s about being known by the right person.
In 2019, people who focus their time, effort, and resources on being known by the right people will run circles around the people trying to pad their social like/follower numbers.
Facebook Likes and Instagram/Twitter Followers have been called “Vanity Metrics” for years… but it’s even more apparent in 2019. Organic social reach keeps dwindling, and Facebook ads keep getting more expensive, so it’s important to start finding other effective ways to get in front of your target audience.
In my opinion, over the past 3 years marketers have gotten lazy and have grown over-dependent on Facebook Ads as the go to platform to drive reach and leads. Most people are still getting great results with Facebook ads, so they aren’t looking to diversify yet. Yes, you should absolutely be leveraging Facebook Ads right now, but don’t stop there! It’s a mistake to get overly focused on any one lead/revenue stream. A close friend of mine got their Facebook Ads account shut down after running (highly) profitable ads for months on end. One day, out of the blue, Facebook turned off their ads account and there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Their business took a big hit, but luckily they had a great organic search presence, otherwise it would have killed the entire business. The point being, never build a business on one customer source, always diversify – and diversify for quality, not quantity.
In 2019, people who supplement their Facebook ads strategy with off-line customer acquisition channels will get a jump start on their competition, and set themselves up for massive long-term success.
Final Thoughts
Building a personal brand is the best thing that you can do to benefit your business both short-term and long-term. In order to build a profitable personal brand in 2019, we believe that developing powerful messaging, establishing a simple business model, and focusing on variety and quality of reach instead quantity of reach, will make all the difference in 2019.
If you’re interested in learning more about our philosophy around building a profitable personal brand, click here to read this post where we cover the 4 core areas to focus on when building a successful personal brand.
Read Next: 4 Core Areas of Focus to Build A Successful Personal Brand.
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