It’s quite simple – the key to success for any business, even online business is in ‘branding yourself’! So why do people buy a certain product or services? Or, why do they choose one particular company’s service or product’? Most likely, the difference is in the brand. Branding is like personifying a product or service, giving it a name, shape, color, identity etc. Your brand is a promise to your customers. It takes a while to establish a brand but that doesn’t necessarily mean that people will only buy those brands which have been established. There are a lot of other factors which people consider when buying something like the price, association, experience, impulse, rankings and the list goes on!
“What’s your brand? If you can’t answer that question about your own brand in two or three words, your brand’s in trouble.” Al Ries
Exactly! So, when laying down the foundation of your online business, don’t forget self-branding! It is a very important internet marketing tool that you need to establish RIGHT in the beginning so that you can build up the rest of your business on it. There are several ways for self-branding your online business, in fact more or less the same way any other business is branded. You create an identity of who you want to be, what you are selling and give the customers a CLEAR message about yourself. The worst thing you can do to your customers is to confuse them about your brand. Something about you needs to be different from the other brands whether it is your values or price or anything else of importance to your customers and brand. Your website should be laden with the keywords that self-brand you. Do exactly what you have promised your customers that you will, don’t mislead them because it is, after all, your reputation on the line.
“At Philips, the brand informs how we do business; from product development to the billing department. ‘Simplicity’ is not just a tagline. It is a guiding principle, which is continuously tracked externally and internally.”Geert van Kuyck, Philips
Your brand will get lost in the millions of other brands online, so how do you gain customers and keep them with you? The answer is -through self-branding! In internet marketing and social media marketing, it is very important to brand yourself!