By Kayla Matthews
Creative marketing can boost your personal brand to ample recognition.
While some mistakenly assume that effective marketing requires a big budget to match, there are several powerful ways you can use creativity and savvy to compensate for a more conservative budget.
1. Latch On To Emerging Consumer Trends
Your brand’s recognition can soar by catering to a niche where your expertise is valued. Naturally, your niche-specific expertise can lead to your fingers on the pulse of emerging consumer trends in that industry.
Seizing upon these emerging consumer trends can help cement your brand and product as attentive toward its consumers, helping attract attention even in crowded niches.
Coca-Cola, although a huge brand, is an excellent example of implementing emerging consumer trends in personal branding for favorable results. Coca-Cola has shifted their branding to a “total beverage company,” compared to one that specializes in soft drinks.
This transition is primarily in response to data that shows consumers are switching to less-sugary drinks and losing faith in grocery store brands. Coca-Cola has consequently invested more time and resources into pushing Vitamin Water, sensing that consumers as a whole are moving toward a more health-conscious focus.
If a largely recognized brand like Coca-Cola considers ditching tradition in favor of emerging consumer trends, it should be an indication that smaller personal brands can successfully pursue a similar strategy.
If you notice your brand and business struggling to attract attention, it’s worthwhile to examine your intended audience. They may consider your approach too dated to engage.
2. Embrace Alternative Mediums For Your Ads
What do you think of when you envision a traditional ad? Likely a billboard or ad placement in a newspaper or magazine, right? However, there is a world of exciting advertising options that go far beyond your basic printed ad.
For example, vehicle wraps provide an eye-catching form of PR that can raise brand awareness. Even better, vehicle wraps can generate between 30,000 and 70,000 brand impressions in a single day. Industry experts also estimate that this offers the lowest cost-per-impression of any form of advertising.
A Nielsen study recently showing that out-of-home advertising like this is the most effective offline medium to drive online activity. And, with more and more consumers turning to micro-gigs as supplemental forms of income, you can consider ad options like these a win-win.
3. Make Your Brand a Lifestyle
Businesses like Urban Outfitters and Whole Foods have crafted their marketing to portray a lifestyle that consumers aspire to.
Urban Outfitters, for example, developed a blog that covered new music and youth-minded events to help enforce the notion that they are more than a mere clothing brand. Whole Foods, meanwhile, is synonymous with organic and farm-to-table food, to the point of many of their consumers prioritizing items that they can find only in their stores. Another example is Lululemon, the yoga-inspired sportswear company that holds frequent yoga-centric events to foster the use of their product and the activities that require them.
Although propelling your personal brand into a lifestyle is a considerable challenge, much of it has to do with outreach.
If you show a passion for your niche within your personal brand marketing, then consumers are likely to embrace what you’re putting out, whether it’s a product or specific event geared toward it.
Similar to how Lululemon hosts yoga events and promotes their yoga products by doing so, you can boost your brand by hosting events about your product’s niche rather than the product itself.
4. Showcase Your Expertise
The accessibility of digital media makes showcasing your expertise easy. For example, you can arrange a Facebook Live chat with interested consumers who can ask any questions they like and receive a response.
No longer is a physical space necessary to hold an event to boost your branding. Another option is to create a tutorial video in your branding’s niche, uploading it to YouTube and Facebook so those seeking answers can find them and stumble upon your brand and business.
Fulfilling a need among consumers will immediately show expertise and lead to trust as a result.
These creative ideas can help to build your personal brand immensely, helping attract new customers and demonstrating your expertise.
About the Author: Kayla Matthews writes about communication and workplace productivity on her blog, Productivity Theory. Her work has also appeared on Talent Culture, MakeUseOf, The Muse and Fast Company.
Featured image via Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/9IBqihqhuHc
