Personal Brand vs Corporate Brand
Which one is right for me?
Branding is:
How you, your company, product or service is positioned in the marketplace.
The strategy behind achieving your goals.
The way someone feels when they have interacted with your product or service.
Your reputation.
Your customers' expectation of your product or service.
How you want to be perceived.
How someone talks about your product or service to their friends and family.
What is Personal Branding?
Personal Branding, in short is branding you, as a person, as the expert in your niche.
Personal Branding is defining who you are and how you are seen in the world in order to promote yourself and have people believe in you and your abilities to ultimately sell your own branded product or service on or off-line.
Having a high quality visual brand identity, strong marketing, on-brand messaging and authentic imagery is essential to helping your audience resonate with (YOU) your brand.
To be seen as an authority/expert in your niche, you need to have an authentic visual brand & content to represent you when you are not physically there to represent yourself.
What is Corporate Branding?
Corporate branding, in short, is branding an actual business, rather than a person.
Corporate branding is how a company or corporation presents itself to the world, and how it presents to its own employees. The face of the company is a logo identity system vs a personal brand which is usually represented by a persons face.
To build authority as a brand, or a marketplace leader, the consumer decides the value of the brand as they discover and use the services or products of that company.
Overall, it is harder to build trust in a company brand, but once that trust is won
Should I build a Personal Brand or a Corporate Brand?
To figure out the answer to this I generally ask three questions.
Do you want to be able to sell your business one day?
What type of business is it?
How do you connect with your audience?
Based on the answers to these questions we can start to determine whether a Personal Brand or Corporate Brand or a combination will be right for you.
Lets take a look at each question…
Question 1: Do you want to be able to sell your business one day?
If you answered Yes, then you may want to consider building a corporate brand because the buyer will want a business that doesn’t need your face in the future to make sales.
If you answered ‘NO’, then you could consider building a Personal Brand because if it’s just you, then you can build the brand around you.
Question 2: What type of business is it?
• Bricks and mortar - E.g. A gym, hairdressing salon, physiotherapy, tile store, clothing store, book store, cafe etc.
• Expert based business - E.g. Speaker, writer, author, business coach etc
• Online business - E.g. Online store, online teaching/coaching, social media based business
Based on the answer, we would then combine it with the answer from the next question to come up with an answer.
Question 3: How do you connect with your audience?
If you are the person that connects with your audience, your customers, anyone who buys your product or service, then it would be wise to consider building a personal brand.
If your businesses sales do not require you to connect with your customers, then you could consider building a Corporate Brand.
Now, I said by answering these questions, you can “start” to determine whether a personal brand or corporate brand is right for you.
This is because if it’s not an absolute clear cut ‘one or the other’, the answer may actually be that you need to build both and here’s why.
A personal brand can be used to promote your own product or service or you could be the face of a corporate brand.
A great example of this is Ryan Deiss. Ryan is the face of Digital Marketer. He uses his own personal brand to educate the market, but the business, Digital Marketer, is where people go to learn the “how to” and put it into action.
People connect with the person (Ryan) and then do the actual work with the business (Digital Marketer).
If you are the owner of a large company, it would be wise to consider growing the personal brands of your employees to improve the perception of the over-aching corporate brand.
After all people like to buy from people, not businesses, so using your personal brand to network and connect with people will help the main business to grow.
Here’s another example…
I utilise my personal brand on Facebook and Instagram ‘Branded by Rebecca Flint” or @brandedbyrebeccaflint, to educate and motivate small business owners to start or grow their brands.
And then, if they decide to engage me for ‘done-for-you’ work, my business ‘Brand + Marketing Co.’ does the ‘actual’ work in the studio, and that could be done by me or my team.
So the Personal Brand connects, educates and motivates the audience, and the corporate brand does the actual work.
So will you be building a Personal Brand, a Corporate Brand or a combo of both?
If you are still unclear, schedule a call with me and I will help you decide.