Selling much ​​more by becoming a celebrity in your business? Today you can. And you have to!

personbal branding

by Giorgio Nadali

Marketing is no longer based on the things you do, but on the stories you tell“. Seth Godin is right. The most important story must be yours. What others tell about you. In fact, true success is achieved when one passes from the “self-referential” plane to the “referential” plane, that is when others are talking about you.

The great seller Jeff Bezos – founder of Amazon – defines the “Personal brand is what they say about you when you’re not in the room“. Personal Branding is the activity that applies to the individual individual marketing and branding strategies, normally reserved for corporate communication. It is among the topics of greatest interest in recent years.
To make personal branding means to create a strong mental association between a relevant competence for an audience and one’s own person, to be considered the number one choice in a specific field.” In essence there is no better method to sell avalanche.
Paradoxically, today the personal brand is worth more than the corporate brand. Do you want some examples? Steve Jobs, Richard Brandson, Coco Chanel, Giovanni Rana, Franco Rosso, Brunello Cucinelli.

People who put their faces to ensure the value of their products, people who have become real celebrities and this has created a stronger relationship with customers to the point of turning them into real fans. People today are not just looking for a product or service that allows them to satisfy a specific need. They do not want just any smartphone, a pair of jeans any … They want the Iphone, a couple of Diesel … just like you’re not just looking for a lawyer, an accountant, any architect. You look for the most experienced or specialized in a certain subject, the one with the best reputation. People are looking for someone they can trust and to whom they can “love”.

For entrepreneurs and professionals, Personal Branding already has an important evolution. In fact, there is talk of Business Celebrity Building, to identify the maximum application of personal branding in the business world, with the aim of transforming the individual into a real business celebrity.

The term was coined by Gianluca Lo Stimolo, founder and CEO of Stand Out, the only European agency based in Milan, Italy, specialized in integrated personal branding services and considered one of the leading experts in the field.

The difference between the two themes is apparently subtle, but it is not so, if examined closely. In fact, while Personal Branding works mainly on the image of the person and on the construction of a coherent identity, the Business Celebrity Building operates not only on identifying a talent but also identifies a distinctive positioning for the growth of both professional skills and visibility, through strategies and operations that embrace the whole sphere of personal business, as if it were a sort of “ME Inc.”.

The reasons for this evolution are basically three:

Stand out from competitors
face the ever increasing competition on the markets with new weapons, caused by unstoppable processes of globalization and digitalization;

Reinforce their messages

Overcoming the refractoriness and distrust of every message that the “fake news” have determined in every interlocutor. “Put your face” is in fact the most effective way to guarantee and give authority to its contents;

Translating visibility into Business

Build and implement business models that allow you to generate greater inflows of money resulting from increasing visibility.

The Business Celebrity Building activity therefore allows

– Exit the price war;
– Access partnership and business opportunities, to the most denied;
– Find and select the best suppliers and the most profitable customers.

The formula of the Celebrity Building Business

Gianluca Lo Stimolo explains how to make Business Celebrity Building through the illustration of the formula he has devised:

BCB = P (E) xR (T) / S

Business Celebrity Building = Promise to the market (Personal label) x Reputation (Target) / Communication and promotion tools.
The promise to the market translates into a label that exemplifies communication, but this alone is not enough, just as reputation is not enough. We must have a clear market promise and a strong reputation. The latter is the recognized ability to keep the promise stated (how much your target considers you able to keep your promise to the market). It is therefore a belief that it must be instilled in its target because it turns into reputation.

How you do it? With the typical tools of online and offline communication, however, all must be applied with constancy and attenactment (for example: a unique and coherent message, what in English is defined consinstency, the story of case histories, customer testimonials, the use of influencer marketing, the creation of valuable content for your target – blog, reports, podcasts, videos, books – events and media relations).

The essential steps for Personal Branding

  1. Specialized to get out of the generalist’s perception:
  1. Choose a specific topic on which you can “say yours”;
  1. Put your focus on a specific audience (market segment)
  1. Find a label that makes it easy to understand your distinction and your promise to the market
  1. Be obsessive and unique in your message (Consistency)
  1. Use personal storytelling to give strength and congruence to what was declared on the market
  1. Produce content on the specific topic that you have chosen, to be distributed through the channels and tools useful to reach your audience (blog, e-book, book, video, heading), including events (workshops, seminars, congresses)
  1. Collect and use testimonials from satisfied users and illustrate case histories: they are a great inspiration for purchase
  1. Identify and use influential personalities to your target to your advantage, without forgetting the use of traditional media that have perhaps lost the value of means (media in Latin) to reach an audience, but are more than ever a means of accreditation and sources of credibility in the to professionalism for the public that you already reach through social channels. The path is this: first you are a general practitioner and few know you. A pity, you deserve more! Then you become a specialist and your reputation improves. Things definitely start to change when you become an authority in your industry. The next step is celebrity. You are known for your unquestionable professionalism and the final peak can only be the reference point for your branch.