It is not that difficult to launch an entrepreneurial project nowadays.

There are plenty of events and accelerator programs that can help you get funding and connections if you only have an interesting product idea.

The way you communicate that idea to potential clients and make them stay loyal to what you have to offer is the number one priority for any starting company. The same applies to an individual who wants to create a personal brand online.

So how can you do this?

How to create a personal brand from scratch

Every brand is different and the technicalities to promote it might vary from industry to industry.

Yet, there are main elements that are distinguishable and should be considered in advance before any action has taken place.

Brand quality

As a brand owner, you should take care of your product quality and set a reasonable price.

While it might sound like a trivial thing to do, customers see the quality in a different dimension than the product owner.

It means that they get emotionally attached to the brand because of the story it brings. Or the design of packaging they love. Or the fact that a group of people, they want to be associated with, uses it, they would buy it anyway. Even if it is identical to a competitive product that is sold at half the price.

What should you do about it? Don’t sacrifice profit margins to get noticed, think of a great story for your brand that would resonate with your audience.

Added value

What else can you do to make customers pick your offer in the ocean of competitive ones? Simply show them the difference.

Was your product innovative? Did you use some grandfather’s advice to simplify the production process?

Maybe your story as the inventor is the most interesting component and needs to be told? In a real world, products are only slightly different from the market and these differences are often not to be seen.

Bottom-line: show people the hidden value and make them see a real person behind the company. Not an ephemeral organization.

Brand identity

While you can’t really get inside your customers’ mind, you can control the message or image that you express to the rest of the world.

The brand image is also called an identity and it should be consistent and recognizable. To create a solid identity, you should think about a couple of matters.

First, mission (how does the brand would change the clients’ life?), vision (what is the ideal brand future?) and values (what are the key brand values?).

Next, think about the customer profile, his/her beliefs, actions, and dreams.

Finally, answer the question what the clients would lose if your brand does not exist anymore.

Once these elements are aligned, your customers would fall in love with your brand.

Selective targeting

New companies make a common mistake to target everyone. But this approach can lead to a disaster. If you sell to anyone, you sell to no one.

Yet the question remains, how to select the right group of people? Conduct research to specify what values resonate with a specified group and who can identify with the story you tell. Or if there is a need your product could solve.

Once your customer has been identified, your task does not end there.

The frequent mistake made by beginning entrepreneurs is a thinking-as-a-client approach.

Unfortunately, until you ask your customers, you will never know what they think about your product.

You could either track the comments of potential buyers via the social media or ask them to fill in your open survey.

If you succeed in defining your target market, you will gain customers with a real connection to your brand.

What’s next?

If you have the identity, quality, values and target of your brand well defined, you can focus on the name and the visual design next.

You can either hire a professional agency to help you with defining your brand identity or you can do it yourself.

Then, once the brand image has been outlined, you need to choose the right channels to communicate your brand identity. Building brand takes time, but once you do it right, the payoff will be huge.

If you do it step by step and watch your brand growth with patience, it becomes as strong, as it needs to be to survive the market adversities.

What do you think? Have you used any of the tips mentioned in the article? And how do you create a personal brand from scratch?

Let me know in the comment section below.

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