Promote Your Personal Brand

In my prior life as a director of car sales for Hertz North America, I fondly remember our top sales person. Bill Williams made more money than any other sales person and he did it with the least amount of inventory because he was located in Hawaii. He single-handedly sold out the entire inventory every year, enabling us to avoid shipping cars back to the mainland for disposition.

I invited him to speak to all of the regional managers at a national meeting to share his secrets. But to my surprise, there were no secrets. He simply said that he worked hard to get people to know, like and trust him.

If you approached a Hawaiian and asked what they knew about Hertz Buy-A-Car, most would shake their heads and say “not much.” However, if you asked what they knew about Bill Williams, he or she could talk about Bill for an hour. Although Bill used the Hertz brand, the brand that he focused on was his own.

In Bill's day that meant a lot of time spent visiting people: buying them drinks or dessert in the evenings at restaurants and bars; delivering donuts to the local police stations; and becoming involved in community service whenever possible. That's where he put efforts, and the cars just seemed to sell themselves.

What brand will you focus on?

Super producers know that they have three or more brands under which they operate. They have the insurance agency brand and key insurance carrier brands. However, the most important brand is you: the individual producer. That is the only truly unique and personal brand you represent because carrier brands can change and agencies can merge or be sold.

Over the years I've recommended that producers focus on their own brands, but few have had exceptional results. In recent years, building a personal
brand has become easier with the Internet and social media—much easier than Bill ever had it in Hawaii. I am amazed that most producers are still slow to put up websites, which can begin an amazing process of building identity and brand.

The Digital You

Make a belated New Year's resolution to develop your personal brand. Even if your time is limited, you can't afford not to do it if you want long-term success. If you truly don't have the time, the aptitude or the knowledge, hire a local college student to help you along the path. Once you get started on the journey you can either continue to hire it out or eventually learn how to do it yourself.

Initially focus on four areas:

Website
Facebook page
LinkedIn page
Personal blog.

Your website will be the central focus and deserves the most attention in its launch. Your Facebook and LinkedIn pages just need some tweaking. Your blog can be part and parcel of your website and all of them can be integrated to avoid duplication of effort. For instance, our company website, soundmarketing.com, continually updates the “Latest News” area to show recent social media postings.

Website

Consider adding these items to your website and let people get to know you:

Pictures of you and your family: Preferably use informal pictures, although a professional picture might be used on the home page. People like to see you in your natural element.
Professional and community activities: Consider a calendar of events for those organizations and links to their websites. Links should be set to open within your site as opposed to sending viewers elsewhere.
Hobbies and sports activities: Let people identify with what you do. I brought on a major client because he saw a car I restored, which was similar to one of his own. We started talking and our firm ending up doing some training videos for NASA.
Insurance niches: Identify your main niches and provide valued information and resources. On your own site, you can be much more detailed than the information on your agency's site.
Anecdotal case studies: Tell stories about the experiences of your clients, so prospects can identify with them and with you.
Additional contact information: Let people know that you are available when they need you.
Agency resources: Link information from your agency site. Make sure this is up front on your home page.
Social media: Have a spot where the latest comments on your social media pages and blog posts can be shared.

Those are just a few ideas to help get you started. You might even get outside the box with a spousal page to allow them to help connect to others through their activities. If you sell personal lines and have teenagers, let them have a page as well. They can help you bring in their peers and their families, as the teens start driving and moving on to college. Beyond calendars, you might even want to have pages devoted to your charities and other community organizations.

Social Media

This area is constantly evolving, but the two mainstays at this point are Facebook and LinkedIn, with some consideration for Twitter as well. Link the pages so that an entry in any one automatically links to the others. Visit your accounts on each of them. Make sure your profile is properly filled out with appropriate links to your website. Coordinate photos, so that there is some continuity of appearance with your website.

Post appropriate information. Avoid controversy unless it is relevant to your clientele. Skip the breakfast menu and talk about important issues:

Information that is valuable to your customer constituency
Information about your activities in your profession and your community
Personal information that would truly be of interest to others.

Blogging

Although it seems scary at first, blogging is pretty simple and straightforward. If you have a thought or an issue you want to share, this is the place to do it. If you want feedback from your clients and prospects, this is where they can give it to you. If you see something of interest to your constituency, here is where you can provide them a link to the article or resource. However, please note that this is the last of the four items mentioned in this article for a reason. I believe that the website and social media are far more important. Save the blogging for last, after you have mastered the others.

Integration

Although we have focused on digital resources for your personal branding, it is only one facet. You still need the one-on-one visits and interaction with the ambassadors that can help carry your message. You still need membership and action within local community organizations and charities, and you need to meet the performance expectations of your clients to assure that they refer you to others and maintain their loyalty to you. No amount of branding can ever overcome failure to perform.

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