Personal Brand Identity: Why Knowing Who You Are Matters in B2B Marketing

Personal brand identity is about knowing yourself and your brand. If you know who you are, then you know who you’d love to work with. Do you know who your people are?

To help align these, I invited Chris Richards on my B2B Digital Marketer podcast (Personal Identity: Why Knowing Who You Are Matters In B2B Marketing).

Sometimes it’s hard to realize it, but you better connect with people who love you for your authentic self versus people that do not.

The truth for you is your ability to connect with other humans is important for your brand, business, and personally. This article will share what I learned from Chris and others to highlight how your personal brand identity is important in B2B marketing.

Personal Brand Identity: Knowing Your Why Vs. Knowing Who You Are

People who watched Simon Sinek or read the books try to force themselves into something they are not. By doing that, you forgot who you are.

Suzy Kassem is known for saying, “You were born an original work of art. Stay original always. Originals cost more than imitations.”

An observation that I’ve made is, at the beginning stages, most entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and consultants learn from others and mimic their behaviors.

This also happens when you compare yourself to others and adopt their behaviors. When you do this, you are swiming in a sea of sameness and everybody looks and sounds alike. You do not even realize that your auhentic message is being squashed whiel you’re attempting to appear special in order to be seen.

This is a terrible irony we all fall victim to.

Is Your Personal Brand Identity Yours?

If you find yourself forcing or filtering yourself, chances are you are following someone else’s template.

The ones who really break away from the park know exactly who they are and own it entirely. Know your strengths and weaknesses.

Richard Branson, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Elon Musk are names that come to mind. These people know who they are and what they stand for. They don’t need to (and can’t at this point) look elsewhere to know what’s right for them. Neither should you.

Trust you own intuition and build on your own strengths.

Knowing Your People In Personal Brand Identity

By knowing who you are in turn, you know who you’d love to work with.

I attempt to align the way I do business, and everything else based on who I am. I seek to reflect and magnetize who I love and those who would love me without trying to be someone else because that is exhausting.

That also means I accept that I will not be the person with a 10-mile procession at my funeral or experience 10 million downloads of my podcast. I have no desire for the spotlight or mega wealth; I want to hold the spotlight on others. That’s who I am.

If you’re trying too hard to find success, whatever that is, then you may not be entirely aligned.  

I am the same person when I’m writing an article, when on video, and when the cameras are turned off. And if you don’t like me for me, then we are not the right fit to work together. If you do, then I/we have an unfair advantage.

Your unfair advantage is when people connect to you. Go find more of those people.

Is It Foolish To Fear Someone Stealing Your Ideas?

Some people fear that if they bring someone into their business, they might go away and replicate it. However, that’s unfounded. It can’t happen because no one can be a better you.

Either they will create a watered-down version. Or they’ll take what you do, what they like about you, and make it their own. In which case it’s not you, it’s them. In a sea of abundance, that’s not a problem.

You don’t have to be number one in your niche to have a successful business. You can be number 258 and be a millionaire. The Lakers don’t have to be number one all the time.

Ford, Lamborghini, Ferrari, which one is number one? It depends on the person who loves them, who connects with them. Once they’re in love with you, they’re in love with you.

According to Gallup, companies that provide an emotional connection with customers outperform the sales growth of their competitors by 85%.

Knowing Your Worth As Part Of Your Personal Brand Identity

No amount of money will ever prove that you are worthy to be loved and wanted.

Many entrepreneurs come from a lot of childhood trauma where we’ve learned to attach wealth to achievement or status, rather than being able to own that I am enough.

The UK 2018 Annual Report of the Director of Public Health proved that approximately 7 in 10 children reported one or more adverse childhood experiences. Do they all attach wealth to achievement or status? More and more, the answer is yes. But it’s untrue.

What you have, what you’re doing and what you’ve achieved is irrelevant.

In tying yourselves too much to the outcome, you’re losing yourself because you’re tied so much to getting clients and being number one.

Common Entrepreneurial Traits

A standard entrepreneurial trait is disliking doing anything more than once or twice. That’s why entrepreneurs make terrible COO’s.

Many entrepreneurs have too much of an attachment to intensity and not enough comfort with intimacy.

They have too much connection and attachment to attention and not enough intrinsic worth. And because of leaning too far in for intensity and attention, they tend to live through their business.

When the business starts growing and growing, and there’s no intensity or grind anymore, you start to get bored. You start to make yourself the single point of failure.

This is seen that a lot in six and seven-figure businesses. They put themselves as CEO, the main point of sales, and team manager. Then, of course, you don’t have any time – you get burned.

Personal Brand Identity: Having Systems In Place and Gaining Success From Something Simple

I see companies just growing like gangbusters yet what they’re offering is not really all that glamorous.

On the opposite side is that companies aren’t growing, yet they have the most fantastic product because they don’t have the sales and marketing machine to drive it.

Many entrepreneurs think that if you build a funnel, it pushes someone’s mindset through the funnel. It’s just not the case. That’s manipulation, and half the time results in a buyer’s remorse.

“96% of customers, say customer service is important in their choice of loyalty to a brand.” (Forbes)

Allow customers to move to you through curiosity. As opposed to you chasing them and trying to pull them through a funnel.

Actually, you get a lot better results and a lot more loyalty and trust by simply laying breadcrumbs and saying follow when you’re ready.

Viewing Your Customers As People Rather Than Objects

As experts or business owners, our businesses our life, it’s our lifeblood.  It’s the most important thing in our lives.

We make this assumption that it should be the most important thing in the customer’s life. It just isn’t the case. So to treat a customer as a human that has a life, and you’re just a piece of it.

56% of people worldwide have stopped doing business with a company because of a poor customer service experience. (Microsoft). Could it be because they are seen as objects?

Tactics In Influence And Persuasion

Some people use countdown timers or incentives. Some people do little pop-ups, which keep coming up. That creates social reinforcement.

It also creates FOMO, if you’re open to FOMO.

Personally, I don’t stay on a site that has a countdown timer or a pop-up because I do not resonate with those tactics.

If the person is in a state of consciousness where they live in scarcity, that person goes on the site. That tactic works very, very well.

So the question is who do you want as a customer.

One of Laura Ashley’s quotes says, “We don’t want to push our ideas on to customers. We want to make what they want.”

Suppose you want to attract people who don’t have any trust in themselves. Or don’t have any faith in themselves. If that is your intent, then maybe your product and service should use more scarcity and FOMO.

The only difference between manipulation and influence is your intent. If your intent is me, me, me, then it’s manipulation. If it’s influence, I want you to win, and by you winning, I get to win.

Conclusion

Bryan Kramer said, “There is no more B2B or B2C; it’s H2H, Human to Human.”

The B2B buying relationship is human to human.

If you believe in this then, you realize being more concerned with their bottom line and their best interests than you are with your own ultimately benefits your bottom line.

You have to identify who you are, so in turn, you can identify the people that best resonate with you and your business.

For further on this authenticity, I recommend that you read the book The Power of Being Yourself: A Game Plan for Success — by Putting Passion into Your Life and Work.

Watch My Interview With Chris Richards

Please Comment

• What do you think are the benefits of identifying who you are?
• What do you think causes self-sabotage in business?
• What is the relationship between B2B and H2H?