The science behind one of the most advanced marketing tools available today.
Personal Branding has rapidly become one of the most controversial marketing tools used by Internet marketers today. Opinions differ from one “guru” to another, but by now it’s clear for the majority of marketers, that Personal Branding (also known as My Story Marketing) is a valuable tool in most kinds of web-promotion. Like a magnet, it attracts tons of traffic and helps create massive lists of qualified leads.
While most people have some general understanding about the subject, rarely anybody realizes that there is an actual science behind it.
So, how does it work and, most importantly, why does it work?
On the surface it looks really simple or even lame: you put yourself out there, you allow your prospects identify the product with yourself, you tell them about your personal story and, miraculously, you get enormous amounts of leads to your website or whatever your platform is. So, the question is, why does it happen? What is so attractive for the prospects in this weird way of presenting the product. Doesn’t it look almost unprofessional?
In most cases it does, but that’s the beauty of it!
Let’s see what’s going on in the brain of your potential client.
We all know about the comfort zone, that little castle that we all have inside of our heads, that little world that we create for ourselves, familiar, predictable and understandable. That is the tool that we use to fight the real world with all it’s unpredictability and complexity. We want to be certain, we must be certain in order to be able to function and to be able to sleep at night. So we simplify the world to a little comics book that we call our comfort zone. We know everything and everybody in that book and we feel safe and secure inside of it.
So, all of a sudden, a salesperson comes along and starts knocking at the front gate of our little castle. What do we do? Of course, we freak out!
He is an outsider! We don’t know him! He is out of our comfort zone and we feel uncomfortable with him!
Plus, he wants us to give him our money!
We are not dealing with him! That’s the verdict!
So, if he is a beginner, he will just leave and we will re-establish our comfort inside of our castle.
But if he is a pro, he knows about our mental issues and he will try to play by our rules. What are they? There is only one rule: we are dealing exclusively with objects and characters from our little comics book.
So he will start playing mind games with us: he will start a drip campaign to increase the amount of times he appeared in our life in order to become more familiar; he will tell us that he understands what we need (and therefore he is not a complete stranger) and his product is going to satisfy our needs; he will give us the most beautiful sales pitch, that will create the need and will offer the solution as well; he will do anything in order to get inside of our little castle.
It will take a while, it will take a lot of effort, certain monetary infusion, time and knowledge. He might succeed, he might get killed by our guards before he reaches the outer wall of the castle.
And here is a completely different story: a guy from our comics book approaches us and offers the same product, but this time we know the guy, he looks familiar, he lives where we live, he eats the same food, wears same clothing, has erectile dysfunction, like we do and works at the same tractor factory. He is almost identical twin of ours and we feel like he is almost a family member. We have trust and understanding with him instantly and we are open to the idea of dealing with him and therefore buying from him.
That’s why this technique is so effective! Your ability to establish instant rapport with the prospect is based on your similarities.
I personally have been using this approach marketing Global Resorts Network for a while and the results are nothing short from spectacular! And my story is not really interesting or impressive, but that’s the beauty of it: it doesn’t have to be!
It’s not about your story being fascinating, quite the opposite, it’s about your story being average and you being an average Joe.
My students often tell me: ”I’m afraid it’s not going to work in my case, I don’t have anything interesting to say about myself, I don’t have anything impressive about myself, I suck and I don’t think my story can attract anybody!”
When I hear it I always remember the scene from “Keeping The Faith”, when Ben Stiller explains to the kid from the church’s choir: “That’s the challenge God gave you! Embrace your suckyness!” And the scene ends with the kid singing: “I love that I suck! I love that I suck!”
You need to understand: it’s not about your story being fascinating, it’s about your prospect having the same story and being comfortable with you because of it.
I hate to shatter your ego, but you are not unique! There are hundreds and, probably, thousands of people in the world with almost identical story, almost identical circumstances and almost identical set of challenges. They will be glad to find you, they will feel extremely comfortable with you, you will be able to establish an instant rapport with them by just telling them about yourself and your life and what you do and what you have been through. Every word you say, no matter how lame you think it is, will be a one more possibility to find a match out there in the world for you. They will be an amazing group of people! You will enjoy communicating with them and you will feel like you’ve known them for years! They will be the most productive team members for you, you will have such a synergy going on that it will blow your competition away!
You all heard about what I consider one of the most effective communication tools known as “personality mirroring”. Andy Bernard from “The Office” was one of the best practitioners of it and you can check it out in the episode called “Merger” if I’m not mistaken.
The basic idea is that you copy the person you communicate with: the posture, intonation, volume of their voice. They speak fast - you speak fast, they use a lot of hand gestures - you do the same, they cross legs - you follow.
What happens is - by copying them you are becoming more familiar and therefore less threatening. They feel more comfortable with you and more open to what you have to say. This technique works beautifully and yet not a lot of people use it because it looks to simple. Try it and you will see how effective it is.
Why am I mentioning it? Because Personal Branding and My Story Marketing is in essence a highly developed case of Personality Mirroring: you are almost like identical twins with your prospect, you do the same things, the same way, you have been through the same events and you are trying to achieve the same goals in life. And the beauty of it is - you don’t even have to learn how to use this tool (like with the Personality Mirroring), it’s already there, you mirror them already by just being who you are!
This all became possible because of the power of the Internet and, particularly, YouTube: now you can display yourself out there and eventually your matches will find you and attempt to contact you.
Talk about targeted traffic! No more cold calling and trying to convince people in things! Your conversion rate will shoot through the roof!
And this all will happen just because of your personal story! Any story will do!
I’m not going to make sweeping generalizations and tell you that this is the best tool and the only tool you should use. There are different people with different approaches on the market and they all have the right to exist.
If Johnny Bolton is good with talking to people on the phone and it works for him - great! If Ty Coughlin succeeds at attracting prospects with his tricks - beautiful!
I’ve found great success with Personal Branding and, if you are not using it, it is worth researching it and, possibly, incorporating it in your marketing. It all depends on what you feel comfortable with and what you are good at.
In my case, I can’t say that I handle rejection very well (or in a very polite manner) to actually call my prospects, plus, being a foreigner with a thick Russian accent, you can figure how successful I was when I attempted to call leads in the beginning of my career.
Paid advertisement didn’t appeal to me either just because of being faceless in most of the cases.
So, eventually, I learned about Personal Branding and it works for me just fine! Weirdly, most guys on my team are not foreigners, as I expected, but rather somebody with similar background, people who had been through different kinds of small business in the past and eventually recognized the beauty of the Internet marketing and joined me to promote Global Resorts Network. It proves one more time, that one shouldn’t try to predict which part of your story will be the most attractive for your prospects, just be honest and personal with them and you will have more leads than you can handle!
