Archive for * Articles
Three Keys to Develop Your Personal Brand
Posted by: | CommentsYou may have noticed that the internet has sparked this trend called “Personal Branding“. Branding identifies and differentiates you, your business, and your products and services so you stand out from the crowd, get noticed – and get hired.
Personal Branding can be the most powerful tool for success in your self-marketing toolkit. It involves identifying your key strengths and expertise, identifying the real needs that you can meet for your ideal clients, and then communicating your message consistently in many different ways.
You can identify, package and market who you are to build a personal brand that leads to business growth, influence, and income.
Here are three key things you need to develop a strong personal brand:
1. A clear, unique strength, talent, or expertise.
Get clear on your personal strengths, talents, values, and core area of expertise. Understand how you connect best with people. Consider what your target audience needs and wants, and then identify the value and the experience that you can deliver to meet those needs and wants. Communicate in ways that reach into the hearts and minds of your target audience and connect with their core values and deepest desires.
2. An ability to clearly articulate that uniqueness.
The personal branding process is about having self-awareness of your strengths and talents, and then letting everyone know about your gifts, talents, and experience. It’s about giving a clear impression of who you are, what you value, what you’re committed to, and how you can be counted upon to act. It’s about having clear, key marketing messages to convey in all of your communications with prospects and clients.
Your branding statement must provide a clear, concise view of your unique set of strengths and tell why you can do it better than anyone else. You need to be able to state clearly and unequivocally why you are different than everyone else, and what services you offer that make you unique and set you ahead of your competition.
3. The persistence to communicate your brand consistently through many channels.
Consistency is one of the keys to building a strong personal brand. Be aware of being consistent in every interaction you have, both in what you say and how you respond.
Your brand is developed over time by all the associations made, the expectations met, the messages communicated, and the services delivered. A great way to deliver a consistent message is through an email newsletter that you send on a regular basis to clients and prospects. You can write articles in your area of expertise so that over time people come to know and trust you. They’ll know what you stand for, how knowledgeable you are, and how you work with clients.
Establishing a professional brand is absolutely critical to long term, sustainable business growth. Branding your products and services will give you an edge over your competition and enhance your value to your target market.
In an overcrowded marketplace, if you’re not standing out, then you’re invisible. Personal branding will differentiate you, your business, and your products and services so that you stand out from the crowd, get noticed – and get hired.
Putting it Into Practice
Personal Branding is about knowing what you have to offer to your marketplace and what makes you different from everyone else so that you can stand out and be recognized and remembered. It is having a reputation for delivering a product, program, or service that delivers extreme value to your target market.
Fill in your answers to the following to gain clarity on the unique aspects of your Professional Brand:
- My top three personal strengths:
- My top three talents:
- My core area of expertise:
- What my target audience needs and wants:
- The value and the experience I can deliver to meet those needs and wants:
- What I can do better than anyone else:
- What services I offer that differentiate me and set me ahead of my competition:
Developing a brand identity is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. With some thought and creativity, all the pieces will eventually fit.
The marketplace is waiting for you to make your mark on it.
What are you waiting for?
Learn How to Build Your Brand Online – Free Webinar THURSDAY
I invite you to join me THURSDAY, May 10th for my FREE Webinar: “Six Smart Strategies to Build Your Personal Brand Online”.
In this value-packed training, I’ll share with you my online marketing secrets so you can make a name for yourself in your niche market and make a bigger difference in the world. You’ll learn exactly what you need to do to create a well-known, in-demand, client-attracting personal brand so you can work less, have more freedom, and make more money in your business.
……………………………………………………….
Copyright © Jan Marie Dore ~ www.janmariedore.com ~ All rights reserved.Jan Marie Dore, ‘The Women Entrepreneurs’ Success Coach’, Master Certified Coach, Speaker, and Author, publishes valuable ideas to grow a professional service business and increase profitability in her newsletter ‘Success Secrets for Women Entrepreneurs’.Jan Marie teaches self-employed female professionals to attract more clients and financial success, and as a result, live extraordinary lives. For free resources and programs on marketing a professional practice please visit Femalepreneurs.com and read the Blog Success Secrets.
Do you have a story about how you developed your personal brand?
Please share a comment below.
Allow More Abundance, Flow and Connection Into Your Business
Posted by: | CommentsI was at my regular Friday morning yoga class recently and had a flash of inspiration about applying practices from yoga into business. I have been taking yoga classes for many, many years – long before it was as popular as it is today. Some of you may not know that I am a certified yoga teacher as well as a certified business coach and professional accountant. I taught yoga for many years when I lived on the west coast, but stopped when I moved back home across the country a few years ago.
So I thought – what better than to mix the concepts of yoga and business together?
In yoga, we bring our attention and awareness to what already exists, but may be just outside of our awareness right now. For example, as a yoga teacher I used phrases like, “bring your attention to your breath” or “relax into the flow of your out breath” or “find your straight spine”.
Read More→
Are You Taking Your Place in the World?
Posted by: | CommentsI work with women to fulfill their purpose and potential through entrepreneurship. Yet many of these women lose sight of why they went business in the first place, and start to lose their passion and enthusiasm over time. 
One client I’ll call Sharon, came to be because she was at her wits end drowning in paperwork, emails, and to-do lists. She felt drained, overworked, and uninspired. She was in a place of not remembering why she had started her business in the first place or what she felt called to do.
Her reason for going into business was because she felt a strong call to make a contribution in the world. She didn’t know exactly how to do that in the way she imagined, so she just started with what she knew. This is where most women start, but they often get lost along the way.
By the time Sharon came to me, she was exhausted, ready to give up, and had very limited financial resources remaining.
Here’s what I had her do to turn her situation around quickly – and you can too!
Read More→
Are You Hiding Out Or Shining Your Light?
Posted by: | CommentsClick the arrow to listen to Jan Marie Dore reading this article
In these times when business may be slow and people don’t seem to be spending as much, it’s easy to hide out and lay low thinking you’ll just wait till it all ends. You may think that’s a good strategy. I know I considered it.
But, if you have a purpose in life and a passion for helping people, then what is called for in these times is just the opposite of what you might be doing.
Are you hearing the call to step into your brilliance, or are you standing on the sidelines hoping this will all go away?
The businesses that will survive this economic shift are the ones who make over their business model, keep in touch with their market, and come up with new product and service offerings.
Read More→
How to Leverage Your Expertise Into Passive Income
Posted by: | CommentsI hope your year has been going well so far. I have just returned from 5 weeks on the west coast. I was very productive and got a lot of writing done while I was away (as well as lots of social time with friends!). I’ve been busy getting ready to release a new online seminar series on signing up more clients as well as a new educational program and workshop very soon.
Some of the work I do with my clients involves mapping out their strategy to add information products to their existing services. If you provide professional services, did you know that it may be hard for you to achieve the kind of financial freedom you might want without having passive income in your business plan?
I have some tips for you today about how you can map out your strategy for a more leveraged business model. I have learned some very good strategies to build a profitable business that I’d like to share with you.
These are the steps I took and that you can too to grow your business and leverage your expertise into sources of passive income:
Read More→
Ten Great Ideas For New Income Streams for Your Service Business
Posted by: | CommentsWhat I have noticed with many of the service professionals I coach is that when I start working with them, they have only one source of income – and it usually means they are giving up all of their time to bring in the amount of money they want to make. They are stuck in an old business model that no longer works!
The new business model for entrepreneurs is leveraged, profitable, sustainable and freedom-based. You’re working only with those clients who you know are a perfect fit for your unique purpose. This is exactly what I love helping women to do – to redesign their business model and programs using this type of structure.
How many sources of income do you currently have in your business? Two, three, five?
If you are someone who has only one income stream – such as coaching or any hourly or monthly paid service that you offer – here are ten ideas for you to add new income streams from your expertise and the work you’re already doing with your clients:
Read More→
Could Your Business Model be More Profitable?
Posted by: | CommentsClick the arrow to listen to Jan Marie Dore reading this article
When I first started providing business coaching services, I followed the time for money model that all coaches at that time were trained to use. I charged a monthly fee for two hours of time with me every month.
That worked well while I was in start-up mode. But, it stopped working so well when I reached a full practice. I ran out of the time and energy I needed to add more new clients and additional income. I started to realize there was a cap on my profits.
I could see only three options: either work harder and longer hours to increase my income, or raise my rates, or settle for a less than satisfactory income level.
I chose to raise my rates. I was too timid to go back to my current clients and tell them I wanted more money, so I just increased my fee for new clients. That worked all right for quite a while, and I was content with a decent hourly rate and a full roster of clients.
It wasn’t until I started learning about different business models that I realized I had been in my own little world of not knowing there were other options for me to have a much more profitable business.
Read More→
Five Ways to Attract More Clients
Posted by: | CommentsAttracting clients can be effortless when you focus on your strengths rather than trying to improve your areas of weakness. There might be something you are already doing that comes easily to you, something you might take for granted, but which could be the best way for you to connect with potential clients. If you spend more time doing that, rather than trying to do all the various marketing activities that are possible, over time you’ll achieve success.
Here are some ideas for growing your client base if you’re in the early stages of your business:
Read More→
The Four New Cs of Marketing
Posted by: | CommentsClick the arrow to listen to Jan Marie Dore reading this article
Marketing in this day and age needs to be a two-way communication. In a professional service business, it may make more sense to focus on the four C’s of marketing rather than the more traditional four P’s. They are much more customer oriented – and you need to think like your clients to do your best marketing.
Originally coined by Robert F. Lauterborn, co-author of “The New Marketing Paradigm: Integrated Marketing Communications”, the four C’s are more client centered and encourage us to view our business from the client’s perspective. They represent a fundamental shift in the marketing paradigm in response to the dramatic changes in the way people now make their buying decisions.
- Instead of Product – you have Customer Value
- Instead of Place – Convenience
- For Price – Cost
- For Promotion – Communication
Here are some guidelines on these concepts and why they are important to consider in your marketing plan.
Read More→
Three Quick Ways to Get More Clients Now
Posted by: | CommentsAttracting and retaining prospects and clients is the lifeblood of any business. Yet one of the biggest challenges most of the entrepreneurs and self employed professionals I work with say they have is getting a steady stream of new clients.
Is this a challenge for you?
Well, if so, you’re not alone. I know that when I started my professional coaching business many years ago, I struggled for the first few years to build up a full practice of clients. Now, I have systems and support in place to generate new leads for my website and my business automatically so that the marketing is not such a time-consuming effort anymore.
If you need more clients to sustain the income for your business or professional practice, here are three of the best ways to generate new business quickly.
Read More→
Get instant Access to Jan’s audio class “Seven Steps to Leverage Your Expertise into a Highly Profitable Business”.
You’ll also receive Jan’s “Success Secrets for Entrepreneurial Women” - inspiring, practical business growth tips delivered directly to your inbox so you can make a bigger difference with your message and your mission.
Sign up with complete confidence! We will never sell, rent, lease, or otherwise share your information with anyone.
