As a self-employed professional coach, YOU are absolutely the product. If you consider yourself a product, then your ultimate goal should be to be a well-known BRAND.
What am I talking about when I say brand? Ford, Coke, Intel, and FedEx are all brands. And even though we are not trying to place you in that category, it will help you gain visibility and stand out in a crowd, if you emulate the branding strategies of a Proctor & Gamble or Anheuser-Busch.
In their book, "Marketing Aesthetics," authors Schmitt and Simonson talk about Corporate Brand Personality. Research found that there are five key personality factors in a brand: sincerity, excitation, competency, sophistication, and ruggedness.
Getting Personal
Is not that interesting? They're talking about products as if they were human and have assigned personality traits to them. For example, they found:
Hallmark and Kodak score high on sincerity
Porsche and Absolut score high on excitement
American Express and CNN score high on competency
Mercedes and Revlon score high on sophistication, and
Levi's and Nike score high on ruggedness
Let me ask you … What are the characteristics of your brand? You can get some help on this topic by visiting the Success Without Selling site. You'll learn the first three steps to take and you'll also receive an introduction to Your Top 10 Personal Marketing Strategies.
Consider weaving your strong personality traits and positive qualities into Brand Positioning just as corporations use human characteristics to build their products brand equity. Your skills are your product. What is your brand?
