This week, we’re talking about how to determine the value of a personal brand. We’re looking at the nine value signals of personal brands.
How do you determine your brand worth? How do you become what I would think of as a luxury brand in the personal branding space? That’s what we’re looking at.
THE NINE VALUE SIGNS OF PERSONAL BRANDING
Before that, if you are building your personal brand and looking to level up your reputation, then I would recommend anyone out there who creates content to start a podcast. To do that, I have a podcasting starter kit for you.
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Let’s get into the actual content for today, the nine value signals of personal brands. What I’m doing here is I thought of nine things that I think of in the luxury branding space to see how I could apply them to personal brands.
That way you could level up your personal brand to make sure that you are getting the price you’re worth, you are being paid the value for your time, et cetera, et cetera. We’re looking at nine things.
VALUE SIGNALS #1: SCARCITY
Number one is scarcity in the luxury branding space. Scarcity is key. If there is a limited number of something and people want that something, right there is a low supply and high demand. That item goes up in value and people are willing to pay more for something that they want if there’s not a lot of it around.
This has been a true story for everything. Every kind of good out there that you can imagine is also true of personal brands. If you are in demand and you simply don’t have time to give to everybody, you can raise your prices. Simply from the fact that you only have so much time in the day.
DEMAND MUST ACCOMPANY SCARCITY
Now, if you cut that time down and you say, “You know what, regardless of how much time I have available, I only want to take on four to ten projects at a time.” Again, that scarcity creates a pricing increase because you have more demand than there is supply.
Of course, what that means is you have to have enough demand to create that too. You can’t just say, “I only have ten hours,” and think the price is going to shoot up. The demand has to be there as well.
Your job is not to just create scarcity. Your main job is to generate demand for your personal brand. How do you get more people wanting what you sell, wanting your time, money, your service, to the point where you have a waitlist?
When you have a line, you have more than you can handle. When that’s the case, then your value goes up and you can justify raising your prices.
VALUE SIGNALS #2: EXCLUSIVITY
The second point, in terms of value signals for personal brands, the second one is exclusivity. One of the things luxury brands do amazingly well is figuring out who their audience is. Who is the right person for their service? They don’t just say, “This is for everyone.” They say, “Our product is only for these people.”
This happens a lot. When you think of the most exclusive locations or venues in the world, there are only so many tickets. They say, “Okay, we only have twenty VIP tickets to whatever the thing might be.”
CREATE A PREMIUM EXPERIENCE
They sell those at a higher price. It might be the front row, a better seat in the house, or a special service that comes with it.
That exclusivity creates value because it is something that only a select few can have, and usually you have to accompany that. It’s not just scarcity. Usually, you have to accompany that with some type of premium experience that comes with that, some premium experience that comes with that is going to make the value worth it.
You can say we only have so many VIP tickets. However, if that experience isn’t any different than the rest of the tickets, then it’s not worth paying for. No one’s going to do that more than once. There has to be something within that exclusivity that makes it worth more than the average. It has to be comparatively better than something.
VALUE SIGNALS #3: PRICE
All right, those are number one and two, scarcity and exclusivity, in the nine value signals of personal brands. Number three is going to be price.
Obviously the higher your price, the higher it signals your worth. Now for someone just coming into your world, if the first thing they see is a high price, they’re going to ask the question, “Why is this price so high?”
If it’s justified, the reason the price is so high was that (as we talked about) you have enough demand to justify that. You have enough customers. You have enough testimonials, you have enough people that have been in your world that say, “This service, this person delivers results and was worth the price.”
Therefore your price has gone up over time. By the time this person comes into your world, the price for them isn’t where you started. It’s where you’re at right now. It’s high now.
BRING VALUE IN FROM PAST EXPERIENCES
What’s difficult is starting at a high price. The first time you do something, you may not be at the highest price level. If you have zero experience in that, but if you have experience from somewhere else, you can transfer into it.
For example, if you are a professional basketball player, and then you become an announcer on a TV station that talks about sports, you’re going to go in with a higher price than someone who just studied journalism and wants to be a TV anchor. You have a different experience than them.
There are these things that dictate price. People see the price of your personal brand. Your cost is going to signal to them that you have a high quality.
VALUE SIGNALS #4: CRAFTSMANSHIP
Number four is craftsmanship. Obviously, the way things are made, and the things that go into the making of a product are what typically are thought of as craftsmanship. If you have a designer watch, car, or designer fashion, usually the thing that denotes its luxury value is the craftsmanship that goes into it.
Maybe it’s hand-sewn or particularly done, a step-by-step process using the best materials. With certain types of craftsmen, there are artisans in a space that do something better than other people. That is going to create a better product, right?
CRAFTSMANSHIP COMES FROM PRACTICE
The better engineer you have is going to build a better car. The better designer you have is going to design a better dress. That design comes from experience. You can’t become a craftsman without experience.
If you’re looking at this from a personal branding standpoint, it’s the same thing. You are not a high craftsmanship personal service if you don’t have experience. What you have to do to get there is gain that experience.
What is it that you have done a lot of that you can leverage to increase the value of your brand? If you don’t have it, go get it. What experiences can you go get? Can you go learn? Can you add to your history to create craftsmanship for the thing you want to become good?
VALUE SIGNALS #5: PACKAGING
Number five is the package. How are you packaging your product? This is huge in the luxury space. Packaging matters. The way things look and feel and the experience you have with the product matters for its value.
If you get a car, kick the tire and the tire falls off, it’s a bad car. That packaging matters. Or if you go into a phone store and you look at an Apple iPhone. It’s beautifully designed versus something that is right off the rack, something that used to be before iPhones came out, the Nokia, or whatever it was.
They’re just different-looking phones because the engineers that designed the product and the designers that made the packaging had experience in designing beautiful products. Not only that, the box they put it in was beautiful just like their stores are designed in a way that is more beautiful.
That packaging makes you attribute that value to what’s inside. You, as a personal brand, have to think about what is your packaging?
RELATED: Build your personal brand with the Content Marketing Starter Guide.
HOW DO YOU PRESENT YOURSELF?
If you are going and speaking on a stage, are you wearing a suit? Are you wearing hip clothing, or are you wearing the jeans you wear around the house and the t-shirt that you garden in?
That’s your packaging. That represents what people think of you and in some cases might be worth more than others to a certain type of audience. What is your audience? What are they looking for from you?
How you package yourself matters. Even with a video, if you’re recording a video or you are recording a podcast, how does it sound? What does the background look like? Is the picture focused or not?
You can tell a user-generated video from an iPhone versus a produced movie production style. You could tell the difference. The production quality is different. It is packaged in a way that you know the difference between an amateur and a professional. That’s just how it is. That’s the packaging. It denotes value. It’s another signal for value. Apply that to your personal brand.
VALUE SIGNALS #6: ASSOCIATION
Number six is association. If you want to be considered high value, sometimes you have to look at what your brand is associated with. If you look at the luxury fashion space, these purses are often seen with these types of people.
It’s the people that have the money, that are the influencers in the space, or that are celebrities. They are the ones who we look to to see what are they wearing? What are they dressing in? What are they driving? Where do they live? What behaviors are they taking on?
We say, “Okay, those things are the things that must be of higher value. Let me go check those out.”
You know what? Restaurants that are exclusive and hard to get into are ones that only the celebrities are going into. That’s a value prop based on association. If the celebrities didn’t go there, it might have good food, but it wouldn’t be the new hot spot restaurant in the valley or whatever it might be. That association matters.
WHO DO YOU ASSOCIATE WITH?
You, as a personal brand, have to look at how are you creating an association that increases the value of your brand.
For podcasts, it’s what type of guests are you bringing on the show? Are they guests that actually are influential, that people want to listen to? Do they have followings already of their own?
Association is also important when you’re talking about what are you looking like versus your competitors in your category. What does your brand look like versus others? People associate your show with one look versus another. They try to put you into buckets and categorize you.
How do you associate yourselves? Who is on your show? What is your brand associated with? If you’re a product, what doctors are recommending you? Who is giving you testimonials? All that association adds up to a value signal for your brand.
VALUE SIGNALS #7: BEHAVIOR
Number seven is behavior. How is your brand acting? This could be your values. Are you a brand that starts off high but then discounts the price to something crazy? People see the behavior you’re taking and create value associated with that. If your brand is always on discount, it’s not a high-value brand.
If your brand has a tone to it that is not in alignment with what the product is, that’s going to cause problems with your value. It’s hard to sell something when the behavior of that thing isn’t acting like a high-value brand.
It has to be elevated, exclusive, and act like all the things that you would expect from a brand. Otherwise, you’re not going to believe it or trust that it’s worth the money you’re going to spend. You just buy the next best thing and it becomes a commodity.
VALUE SIGNALS #8: STORY
Number eight is story. What is your brand story? A lot of the time, the history and story of your brand is what creates the value of it.
Your “why” for doing something and your passion for doing something can demand a higher price. You know, There may be three or four things in the market that are exactly the same, but this one has a purpose that I aligned with. I am part of this movement now, instead of just a product.
I’m supporting a movement. I’m supporting a story. What is your story as a personal brand? Can you get people to rally behind it? If so, your why becomes a value signal. Your story becomes a value signal that tells people this is something that is worth spending more money on than something else.
VALUE SIGNALS #9: CRITICAL ACCLAIM
The last one that we’ll tie into for your nine value signals of personal brands is critical acclaim. At the end of the day, if you’re putting yourself out there as a product in the luxury brand space, you’re going to be judged at some point by the connoisseurs in the space, the taste-makers in the space, people who are out there.
They know the nuanced differences of fashion or food or anything else in culture. The connoisseurs, the critics are the ones who can evaluate the nuance of something, even movie critics.
They may see things that you don’t see. When they look at every movie, they understand filmography, cinematography, and all the things that go into the making of a video, the telling of a story, and the acting of an actor, and they understand all those. What makes it good and bad? They noticed the nuances because they spend so much time studying it.
PEOPLE NOTICE DETAILS
Same thing when you look for wine. I’m not a connoisseur of wine. It all tastes the same to me for the most part. However, someone who is a sommelier is out there tasting wines every day.
They have been trained to notice the differences and will tell you, “This is a good wine. This is a bad wine. Here’s why,” based on the differences that they know from the history, the taste, and the experience.
That critical acclaim is third-party validation of the value of the brand. It’s hugely important for you to have that if you want to be considered a high value brand.
GET YOURSELF ON A ‘BEST OF’ LIST
How do you get that in your industry? If you’re a personal brand, is there a third-party critic in your industry that you can go to and say, “Hey, consider me. Look at what I’m doing and consider me on your list of top ten. I want to be on the list of top ten podcasts, or I want to be top ten new Zumba instructors.”
Even if it’s just by city. How do you become someone who is ranked by a third party as someone who delivers high-value services or products? Finding that critical acclaim might be the step you need to separate yourself from the competition.
TAKE YOUR PERSONAL BRAND VALUE TO THE NEXT LEVEL
Those are the nine value signals of personal brands: Scarcity, exclusivity, price, craftsmanship, packaging, association, behavior, story, and critical acclaim. I hope that was useful. Hope you guys are thinking differently about how you are building your personal brand.
If you want to get started with your personal brand, start investing in your content, in your story, and in the things that make you different. If you need help with that, explore my website. I have content out there to help you move your personal brand to the next level.
MORE ADVICE AND INTERVIEWS
If you’d like to learn more about building your own personal brand, check out the Podcast Branding Academy at:
www.podcastbrandingacademy.com
And here are some more of my most popular thought leader interviews!
- What Business to Start with John Lee Dumas
- Personal Branding Masterclass with Chris Ducker
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Talk soon!