Should Your Beauty Brand Be A Personal One?
How to know what’s right for you?
It all starts with the purpose of your brand. Think about your core values, target audience as well as medium to long-term goals.
The key is connection — what will resonate the most with your potential customers? Will your personal experience add something of value to the brand and its fans? Once you get this answered, imagine your brand in 10 years and what you want it to be:
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If your ultimate goal is to share your personal story and educate your audience and, ultimately, provide your service then a personal brand is the right path for you. However, if your plan is to build a product-oriented global brand that would attract investors and even sell then perhaps a business brand is the way forward.
Success pillars for a personal brand
Be genuine and authentic in your communication. You will need to live your brand and if you try and fake it, it will show. You want to take your audience on a journey with you, tell a story, and provide value. The danger with personal brands is to become ‘preachy’. So check in with your fans continuously to ensure that you are staying relevant to them, listening to what theft has to say, and encourage a two-way conversation. Networking will be a key to your success as it will help you build authority in your niche industry. Finally, be consistent — you can’t flip between sounding corporate and personal. If you choose to go with the personal brand route, you have to fully embrace it and be ready to share and stand up for your beliefs.
Success pillars for a business brand
Share your business values and ethos in order to make your brand more relatable. Work with influencers and press to build trust in the industry and among your target audience. Investing in PR will be something you need to budget for and be patient with. Provide value every step of the way through your communications. There’s no worse scenario for a brand than talking about yourself to yourself. Get to know your audience and answer their concerns and questions.
Is there a happy medium between personal and business brands?
Most of the experts will tell you — no. And they have a point — remember when the founder of Deciem took over the social handle of the brand? For a short but very powerful moment, it seemed that the beloved brand was done for.
On the other hand, social media has provided a unique window to the kitchens and workshops of founders. When done thoughtfully, telling the story of the founder, sharing tips, doing LIVE or Reels from the workshop is actually a hugely positive addition to the brand image. It instantly becomes relatable and approachable.
Looking at the current social media landscape, lot of indie brands are finding themselves exactly in the happy medium between the personal and business brand. It is very prominent on TikTok even among big brands and certainly on Instagram among indie ones. As long as you keep your business purpose in mind when you experiment with your brand communications look and feel, I say go for it!
Originally published at https://www.in-digital.co.uk on February 26, 2021.
