Do You Have a Personal Brand?

At Envisage Promotions, we have thousands of people on our database. Every single person is talented with an array of fantastic skills, amazing experiences and a professionalism that is second-to-none. It is because of our promotional people that we are such a success.

It is your skills, talent and professionalism that makes a great impression on clients. And that’s why they come back to us time and again.

But why do I need a personal brand, you ask? And what is it, anyway?

What is a ‘brand’?

Businesses and organisations talk about brand all the time. It is the tone of voice, the whole personality and character of a business. It is how the emotion and the feeling that a consumer gets when they interact or buy from a business.

So why do you need a personal brand? Simply put, it is what sells you as the promotional person right for an assignment.

How can you expand your personal brand and why do you need to?

Stand out!

The work we do is competitive. There are many freelancing sales and promotional staff just as there are many agencies looking for new, exciting and fresh talent to attract attention from their clients.

Just a like a business sells products and services, it works ‘on’ its business too. For example, as well as developing a new product range, it may also revamp its logo, make a change to how it sends out invoices or invests in a new computer system that streamlines production.
In effect, you need to do the same. You need to be confident you have the ability to continually adapt to meet the demands and needs of promotional agencies and their clients.

It’s a bit like updating your CV – it may a little dull, but it is essential. But what you will find that because you spend time ‘on’ your brand, you start to work on exciting and different projects.

How do you work on your brand? How do you build it?

You want to be known for being many things; reliable, adaptable, talented, and with a can-do attitude. Here’s how other people have built their brand so that they become the memorable people agencies turn to;
• A monthly email update – why not let us know what your availability is for the coming month and tell us a little more about what you are up to? Work you are doing elsewhere may prompt us into offering you similar or related work.

• Create/update your email signature – every webmail and email provider afford you space at the bottom of your email in which you can create a message. From contact details to updating your availability to your social media channels, website and other information that people would find interesting.

• Photos – amazingly, although we live in a self-culture it is amazing how many people don’t take photos of themselves working an assignment! Do it! Every assignment you take, make sure you get a photo of you at the event, official photos and your own too. Use these in your portfolio and you can add them to an email signature too.

Our top tips for standing out

A personal brand is integral to standing out from a crowd but when it comes to it, the devil is in the detail.

• Responding to assignment requests
We send out hundreds of requests over the year for promotional and sales staff to take on all kinds of interesting, exciting assignments.
It is numbing how many email responses we get from people that say ‘yes’ or ‘I’m free’!
Tell us why you fit the bill and why you know that you can make a success of the assignment.
• Read the email
Please read it because we sometimes ask for specific things, such as location, dates, certain skills and so on.
In your response, highlight how your skills and talent matches what we are looking for. Impress us by highlighting what else you can bring to the role.
• Update and maintain your profile
Whether it is changing the photo, updating your write up, changing your address because you have moved, a new email or mobile number, an active profile is more likely to attract attention than one which has not been updated for some months (sometimes years!).
Update your skills list too!
• Report back
We know how hard and busy the conference or trade show floor is. We understand that exhibitions are full on or that being a sampler is tiring.
You’ve got home, collapsed on the sofa and are desperate for a foot soak and sleep. But there is something critical that needs to be completed: feedback.

When things don’t go right…
… You need to say so. But rather than making it a monologue of moans, make it a constructive report. What was wrong? What would you do differently next time? Where there external influences?

When things do go right…
… as they tend to do most of the time, you also need to identify why things did. This is so we can repeat this successful formula again because, why reinvent the wheel or fix something when it isn’t broken?

Your brand, your success

To sum it all up, someone who stands out in a promotional agency is someone who engages not only with us but looks after and cares about their own personal branding. From updating profiles to communicating, to being reliable and providing feedback in a timely manner to having plenty of photographs.

Your brand is self-promotion, do it right and success is yours for the taking.