Marketing Yourself with Strategic Authenticity
May 09, 2018
No matter what product, service, or company you sell or work for, who you are and how you are perceived impacts how successful you are.
As consumers become more empowered, the human connection – understanding who is behind what they are "buying"- is increasingly important. As Simon Sinek so rightly pointed out in his Golden Circle example, people want to be a part of a community. In order to do that, they need to understand and be able to buy into, the big “why”. That “why” isn’t just about a product, service or company someone but also about the individual behind it.
This is simply human nature in play: people want to know why do you do what you do, and what your passion and purpose are. However, professionals often marginalise this part of their professional lives. Instead of investing their time and energy defining and learning to articulate the answers to these questions, they rely on “winging it” and often fail to think and communicate strategically. Why? Because they consider this the “softer” side of business, despite the fact that human nature underpins all business.
This blasé attitude doesn’t cut it any more. As Richard Branson practically evangelises, without a clearly defined Personal Brand, as this is often called, but at the very least an ability to articulate some sort of passion and purpose, your chances of being heard, seen, valued and successful will be limited. There’s too much competition today to leave this to chance.
Soft skills can be your cutting edge if you commit to sharpening them. Will you take the challenge?