4 Ways Agency Executives Can Use Personal Brand Influence to Get Clients [Contributed Blog]

September 25, 2019 - 10 minutes read - Branding, Business Branding, Contributed Posts

As a company executive, you also need to develop and promote your personal brand.

Doing this builds transparency, trust, and eventually stable connections with your would-be clients — which are all vital for the success of the business.

The good thing is your designation as an executive already bears industry clout and authority, even among your fellow business leaders and decision-makers.

The question now becomes, how can you use your personal brand influence to get clients?

Allow me to share with you four ways you can do that.

Let’s dive in.

1. Create online courses and webinars.

Online courses and webinars are excellent for leveraging your personal brand influence.

They are a convenient and cost-effective means for you to share your expertise with thousands, even millions, of viewers around the globe.

As such, they hold massive potential for acquiring high-quality clients.

If you’re the marketing director of a digital marketing company, for example, you can create an online course about how executives can get the most value out of partnerships with other digital marketing firms.

Because your audience would also consist of executives, your tips would likely resonate with them. Not only that, but the position you hold as a marketing director will also make you look and sound more credible, therefore making you look more trustworthy.

As you run your webinars and online courses, you are bound to build relationships with other executives, which can lead to you discussing opportunities for collaboration, or you straight up closing deals.

And so the question becomes, how can you start creating your online course and webinar? What platform can you employ? One great option is to use Kajabi, a reliable online learning platform with sterling features you may find perfect for your client acquisition campaign.

 

With Kajabi, you can develop an attractive website for your personal brand, which includes a blog, landing pages promoting webinar events, and a learning management system (LMS) for courses. You can also customize the design, curriculum, and other aspects of your site not only for a functional learning experience but also to help promote your personal brand in a manner that dovetails with your agency’s brand.

Besides that, Kajabi has innovative tools to help you promote your webinars and courses. For instance, the platform’s Pipelines module makes it easy to set up marketing automation funnels that tap into segmentation data from your contact lists, serving up multi-stage and multi-platform nurture journeys encompassing videos, landing pages and email drips – all managed from within the platform.

You can leverage these marketing features to engage your prospects and clients strategically as you share your product and industry knowledge.

2. Publish content on LinkedIn frequently.

LinkedIn is a platform geared toward business and professional connections. It has a large audience base, many of whom are executives like you. That’s what makes LinkedIn such a good fit for interacting with an ever-growing network of contacts, which can result in publicity and profitable engagements, like getting clients.

Direct networking is good, but it’s more sustainable if you draw on your influence as an executive to obtain clients. This is where long-form content comes in.

Long-form content is advisable, since you can provide great value for your audience as you provide facts, insight, and views on the issues surrounding your industry. You can even inspire and spur them to action, especially when you take a brand storytelling approach that resonates with your audience’s feelings and perspectives.

By doing so, you expose and bolster your brand and influence in a meaningful, compelling, and memorable way.

Here’s an example by Tony Robbins:

When producing your content, select topics and angles that are relevant, interesting, and noteworthy, like Tony Robbins, who shared vital leadership lessons from Walt Disney.

You can then transform users’ comments into purposeful dialogues and network-building starters. Publish your content as frequently as you can, too, to boost your visibility on LinkedIn.

3. Answer questions on Quora.

Online communities and Q&A forums help you project your brand influence, because answering people;s questions augments your credibility and online presence.

When questions relate to your industry, you, as an executive, are the best person to answer them because you have the top-level view, inside information, and professional expertise. That said, one of the most popular online forums you can go to is Quora.

A social network built around questions and answers, Quora hosts discussions – among experts, executives and curious or knowledge-thirsty users – about everything under the sun.

What’s great about Quora is you can display your affiliations. This feature gives users a quick insight into your credibility so they can regard your response accordingly.

Here’s an example:

When you display your background, designation, and affiliations, users are likely to pay attention to your response, upvote it, and maybe even click through to content pages you reference in your answers. People may also follow you if they find your answers reliable and compelling over time. So it’s best if you answer in relatively high volume.

When this happens, Quora can verify your high-level profile (along with your confirmed identity) and indicate so by displaying a blue checkmark on your photo. People can then recognize you instantly as a reputable executive and resource person, and you can use that influence to initiate possible client partnerships.

4. Host a Twitter chat.

Twitter is a dynamic platform for engaging with brand ambassadors, influencers, customers and prospects in conversations about specific topics. As an executive looking to amplify your personal brand influence, you can use Twitter to bring your potential clients together and start relationships with them.

One of the ways you can do so is by entering, or better yet, hosting a Twitter chat.

Twitter chats are typically weekly events that last for about an hour. They talk about specific topics with hashtags and numbered questions so people can follow the conversation easily.

See this #ContentChat Twitter chat from content marketing consultant and influencer Erika Heald as an example:

Heald hosts #ContentChat every Monday at 3:00 PM EST, with different topics every week. Many popular Twitter chats like working with guest hosts, but once you’ve gotten the hang of it, you might want to start one. To host your own Twitter chat, you need to plan first your topics, hashtag, and regular schedule.

Once you’ve identified those things, announce your upcoming Twitter chat so your followers can mark their calendars and participate. On the day of your Twitter chat, open the conversation like this:

People can then reply to your question directly, tweet, or retweet using your hashtag, so they’re included in the stream. From there, you can freely interact and engage, seeing where the discussion leads.

By answering questions and hearing people’s opinions, you can communicate value, expose your brand, and influence your potential clients significantly.

The bottom line

As you establish and strengthen your personal brand, keep it consistent and cohesive throughout your marketing activity, so your growing audience doesn’t find you confusing or unreliable.

Your personal brand as an executive is a first-class marketing springboard that can be utilized for influencing your potential clients to do business with you – or at the very least, to ease any reservations they might have about doing business with you.

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Tags: agency owners, brand influence, Branding, marketing tips, personal brand