In this day and age, if you do not have a plan for proper and effective marketing you are going to fail. It does not matter if we are talking about business or personal. Today, we are going to focus on your personal marketing plan. To start off, we are going to explain to you exactly what a personal marking plan is. We will then take a deeper look into the things you are going to need to do in order to make sure that your plan will be well executed.
A personal marketing plan will bring focus and direction to your job search or your career path. The plan needs to lay out the steps you are going to take in order to implement your personal marketing across your entire brand (your name).
Doing this will convey your core values throughout your entire personal marketing strategy. It will also quickly show others what you have to offer and stand for in your chosen field. The ability to quickly and easily show what you have to offer will make you that much more able to get into a position to capitalize on any potential opportunities.
What is Personal Marketing?
When most people think of marketing, they think of a company that is attempting to showcase a new product or service. Well, that is exactly what you are doing with personal marketing. You are providing people with a lot of details about yourself in order to make yourself look good. Just as a company would want you to only think the best things about their product or service, you are going to want people to see the best things you have to offer. In this scenario, you are the product that intends to provide a service.
In the business world when you are dealing with a business, you must think about the five Ps. They are, in no particular order, product, price, placement, promotion, and people. When you are applying that to yourself, you have to think about where they all fall into the marketing mix. Some are easier than others to nail down. For example, you are the product. The price is what you are going to charge for your services. When it comes to placement it becomes a little trickier. You are in a specific location. If you want a job that is somewhere else, chances are you are going to have to move. When you are doing the placement of your brand, you need to make sure you are targeting the location that you want to be. When it comes to promotion, that is another easy one. You are promoting yourself. That is the essence of the plan that we are making today. People are all the people you are trying to impress with the plan that you are making.
Values and Skills
Whenever you are presenting your values and skills, it is important to remember to accentuate the positives. Try to leave any negatives out. There is plenty of research that they can do to find that out. You want to impress them with your positives so that they will forget about the negative things they may read. Trust us when we tell you, everyone has something they don’t want others to know about. That does not mean that they will not find it. Should that happen, you need to be prepared to spin that negative into a positive. Adding this to your plan will be time well spent.
Audience
When you are developing your plan to market yourself, no matter if it is by traditional means or online, it is important to remember the audience you are addressing. When you are making your plan, you need to constantly remind yourself who you are trying to attract with your promotion. If those people would not be interested in the plan that you have made, it is time to start over.
Let’s assume that you are a realtor. If you are deciding on your plan, you are going to want to make sure that you are targeting brokers, lenders, and real estate agencies. These people are your audience. Therefore, talking about your summers spent working on your car is of no interest to them. Instead, you are going to want to make sure they know how you did while you were studying to become an agent. If you worked at another business prior, let them know about the number of houses you sold or what kind of margins you got. These are the things that they want to know.
The Core Elements
No matter who you are or who you are trying to target, there are some things that belong in virtually every single marketing plan. You plan should be focused on the future, not on the present. That means that when you are making your plan you need to focus on the things that you will be doing in the future. Make sure that you keep track of the things that you are currently doing to show progress. Be prepared for every situation. If you are working somewhere and a better opportunity should come along, be prepared to secure that job for yourself.
Conclusion At the end of the day, the only way that you are going to make sure that your plan is well thought out is to make sure you have one, to begin with. If you have a plan, you can make sure that it is working best for where you are wanting to go in life. Make sure that you are constantly keeping track of your skills in order to make changes to your plan as you go along. A plan is a living thing. You will want to constantly update it to be in sync with where you are heading in life. When you hear about people with a five-year plan, this is the plan they are talking about. They have found a way to perfect their marketing plan and have applied it to their life.