What do personal brands have to do with agency growth?
A lot more than you think.
Let me unpack it for you.
The best place to start is by reflecting on how customers make decisions when thinking about hiring a new agency.
The other day I ran a quick poll to confirm something that I had long suspected—that agency review sites aren’t as meaningful to customers as you’d like to think.
The reality is, of the dozens of agency owners I’ve talked to, the biggest channels of high-quality leads have come from:
- The founder’s network
- Content that demonstrates firm expertise.
Now each of these can be unpacked further.
The founders network
This doesn’t need to be limited to their in-person professional network, though it often starts there.
No, instead it means any area where they have a network of influence over their target audience. It can be professional organizations, events, or even Slack communities they are a part of. Today, it often includes places like LinkedIn, Twitter, or Instagram as well.
In short, they are places where the most visible expert from the agency has put in the time to demonstrate their deep expertise either in-person or virtually.
Part of the reason this is so powerful is that it is a form of word-of-mouth marketing which is the strongest marketing channel you can use.
Content that demonstrates firm expertise
The other channel that high-quality leads come from is content. But all content is not created equal.
Let me backup a little to explain.
There are two different types of customers that will contact a brand.
- Those that come to you after having firsthand contact with your visible expert. (i.e. usually the founder’s network that we just talked about)
- Those unfamiliar people in your target audience who want to learn about your unique approach to your solutions. The folks who want to decide on their own why they should select you over others in your niche.
The content that performs best here, is the content that demonstrates your thought process.
Let me repeat that.
It demonstrates your thought process. The key here is that your audience understands why and how you reached your result, before they understand what result you achieved.
This is important because as an agency, you’re in the business of selling expertise, not a physical product.
If you’re only selling best practices, that’s commodity expertise and it’s worth less to your audience.
If you’re selling your unique insights and strategy, your own recipe for success, it’s worth far more to them. It also makes it far more difficult for others to compete with.
So what does this have to do with personal branding?
Fair question, glad you asked.
To unpack it, I’ll need to back up and explain some of the key benefits of personal branding.
- It positions you as a subject matter expert and leader
- It makes you relatable and helps connect you with others
- It expands your network and invites more client and partner opportunities
- It has greater organic reach than business brands
In short, a personal brand helps you do word-of-mouth marketing at scale.
But what benefit does this have to your agency growth you might wonder?
Think of it like the popular Marvel movies.
Each personal brand is like each stand-alone superhero movie—but when you bring them all together—you get the high-impact, extra powerful Avengers team. “Agency experts assemble!”
A team of personal brands are greater than the sum of their parts.
Time to build your Avengers super group.
So, let’s recap.
- Customers prefer to engage with humans, not brands. (This is why word of mouth is so powerful)
- Customers also prefer to work with experts with a unique problem-solving approach that they can understand.
- Personal brands allow you to be human and share unique perspectives, at scale.
- When you can compound this with each of your team’s experts, you can multiply the impact, building a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.
Now it’s time to build your superhuman brand so that your agency can go and save the world!