Marian Esanu's 3 Key Secrets to Build a Profitable Personal Brand
The digital era is catching on faster than ever, and for entrepreneurs/business owners, artists, and athletes, personal branding is now more important than ever. Without a strong online personal brand, it is hard to become known, trusted, and even liked, as people will always screen you online before engaging with you. A personal brand can help you control the narrative and tell your best story. It also helps you stand out from the competition. So how do you build an outstanding and profitable personal brand? Celebrated personal branding strategist, entrepreneur, and podcaster, Marian Esanu shares his three golden rules of personal branding.
Marian Esanu is an immigrant turned investor and entrepreneur/personal branding strategist. He specializes in helping service-based business owners and online creators build an omnipresent profitable personal brand. Marian is best known for his strategies and diverse approach to personal branding. He has authored Brand Up: The Ultimate Playbook For Building A 7-Figure Personal or Business Brand From Scratch. In the book, Marian dives deeper into how to become omnipresent online and go from hunting for clients to becoming hunted.
Marian is also the founder of Marianvesanu.com and the brains behind the highly-rated podcast; Momentum, where he interviews highly-successful entrepreneurs like Brad Lea, Grant Cardone, and more. They talk about entrepreneurship, marketing, and personal branding.
According to Marian, your personal brand is your identifier. It is a unique combination of your skills, experiences, and anything else about you, so what you include in your personal brand can either make or break you.
Here are the key steps to building a profitable personal brand, as explained by Marian.
- Understand what problem you solve for your target market
"Your personal brand should mainly communicate to solve the biggest problem your customers have. Of course, your content should highlight your strengths, but that would be done much later in the customer journey," Marian says.
He explains knowing and understanding your niche and the gap you aim to fill will help you become more relatable and relevant and even strengthen trust between you and the audience, as you all have a common goal.
- Identify the biggest influencers
After identifying the traits that make your brand unique and which customers your products/services most appeal to, start looking into that particular niche. Marian recommends 'watching' big influencers in the field.
Look into how big influencers create engaging content and connect with the audience through Q&As and other features like going live. However, you shouldn't copy the content word for word, as you will be losing your 'spark'.
- Offer a solution
A personal brand is how you represent yourself to the world and promote your work, and it should reflect your story and vision, including the solutions you aim to provide. Marian explains that to stand out and be seen as an expert, you have to showcase your expertise. The best way to do this is by creating quality free content.
He recommends using tools like Keywords Everywhere, where you can identify the actual volume of searches per month of phrases, keywords, and more. There is also Answer the Public, which tells you the questions people ask regarding a specific topic.