The Importance Of Being Relevant

14/02/2012

By Alexia Leachman, Personal Branding Coach At Blossoming Brands

In the process of figuring out what your personal brand is all about, it can be tempting to focus on the sweet spot where your passion and your talents meet and decide that that is what you are going to offer the world. But before you crack on, you need to make sure that the world is interested in what you have to offer.

Many people have their heart set on offering a particular specialism or product and while they’ve spent a long time figuring out the ins and outs of their product...

...or service, they haven’t checked whether anyone actually wants it. Or indeed would pay for it.

My favourite example of this is a guy that was on Dragons Den with his electrical boiled egg making machine which allowed you to make a boiled egg without water. He had spent around ten years developing his product, even remortgaging his house, but when it came to demo-ing it to the Dragons it didn’t work. Aside from the epic product performance failure, there was an even more epic failure at play here. Would anyone actually WANT to buy a product that boiled an egg when the saucepan and water solution worked so well? It can be easy to get so wrapped up in what WE want that we can forget to ask a few more simple questions:

Is what I’m offering desired? If it is... Would people pay for it? And… Are there enough potential buyers in the world for me to make a living from it?

In figuring out your proposition it’s not sufficient for you to look inward, some outward exploration is also required. Just as businesses carry out market evaluations and market research, the same type of work is required... continued on page two >

 

 

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