Promotion is about how people get to know about you.  The foundation of promotion is having a brand.  When we market our outsider qualities we need to know what key concept we embody.  You can establish your personal brand by using four Personal Brand Strategies.

Outsiders On The Inside: How To Create A Winning Career…Even When You Don’t Fit In! Career Press 2010 by David Couper – Reproduced with permission.

Personal Brand Strategies

Strategy 1. Market your unique outsider attributes that are scarce.

Strategy 2. Bring a different twist to something old.

Strategy 3. Create something as unique as you are.

Strategy 4. Satisfy a customer, client, or employer’s desire.

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Strategy 1. Market your unique outsider attributes that are scarce.

Simply, do you have something that other people want and don’t have? When I worked in Chicago, my unique selling point was my global expertise and international expertise. I had lived in Europe and Asia, spoke other languages and had worked on international projects. I was working on training materials that were designed to be taught to 5,000 people around the world.

Sports stars, who have exceptional talents, are also a scarce commodity. They don’t need to fit in. They can dye their hair pink, have tattoos all over their bodies, even dress in wedding dresses (think Chicago baseball player—Dennis Rodman) and still be accepted. Their skills outweigh their differences—and the show they put on is a pretty nice bonus.

Your marketing must make this unique selling point clear. A global perspective is part of my pitch to some international clients. I give an example of how I planned a seminar where the U.S. members of the team scheduled dinner for six p.m. As the seminar consisted of 60 percent non-U.S. members the time didn’t work. For southern Europe eight or nine p.m. is more suitable and the same goes for Latin American where nine, ten or even eleven is a better meal time. We established a compromise where cocktails and hors d’ouevres were served at six p.m. and then dinner at eight-thirty p.m.. Everyone was happy.

Elinor Stutz was unique in two ways – the only female sales person and the only one who was “nice” – that is was ethical and cared about the customer!  Here is how she marketed her scare skills – being a nice woman sales person.

Years later when I announced I was a sales trainer, once again the men laughed at me and the women ran away scared of the word “sales”.  Marketing materials all suggested I write a book.   “Nice Girls DO Get The Sale: Relationship Building That Gets Results”. It was featured in the TIME Magazine business supplement, translated into several languages and sells worldwide.  Thousands of copies have sold.  This one strategy alone greatly increased my credibility and visibility leading to speaking engagements and additional business.

Elinor Stutz, CEO, Smooth Sale, LLC, San Francisco Bay Area, CA

Strategy 2. Bring a different twist to something old.

Sometimes, it’s not that we want to build something brand new, but that we want to give a home we are fond of a face-lift or a new coat of paint. In my example, the company had a formula for training, but they wanted to give it a twist. I was the twister they needed.

Unlike my colleagues, I didn’t have a Masters and PhD. in Instructional Design, but I did have ideas, creativity and wackiness. My marketing message was that I could take uninteresting material and bring it alive.

Like their clients—the accountants, the trainers were focused on facts and figures, making sure that the details were right. I had already found out that wasn’t my skill.

This really came home to me, when I was part of a team that produced an educational program that was going to be shown to the whole of the company, through their own, private broadcasting system.

The training department had pumped out training videos at regular intervals so prolifically that people were tired of them. My client wanted to do something different to explain about coaching. I suggested taking a satirical approach.

An “expert” would explain to the audience all about how to coach people they worked with. Instead, of a serious approach, it would be a kind of toned-down Monty Python. It started off with the presenter tossing a memo from the training department into the garbage. The video got people’s attention. Instead of being a throwaway the audience watched, laughed and learned.

Strategy 3. Create something as unique as you are.

The famous story of 3M and Post-It Notes is a good example of something unique. A scientist was working on a new adhesive. As glue what he came up with was a failure. It was a outsider amongst the range of existing products. But the scientist found that its main failing, that it didn’t permanently stick, was actually its main advantage. The rest is history.

An actress I coached on career goals, was from Europe with a strong accent. She has been working on sounding like an American, disguising her heritage as much as possible. She was competing with lots of American actresses for every part. We talked through what made her different and decided that she should use her accent to her advantage. In an audition she would be the only one with a sexy Eastern European persona. It worked. By being her unique self, she got more work than she had ever gotten before by being herself, which was unique. She marketed herself as the actress with the accent.

Another example of how someone bought someone created something as unique as them comes from Europe.  “Corinne” whose background includes education in the USA, Europe and Latin America and who speaks three languages fluently and a few others well created something very different which reflected who she is.

“And, as for work, I don’t work for France or any given country.  I work for a group of 87 countries as an Area Learning and Development manager.  The job is very international.  I am part of a virtual team of people based in Hungary, Turkey, Luxemburg, Belgium, Germany, the UK and Holland.  I do a lot of ‘cross-border’ teaching which means I am constantly in contact with people from many different countries and cultures.  I love the environment. In fact, I’m not sure I could ever work for a single country any more – it would seem too provincial.  People get set in their ways and are not aware or interested in the fact that other’s might see things very differently, or have different needs, sense of humor, of hierarchy, of history, etc.    In some sense, If I worked for a single country I’d be afraid that others would be too comfortable, set in their ways and unwilling or unable to listen to others and adapt. Since I’ve always been a bit of an outsider – no matter where I am- that would bother me.”

Corinne, Manager, Professional Services Company, Paris, France

Strategy 4. Satisfy a customer, client, or employer’s desire.

This was true for my writing career. I have had a number of books published—in fact the number is seven—not counting this one. My most successful book fits Factor 4.

George Sees Stars is a short book written for young students who are learning English as a foreign language. To date, I have sold 80,000 copies. That’s pretty good by any stretch of the imagination. Some new novels are lucky if they make their print run of 5,000.

Why is this book successful? Because the reader expects something different and that was what I gave them.

My short story is part of a series. Not just any old series but one of the bestselling series for EFL (English as a Foreign Language)—“Streamline,” published by Oxford University Press. It doesn’t look like a textbook; it looks like a comic book on LSD. Students and teachers expect something different when they buy this course.

That’s what they get. The book has a variety of stories, cartoons, color and jokes. It is very well researched and a good teaching book, but it is also slightly surreal, wacky and full of quirks. Kids love it and sometimes even forget that they are learning English at school and just start having a good time.

In this series, kids and teachers want something unexpected. That’s what I gave them. And that worked. I used my outsider qualities to make this book work.

This is how another outsider, Ron Shimony, whom we met in Chapter 1, satisfied his employer, Nextel’s needs.

“I vowed to work hard on myself and stop worrying about what everyone else thought…  The month of January was coming to an end, and a thousand dollar commission bonus was on the line.  I had to produce total of fifty Nextel phone sales in addition to my quota in order to qualify for the bonus, and I was short twenty-six phones…

I got in my car and drove away to a customer’s location to seek new business…On the way there, my cell phone rang… “How soon can you meet my main in Naperville to set up my company with 27 phones?”

“It may be that my hard was paying off …”

“My momentum going into February was incredible.  The hard work I invested in generating referrals started to pay off. I made sure always to ask for referrals started to pay off.  In March, an amazing thing happened: I broke the company’s sales record for the month.”

Ron Shimony, Speaker and Author, Schaumberg, IL
In Ron’s case his hard work, his faith in himself and something larger paid off.  Simply he stopped letting being an outsider get in the way and worked hard on making the insiders happy. And it worked!

So how would applying these four strategies work?  Here is an example.

A friend of mine is a coach. She works with a school to help its teachers. She is a outsider because she is not a teacher and she does not have the same background as the members. She is a professional coach trained to help people develop their career potential.

She found this niche and has been very successful. Instead of competing against other coaches for business clients she has her own private market.

Personal Brand Strategies Example

How did she use the four personal brand strategies?

Strategy 1. Market your unique outsider attributes that are scarce.

In a school there is often very little discussion of career goals. The teachers are just too busy to spend time on future goals.

Strategy 2. Bring a different twist to something old.

Experienced teachers when they have time will often spend time helping less experienced colleagues. An in house coach is an extension of something that has already worked before but it is different. The in house coach has time, can be consistent, and can work with everyone not selected people.

Strategy 3. Create something as unique as you are.

Coaches in the business world are commonplace. In a school this is less common and maybe even unique.

Strategy 4. Satisfy a customer, client, or employer’s desire.

This factor does not apply here. If the coach worked in an advertising agency then the coach might have to do lots of creative games, simulations and visual activities. That audience expects something different from regular coaching.