Improving the effectiveness of information

In my first blog in this series, I explained the similarities between product branding and personal branding and how I learned that branding can help you promote your product and reach your goals. The first lesson was about using a goal-driven approach to branding. Lesson number 2 is about finding the right path between facts and suggestions when establishing your brand. Lesson 2: Stay close to the facts For a product marketer it is not very uncommon to introduce a product as the solution to everything. But once consumer reviews come back, a brand can easily be damaged if the product doesn’t meet with the expectations. The same is true for personal branding. If I promote myself as being an expert on java development and during my first project people find out that I have no clue what I am talking about, the value of my personal brand will drop immediately. On the other hand, branding is all about creating an image. An image that can be closer or further away from the cold f...

Personal Branding is a hot item these days and there are already various blogs and articles written on this topic. But where does is come from, how should we use it and why is it so important? To answer these questions I want to go back to one of my former roles, being the product marketer at a software company. It is there that I have learned how branding can help you promote your product and reach your goals. Although product branding and personal branding seem to be two completely different things, there are a lot of similarities in my opinion. My lessons learned: Define your goal Stay close to the facts Be clear about your motives Don’t wait until tomorrow Keep your brand intact Lesson 1: Define your goal All marketing activities – branding included – are goal-driven activities. For a product supplier branding is a tool out of the marketing toolbox, not a goal. The goal is to sell the product, or more specific: reach new audiences to sell the product to. With ...

The last three years I worked as a (senior) business consultant and information architect at software company Be Informed in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. We worked on an amazing product, a ground breaking model-driven business process platform. And my job was to explain the possibilities of this platform to various audiences. The Be Free program, which I launched in September 2013 was a marketing campaign that targeted on making a wider group of people familiar with the product. The campaign was a great success and I had the feeling that I was really helping people in proving their ideas to their customers and managers. But the interaction was on-line and from a distance, never close enough to really understand their business goals and issues.  The sudden end of my contract with Be Informed, forced me to rethink my professional goals and ambitions. What do I really want? Do I want to be a product marketer, focused on 'pushing' a product? Or do I want to be a business cons...