How To Build Your Personal Brand and Generate Leads

"People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it" - Simon Sinek

"And they buy from people they like" - Angelina Marie Hilton

My name is Angelina Marie and I’m a mother, a wife, an advocator, an ambassador, a project manager and a worship leader. Currently at HubShout, I’m the Marketing and Team Development Leader.

I’m here because I believe we have a responsibility to help each other and share our knowledge and experience. I’m by no means the best at personal branding, but I’ve been given this opportunity to help other like-minded people by sharing my experiences with it. It’s a position of vulnerability I’m taking, but if I can help just one of you, inspire you, or help improve some area of your life, I know that I have been successful in the purpose of this webinar. I have a desire to light a fire today! And I truly hope that you’re able to acquire some relevant applications that you can take away.

In order for you to trust that I’m qualified to talk about generating leads by building your personal brand, I believe it’s important for you to understand how I got here.  

Throughout high school, I was an overachiever. I was a cheerleader, a basketball player, and a softball player. I participated in several clubs and held a position as a leader. I had a natural desire to be center of attention. At the time I didn’t know that my involvement would bring me in this direction.

I graduated and set out on the open road for the west coast. I grew up in a small town where everyone knew everyone and I didn’t want to stick around. It was freedom that I desired most. Freedom to travel, freedom to learn, freedom to grow. I moved out when I was 17 thinking I knew everything, but grew to know that I knew nothing.

When you’re by yourself in a big city, it becomes easy to fall into a pool of self-pity. I once had a roommate who got real with me and said straight up to “drop your negativity”. I thought to myself, dang, is that really how people see me?

Personal branding is the combination of how others see you and how you see yourself.

The last thing I wanted was an association with frustration, depression, or any negative connotation.

Her words helped transform my life and brought out self-awareness. I decided to forget the strife and bring out the audaciousness.

So I made a commitment to stay consistent and set out to make a change. I wanted people to remember my name and call on me when they were in need.

I changed my attitude and surrounded myself with people who inspired me and could help me grow. Any baggage that was weighing me down, I had to let it go.

I gave college my all. I got involved in clubs on campus, networking events throughout the city, and participated in an invitation only competition. I even was recognized as one of the most promising minorities in the nation.

After graduating, I moved back to New York and worked as an Account Executive at a local media company. I exceeded goals which I can attribute to my commitment to consistency. At a prime time in my lifetime, I was driven by making money.

I desired to be the center of attention and didn’t care what people said or thought about me.

In fact, I let my haters be my motivators. If it was publicity, I wanted it, so how I acquired it, didn’t really matter to me. I kept hitting goals, and did very little to help out anyone but me. I had a mission to bring my clients business and as a result, I would get an increase in commission. Nothing else mattered, but through all of that “success” there was still something missing.

My desire to travel and learn new things took me on a journey to the Philippines. The Philippines showed me a truth I had never seen.  The brutal reality was that I lived without humility, taking advantage and appreciating things that didn’t really mean anything. I saw extreme poverty, yet those who literally had nothing seemed to be the most happy. I volunteered with WE International which is an organization that strives to create effective and sustainable solutions for people affected by poverty and injustice in developing countries around the world. I also worked on expanding my knowledge in mobile marketing. I knew when I got back to the states I wanted to do more with advocating and communicate with people in ways that they could relate. This was a pivotal time in my life when I decided to take my future in my own hands and to motivate and educate others to make a positive difference in their life as well as in the lives of others and from that came Educate, Enlighten, Empower.

I started on another road of transformation. Instead of striving to please me, all I wanted to do was serve others. Knowing I helped someone live or feel better was what made me happy.

I came back to the states with a changed attitude and a different point of view. I took jobs that allowed me flexibility to travel more, and live humbly. I was penniless, yet happy, briefly.

The next couple years threw me a hard curveball, with down times where I thought I wanted to end it all. I went through heartbreak and heartache, questioning if my past decisions were worth it all. I also had family diagnosed with cancer and feared of losing people I love. I had little to no faith for the Man above. I recognized this feeling from years before but knew I didn’t want to be that person anymore. So I picked myself up and changed my attitude once more. I realized that no matter who you are, or how hurt you are, you’re not that far from getting back on track. I started exercising, going to church and volunteering. Getting involved with the community helped bring about new opportunity. During the last few years, I have become increasingly involved with the American Cancer Society and more recently began teaching at the Rochester Brainery.

My experience in marketing and my passion for helping people has become my brand foundation while I am still continuously learning and going through a transformation.

So here I am now, super thrilled to share some insight into what has worked for me. Again, I believe helping each other is our core responsibility. I hope my backstory laid the foundation for some credibility. Let’s get started.

People want to invest in, work for and partner with professionals they know and trust.

To generate leads by building your personal brand, being a leader is crucial. Leadership is a timeless practice of guiding others in pursuit of some goal, destination or desired outcome. A leader has a vision. A good leader continually recites their vision and brings it in front of the community.  Leaders see a problem that needs to be fixed or a goal that needs to be achieved. Whether the goal is to double the company's annual sales, develop a product that will solve a certain problem, or start a company that can achieve the leader's dream, the leader always has a destination in mind. It is not enough to just have a vision. Many people see things that should be done, things that should be fixed, or are conscious of a great step forward that could be taken.

 

What makes leaders different is that they act. They take the steps needed to achieve their vision. Generating leads means leading by example. People will follow and listen to someone who is willing and patient enough to connect and engage with. It is a significant opportunity for you to listen as well. People will share their whole life story if you let them, and they will tell you exactly what they want and exactly what they need. If you stop pushing an agenda, and listen to what people are saying, they will tell you what direction they want to go in and how you can help build and grow with them. Generating leads isn’t the “real” goal. It is building relationships and establishing yourself as someone they can trust. Sales leads will invest more than money in you, they invest their time and energy too. Make it count.

PERSONAL BRANDING

Your personal brand is how the world sees you and how you see yourself. Your brand should be a reflection of who you are. Do you know what you believe? What you stand for? What your strengths and weaknesses are?

Our marketing team recently launched a superhero campaign where some of the employees came together and developed their alter ego into a superhero. We had to identify our strengths, weaknesses, and what our powers and abilities are. We also had to develop and origin story as well as share a story that we are most proud of at our company and what our role is in it. This really helped us take a good look at ourselves and figure out who we are and who we want to be and what made us this way. We essentially, created our own brand that we, as employees at HubShout, want people to identify with. We created a personal brand. Building a personal brand is first and foremost developing an understanding of your true self, and then sharing that with the world.

SOCIAL SELLING

Social networking takes up nearly a quarter of all time spent online and reaches more than 75 percent of all Internet users. If you’re engaging with your target audience on any level via social media, whether for business development or promoting your brand, that is social selling.

In the age of social media, leveraging a social professional network like Facebook or LinkedIn to drive your own sales leads is becoming increasingly important.

Utilizing social selling for lead generation enables you to find and connect with your potential sales leads, who are already on those social platforms, engaging with others and content.

According to HootSuite: Social selling generates 40% more qualified leads than cold calling. Social selling can be both online and offline. I will discuss how you can generate leads by using both.

FACEBOOK

Direct Leads: Direct leads are generated by sharing content that links directly back to a form on your website where visitors can share information in exchange for an offer -- whether that be an ebook, coupon, infographic, or any other piece of content. This form is housed on a landing page dedicated to that specific offer.

Indirect Leads: Indirect leads are generated by using Facebook on the path to conversion. For example, if you shared a blog post that had a call-to-action to a landing page at the bottom of the post, your initial Facebook share is helping direct visitors to that landing page.

When I worked at the Democrat and Chronicle, I was considered one of the top sales executives, consistently exceeding goals and even doubled my salary in commission. I specialized in selling newspaper and digital ad space to all restaurants, nightclubs, events, anything that fell under the entertainment category on the east side of the Genesee river, they worked with me. I made sure to connect with the business owners on Facebook and like their business pages. Since I was in outside sales, I was always on the go and everywhere I went, I would “Check in” on Foursquare. This was before Facebook had check in, so I would share my status update. People could see that I was all over the place, all the time and it drew attention. Because I worked with restaurant owners, I would make sure to dine there too and then leave a little note on social media. Not only did this generate buzz with people I was connected with (everyone is a food critic) it also showed their competitors who I was working with. You could say it was like “keeping up with the Joneses”. As my network grew on Facebook, it became a database for potential leads. If there was a discount going on for ad space, I would promote it. If there was a particular campaign we were running that I would feel appropriate for specific businesses, I’d call them out . At all times we ran on deadlines, and sometimes, we needed a last minute sale to fill the ad space gap, so since I couldn’t be in all places at once or get on 100 calls at one time, sharing the last minute ad space availability on Facebook was super helpful in closing a deal. During my time at the D&C, I was able to manage an average 50 active accounts monthly while building relationships for future opportunities. I generated over $500,000 in annual revenue and was named Top Sales Executive of the Quarter that awarded a $1000 bonus.

Currently, I use Facebook to generate awareness for the American Cancer Society and the Relay for Life of Greece NY where I currently sit as a tri-lead and my role is to “Fund the Mission”. Through Facebook, I have been able to raise funds, awareness and build teams. Last year I had over 15 team members and exceeded my fundraising goal by 300% and much of this success can be attributed to my network on Facebook and how I present myself and the cause.

Having a positive representation on social platforms is crucial. I would not recommend sharing negativity or complaining about things. Keep it clean. Facebook is very personal but even so, as an event lead and someone who uses the platform for branding and generating leads, I need to make sure I maintain a positive image. If someone is interacting with your posts, be sure to engage with them. Building your personal brand and generating leads from it requires engagement. You can also become part of groups or start your own, especially if you consider yourself an expert in your field.

This is also a great platform for creating and inviting people to events. Just last week, I volunteered to help a member at my church put together an event for a Mother’s Day Brunch that is a big event to help inspire women, build their faith and fellowship. There is a guest speaker with limited seating that costs $25. We are able to include links to registration pages and provide an open forum format within the event for anyone who wants to provide feedback. I then shared it with my network, and tagged every woman I knew that would either have interest or that I was connected with that attends our church.

According to Social Media and Sales Quota Report, 78% of salespeople use social media to outsell their peers. I am one of those salespeople. Another platform I am active on, but would like to continue to increase my activity because it helps with profile rankings, is LinkedIn.

LINKEDIN

LinkedIn is very special to me because it has connected me with people who have had a significant impact on both my personal and professional life. This is where I met Jillian Ference. In 2013, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. I was freelancing and waitressing and looking for different work opportunities. I was skimming through LinkedIn and saw a post that was looking for volunteers with The American Cancer Society. So being that I wasn’t working too much and that my mother had just been diagnosed with cancer, and the fact that I had never experienced something like this so close to my heart, I reached out. I met Jillian through LinkedIn and at the time, Jillian was a co-lead for the Relay for Life event in Greece. She invited me to the first committee meeting of the season to learn more about the event and what the volunteer position would be. There was a spot available for marketing and since marketing fell into my background, I jumped on board. I was introduced to many other people affected by cancer, worked in marketing, and since advocating and promotions were essential to fundraising and building awareness for the ACS and what they offer the community, I began to travel to meet with people from all over the state and New Jersey as an ambassador. This includes meeting with state legislators with several trips to Albany. LinkedIn introduced me to Jill, and Jill introduced me to The American Cancer Society.

In January, I started working more in marketing at HubShout and one activity we do on a weekly basis is track our marketing metrics. This includes metrics like organic visits to site, followers on social media, leads, and so much more. I thought it would be fun to track metrics on LinkedIn so I initially started tracking my connections and updates. LinkedIn provides analytics so you can see where you are ranking for profile views among your connections and the activities you are doing on a weekly basis. My metrics tracking expanded to

• Updates
• Emails Sent
• Pulse Posts
• New Connections
• Total Connections
• Total Followers
• Profile Views
• Liked Updates
• Endorsed Other People
• New Recommendations
• Posted Group Topics
• Joined Groups
• Ranking % Among Connections
• Ranking % Among Co-Workers

When I first took a look at where I ranked for profile views, I was in the 30th percentile. As I started becoming more active such as providing recommendations, sending out emails to those I connect with, endorsing people, writing pulse posts, engaging in conversations in groups, adding updates, sharing and liking updates, my ranking increased. I set a goal to get into the top 5% without paying for premium service, and in a period of just a few months, I achieved that goal. I didn’t stay there for long because like SEO, if you are not consistently adding fresh content or staying active on the web, your rankings will drop. At the moment, I am tracking what I am participating in to see what has a greater impact on rankings. My connections have increased and so have my followers. Connections are two-way relationships of trust between people who know each other. If you're connected to someone, you're following them and they're following you by default.

Following allows you to read - right on your homepage - what members are sharing publicly on LinkedIn, including content that they've created such as long-form posts. You can follow someone without being connected to them. I have more followers than connections which tells me that people want to know what I have to say on LinkedIn.

Here are some tips to help grow your LinkedIn network, establish your credibility, and generate leads.

Sales tip #1: Create an effective executive profile

1. Tell your professional story to attract opportunities
2. Build and nurture your networks to unlock future opportunities
3. Stay informed on news relevant to your professional world, and gain the skills to stay ahead in your career

Customize your LinkedIn experience by:

• Uploading a professional photo: You are 11 times more likely to have your LinkedIn profile viewed if you have a picture.
• Writing a compelling headline: Add your job title, current company and a tagline about how you help customers.
• Adding a summary: Your summary in essence is the ‘story of you.’ Share the vision you have for your role or company.
• Adding rich media like videos and presentations: You’ll maximize your exposure on LinkedIn and better showcase your story.

Sales tip #2: Efficiently connect with the people that matter

LinkedIn isn’t intended to replace face-to-face interactions, instead, it optimizes your ability to know more about people you’ve met or about to meet. Also, inviting people to connect is a great way to follow up on an in-person meeting.

Sales tip #3: Leverage your mutual connections

People are five times more likely to engage with you if the outreach is through a mutual connection. See who within your network is connected to your 2nd or 3rd degree connections and request an introduction.

Sales tip #4: Find your top tier customers

Sales is about people, but nurturing relationships takes time. LinkedIn allows you to find your customers by searching by name, company, or position so you can easily connect and establish better relationships.

Sales tip #5: Follow your customers’ activity in real-time

If you are connected with your customers, their public activity will appear in your newsfeed. Keep tabs on your contacts’ interests and updates so you can remain top of mind and provide them necessary information.

Sales tip #6 Listen to conversations and debate

Joining and following Group discussions in your industry is an excellent way to gain customer insights about needs, interests and more.

Sales tip #7 Use LinkedIn Pulse to stay on top of industry trends

curates content in real-time based on your interests and the companies and influencers you follow. Share and comment on these articles to demonstrate your insights.

Sales tip #8 Reach people directly and more credibly with InMail

Effective sales prospecting requires communicating in a way that gets noticed. Identify something personal about the person that you can reference in the message. Then send a follow up InMail 1-2 weeks after the original - it increases the response rate by 500%.

Sales tip #9 Engage with your customers

Today there’s over 1.5 million unique publishers actively sharing content on LinkedIn. You can become a voice in your industry by sharing relevant blog posts, insights and industry news.

Sales tip #10 Publish content

Leverage LinkedIn’s Publishing Platform to share long-form posts with your network and beyond. When you publish a post on LinkedIn, your content becomes part of your profile and is shared with everyone, even those outside of your network. It’s a great medium to generate leads while positioning yourself as an expert in your field. These posts are also searchable on Google. The post should have a solid headline, attention grabbing, and keep SEO in mind.

A good idea is to state a problem your clients can relate to. Start your content with a question or a problem to draw your readers in. At HubShout, when we create onsite content, we start with 300 words, so I would recommend your post be at least 300 words too. It should be engaging and provide a solution to the problem you stated. At the end, ask your readers a question about the content, encourage them to comment and share. Make sure you always include a call to action, whether it be to invite back for more, request to connect, link to join your email list, etc. Include high resolution images and video. This helps keep visitors on the page longer. Also, include tags that best describe your content to make it easier for others to find your article when searching for topics.

Once posted and published, always return to your post and create a conversation with the people who engaged with your content. These are people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say, and may be potential leads so don’t miss out on the opportunity to build a relationship with them.

LinkedIn enables sales lead generation success by allowing sales professionals to easily and quickly find the right prospects.

You can use LinkedIn's advanced search and filtering system to quickly identify influencers and decision makers and save them as leads to create high quality lead lists.

Network

Surround yourself with people who inspire you and will help you to grow. There is a saying “birds of a feather flock together”. You can also find a mentor, someone who you  can trust and believes in you. Someone who has knowledge or experience to help you grow, someone who inspires you to do and be better. Over the years I have surrounded myself with some amazing people, and I’m hoping some of you are listening in today!

Alex Gombos and Zharie Mejia, these two have such a drive and passion for life and love that it inspires me to want to give more of myself.

I had many professors that were mentors, but to name a couple, Donna DiGioia, she saw potential in me that I didn’t recognize and she helped bring it out, and Henry Hikima, he taught me to understand that anything we do, there should be reason or a why for it. He also helped stretch my creativity past the limits I thought I had.

Ashley Krenzer, she taught me what a solid partnership should be. We worked side by side together my first job out of college, and I can confidently say that we were a dream team.

Jillian Ference, Sadie Szarma, Emily Kellas, Laura Elia, Kristine Trapani, among many other great individuals I volunteer with, these ladies are motivated and dedicated to saving lives and improving the quality of life for others. They not only volunteer for their causes, but work for them too, making it a daily mission.

My pastors, Ryan Intercinola and David Domina. Their stage presence is captivating. Not only do they provide messages that are relative to what people may be going through, they do so with poise and enthusiasm. I aspire to one day be able to get in front of hundreds, if not thousands of people and be able to captivate the audience in the way they do.

My mother, she doesn’t ever give up. She has gone through some tumultuous times, and we all know that life can beat you down, but she never ever gave up, and her attitude has always remained positive.  She inspires me to do the same.

My husband, he is so forward thinking, and challenges me to do more and be more yet provides encouragement by not only challenging me, but walking beside me to challenge himself.

God, I believe that everything will work out the way it is supposed to because that is his plan. And I have faith that it will, so with risks, I’m happy to take them, because I know that in the end, He only wants what is best for me.

Every person in this room today, all of my co-workers, I got to tell you, the drive and passion in this business is by far the most exciting and exhuberating I have ever experienced. When people talk about collaboration, I think about the members of this team and how hard each one works independently and with each other. We hold each other accountable, and we listen to each other. We believe in each other and that each one of us has something special to offer one another.  

The right people for you are every where, you just have to get out there. You can do this by attending church functions, professional networking groups, webinars, seminars, workshops, just to name a few.

I encourage you to attend networking events as much as possible. Bring your cellphone and encourage people to connect with you on LinkedIn. If you prefer business card, consider this, according to Statistic Brain, 88% of business cards handed out will be thrown away in less than a week. If you have a website, encourage your new connection to take a look while you are chatting. Get as engaged as possible and you can even encourage swapping contact information right there. Be sure to follow up after the event and remind them who you are, maybe something you talked about that caused a laugh or a good story.

You can attend BNI’s, go online and look up Meetup groups, locally, we have a group called Rochester Young Professionals that puts together networking events so I make sure to follow them on Facebook and subscribe to their emails

With over 190,000 members in 7,300 plus chapters worldwide, BNI? is the largest business networking organization in the world. In 2015 alone, BNI? members generated millions of referrals resulting in over $9.3 billion in closed business worldwide.

Community Involvement

Get involved in the community. Volunteer or sit on a committee or a board. Getting out in the community will help expand your network and a lot of times, there are down times, times when you can get to know who the other volunteers are. This will also help build relationships.

• Expands your network
• Expand and strengthen skillsets
• Try on new roles
• Fill in employment gaps
• Become a better coach/leader

 

Teach or Speak

Offer to teach or speak at an event or a class. Share your expertise with other professionals or aspiring professionals. This helps establish you as an industry expert and grow your credibility.

The world needs leaders. Leaders head families, coach teams, run businesses and mentor others. These leaders must not only accomplish, they must communicate.

• Establishes you as a thought leader in your industry
• Expands your network
• Reach a large audience
• Improves presentation skills
• Get to know the community

• Ask for feedback and offer to send out presentation in a follow up.

Public speaking

Whether done in person or via a webinar—is a great way of educating your audience, establishing your credibility, and generating a consistent stream of leads. If you don’t establish yourself as an expert, your competition will.

• Whether you speak for other groups, or create your own speaking opportunities, you can leverage the web and social media to greatly increase your visibility.
• Give a talk that educates the audience: Show them how your specific knowledge and expertise is invaluable, then you won’t have to sell. The right customer will want your product or service. The tip here, don’t sell, educate.
• “Approach your two partners with the idea that you’ll present a great topic, they offer it to their customers, and they get to cross promote to each other’s attendees as part of the deal. You simply get referred in as the expert.” - I have done this with the Rochester Brainery. The brainery provides space for experts to teach a class. I have taught a couple different ones and the brainery promotes on their network, I promote on my network, my colleagues and other connections promote on their networks, and then all of the sudden, I have a sold out class.
• Builds your database: Event attendees are there because they are interested in your topic. You can continue to be a resource to them by capturing their contact information. This also engages them in a sales funnel. I just tag teamed a class two weeks ago and it was sold out. What was really cool about it was that there were people who attended by learning about from the Brainery, but also several were from the previous class I taught. After each class, I make sure to follow up and connect on LinkedIn which helps take those relationships even further.

Make it easy to buy from you

While you’re educating your audience, you probably will reference your products and services. Many people attend events to find resources and want to act immediately when they discover something they need. You can seize these opportunities by being ready to take orders after the event or having additional staff in attendance who can help answer questions on the spot.

After the event, continue the momentum. Rather than reinventing your presentation for every event, think about how you might be able to reuse some of that valuable content in your integrated marketing efforts to promote yourself across multiple channels

Referrals

With people you have already worked with, ask for referrals. If you’re a business owner, offer a referral program. Let other’s do the networking for you.

Precision Targeting

"Have you ever tried using Google Adwords or Facebook Ads just to watch your money disappear, literally before your eyes? Many times this isn’t the fault of the platform, rather your targeting. A great marketing campaign involves two key components, a great message and laser targeting."

Referral and word-of-mouth marketing tend to be much more targeted because people tend to know their friends and social audiences pretty well. This allows your brand message to spread more effectively than with most other marketing channels.

Trust goes a long way when it comes to convincing someone to buy something. If we don't trust someone, we aren't going to listen to them. Consider the last time a salesperson you know is on commission tried to sell you something. You likely had doubts about his authenticity due to a lack of trust. With referral marketing though, the sales pitch is usually coming from someone that you either know well, like friends and family, or it's coming from someone you have trust in.

Time and time again, studies have shown that people almost always trust these people's opinions over generic advertisements and sales pitches carefully crafted by the brand themselves.

Key Takeaways

• Share your story

• Demonstrate your capabilities instead of just asking someone to believe in you.

• Fill out your LinkedIn profile as much as you can and keep it updated.

• Don’t sell, educate.

• Post Pulse posts and to groups on LinkedIn.

• Surround yourself with people who inspire you and you can grow from

• Personal branding is like SEO. Consistency over time builds credibility and gets you found!

• Even if you fall to the wayside, it is easy to jump back in again.

• Get involved in the community

• Attend networking events

• Teach or speak

• Continue to improve leadership and communication skills

• Believe in yourself!

Please provide any additional selling through building your personal brand in the comments section. Thank you and I appreciate your feedback!