How to build a business plan for your personal brand

Your personal brand is a public impression you create for yourself within an industry, platform or broader culture. It can help turn your name into a wider long-term business model.

A traditional business plan suits a company that seeks sources of finance. That’s also true for your personal brand, to help pay for costs like marketing. Still, it’s also crucial to help you strategise and grow your influence further.

This guide discusses how to build a business plan for your personal brand, which includes:

• Executive summary
• Current position
• Market analysis
• Marketing plan
• Financial information

In the first stage of how to build a business plan for a personal brand is to introduce yourself. Describe your ambitions and what makes you stand out.

Lay out short, medium and long-term goals. If you aspire to be the biggest name in fashion design, that’s a great long-term goal. 

Short and medium ones help you take practical steps to achieve that. For example, a short term goal would be to increase your social media following by a thousand over three months.

Medium goal could be to get your name into a magazine within six months. It’s important to set goals you can measure, so you can check on your progress overtime.

As a personal brand, you’re the business and the product. So find your unique selling point (USP) to differentiate yourself from anyone else.

A successful brand is easily recognisable, so be someone people will remember. It doesn’t mean you need to dress or speak outrageously, but build value around yourself for others.

If you have the wisdom to share, encourage an audience to listen to what you say. That can be an opportunity for blogs, podcasts, videos, books and courses.

Angel investors or banks only give money to entrepreneurs they can trust, so it’s useful to be open about your current position. That will also help you find areas to improve and continue to thrive in.

To explore your position, conduct a SWOT analysis. It highlights strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Your strengths are the reasons you’re likely to succeed with your brand. For example, previous experience in social media could help introduce yourself to people through the platforms.

It’s vital to take an honest look at your weaknesses to improve in those areas. For example, if you lack skills in financial management, look for tools to make it easier, such as Countingup.

Countingup is a business account with built-in accounting software. You can manage your money on the go, through the simple-to-use app.

Look for new opportunities to progress your brand. For example, take advantage of virtual reality technology and create a webinar people can watch through headsets.

Find potential threats to help prepare for them. For example, an influencer could start to talk about similar topics to you, so build more authority on the subject through online courses.

Your brand must understand its market and find competitors like a company. So a significant step on how to build a business plan for your personal brand is a market analysis.

To build an insightful overview of the market you’ll operate in, carry out market research and take a look at what others do.

With market research, it’s key to look for information about who your audience could be. You can do that through surveys or interviews to ask questions about what the public think of your brand.

Find what people are interested in and how you can reach them. Think about the possible channels you can use and discover what their daily habits are.

Other sources of information about your market are through your competitors. These could include people with successful brands that they’ve built over time.

Here are some examples of individuals with powerful personal brands for inspiration:

• Steven Bartlett
• Courtney Elmer
• Tai Lopez
• Tony Robbins
• Gary Vaynerchuk

You can look at their websites, social media pages and content that they put out. In addition, note the people that follow them and use that to think about your potential audience.

The critical understanding you can use from your research should be your decision on who to target and how to reach them.

To create a personal brand, you’re reliant on people who engage with your message and contribute to your positive image. 

So an important section of how to build a business plan for your personal brand should define your target audience.

These are the groups of people most likely to interact with you and follow your career. Your research may find similarities between these, which can help you create a targeted approach for your marketing.

Without a plan for your marketing, you could struggle to gain traction and exposure to your brand. Choose which channels you can focus your attention on, with your audience and research in mind.

For example, if you think your brand will resonate with young adults, maybe use TikTok and Instagram.

Before getting a loan or investment, you should define the amount of money you need and list what you’ll do with it. To get an idea of how much activities will cost, you can research them. 

For example, you can ask for a quote from a marketing agency to find out how much a campaign would be.

Financial estimations help you plan and show your ability to pay back any money you borrow.

You can do that with a sales forecast that multiplies the number of customers you expect by your product or service price over a month, quarter or year. For example, predict sales of merchandise or memberships to an online course.

A business plan is an excellent start on your journey, but you must make the most of your money to build your brand.

Countingup is a great solution as a business account equipped with built-in accounting software. 

Its cash flow feature can offer you regular insights on everything you earn and spend, to ensure that nothing can get in the way of your growth.

Get started for free.