REFLECTION AND PERSONAL BRANDING (2)

REFLECTION AND PERSONAL BRANDING

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TOC o “1-3” h z u Executive Summary PAGEREF _Toc42318719 h 31.0 REFLECTION AND PERSONAL BRANDING PAGEREF _Toc42318720 h 41.1 My Personality Evaluation PAGEREF _Toc42318721 h 41.2 Personal Brand Development and Presentation PAGEREF _Toc42318722 h 91.3 Strategic Tools Application to My Brand PAGEREF _Toc42318723 h 102.0 Conclusion PAGEREF _Toc42318724 h 14References PAGEREF _Toc42318725 h 16

Executive SummaryThis paper will be providing a self-reflection analysis using marketing management tools mastered during the Marketing for Managers Course. Through self-analysis, I gained an understood of tracking personal brand growth with the use of marketing tools. Such tools are SWOT and TWOS analysis, anchor points, SMART goals action plan, perceptual mapping, and action timeline. The paper also describes examples and essential insights to enable me to reinforce my brand reasoning.

1.0 REFLECTION AND PERSONAL BRANDINGThis paper will be describing my personality evaluation, personal brand development and presentation, and strategic tools application to my brand and career prospects.

1.1 My Personality EvaluationTowards the end of last year, I was lucky to be selected by our school administration to attend to The Brand Marketing Summit in Sydney, Australia. The specific things that were discussed in the summit were customer insights, personal branding, social media marketing, and content marketing. During the conference, several sessions were lined up with the speakers being professionals in marketing management. The speaker for personal branding talked about the practical skills needed for building a personal brand to better market oneself both nationally and globally. The conference provided me more significant insights when it comes to personal branding. That is personal branding cohesiveness, clarity, consistency, and having aims of serving specific customers in the market are crucial in building a strong personal brand. That personal branding is the process of building and maintaining impression and reputation in the market among customers. How your customers view you in terms of your offerings will make your brand in the market. Building a personal brand needs one’s ability to create content and make stories about your market offerings. Providing content and storytelling to customers, market analysts, and marketing professionals is what has always been an uphill task for me since I’m not a person of content and storytelling. It made me worry about my career in marketing management, and I would always ask myself when I will be able to build my brand. I’m a person who likes describing something briefly as well as I need brief replies. That if someone asks me about what business I’m doing in town, I will just reply to them that I’m selling groceries in the downtown store, and that’s all. But when it comes to building a personal brand, that is not the best way to reply. When it is about marketing my brand, I’m supposed to go further and tell stories or provide additional content about what business I’m doing in town. By replying that I’m selling fresh and free delivery groceries in the downtown store, customers can make online orders over my company website or social media platforms.

Have you noticed any differences between the two replies? Yes. The second reply will without a doubt market or build your brand, but the first one won’t at all. It consumes a lot of time. Right? Yes, it wastes time telling stories, but it is worth it because it is the only way of building your brand and marketing yourself better. That proved to be a challenge to me, but I promised myself I have to do it to develop and market my brand better. The speaker also talked about anchor points that make them who they are and what they stand for, for example, having flexible and enough time with their family tells more about who they are, and that is all about personal brand.

The first and foremost thing after the conference was to identify what my passions are and what is all about them. Secondly, with those passions, I possess how I can anchor them to resonate with my personality, and then lastly, how will I convey them to the public or a given market segment in a better manner. My past experiences provided me a glimpse of my passions and strengths. I realized that I have a strong passion for online marketing. My strength was that I was able to communicate clearly and socialize well with the customers through my social media platforms. I was able to sell more groceries to customers over the internet. Knowing my passions is not enough to build my brand, I had to find ways of including my past experiences and strengths to my brand. However, it was difficult for me to do so, but I had to make it happen. I had to create my SWOT analysis as well as TOWS analysis to analyze my brand better. According to Saldanha (2019), to better understand your personality and skills you possess, your SWOT and TOWS analysis comes in handy, and I did that precisely.

My SWOT analysis is provided next.

Table 1. SWOT Analysis.

Strength

Excellent communication skills

Extensive experience in online marketing

About to complete my MBA course

I’m persuasive

Strong analytic skills

Moderate easy going person

Team player

Superior know-how in marketing graphic design

Good decision-maker

I’m a committed and motivated person.

Weakness

Cannot work under pressure

Paranoid sometimes

Low agility to change

Insufficient funds to achieve my needs

Too much sympathetic person

Procrastination

Opportunities

A close and good relationship with the public

Competitive advantage

Widen my professional network

Grow and develop marketing management skills

Desire to learn technological innovation tools

Welcoming feedback from customers

Marketing data analysis skills

Threats

Not able to balance home and work

Discriminative in customer treatment

Over-analyser which can make me deviate from the real facts

Slow in keeping up with market changes

After completing my SWOT analysis, I had to carry out a TOWS analysis to help me identify and describe the strengths-opportunities, strengths-threats, weaknesses-opportunities, and weaknesses-threats.

My TOWS analysis is provided next.

Table 2. TOWS Analysis.

Strengths

Excellent communication skills

Extensive experience in online marketing

About to complete my MBA course

I’m persuasive

Strong analytic skills

Moderate easy going person

Team player

Superior know-how in marketing graphic design

Good decision-maker

I’m a committed and motivated person Weakness

Cannot work under pressure

Paranoid sometimes

Low agility to change

Insufficient funds to achieve my needs

Too much sympathetic person in the workplace

Procrastination

Opportunities

A close and good relationship with the public

Competitive advantage

Widen my professional network

Grow and develop marketing management skills

Desire to learn technological innovation tools

Welcoming feedback from customers

Marketing data analysis skills SO strategies

Make use of extensive online marketing experience to gain a competitive advantage.

Use competencies and skills earned from MBA to widen professional networks.

Use excellent communication skills to receive and reply to customers’ feedbacks.

Use analytical skills in offering marketing data analytic consultancy. WO strategies

Seek financial assistance from my professional contacts.

Keeping myself close to those persons with rich content to grow personally and professionally.

Develop a plan to avoid procrastination and seek professional guidance from mentors.

Grow and develop marketing management skills to avoid being paranoid.

Threats

Not able to balance home and work

Discriminative in customer treatment

Over-analyser which can make me deviate from the real facts

Slow in keeping up with market changes ST strategies

Seek professional guidance on how to balance home and work as well as stay motivated in my work.

Learn how to treat customers fairly and be useful to all through my MBA course.

Learn how to carry out better analysis through industry professionals.

Attend more conferences and enroll in refresher courses to increase my online marketing skills. WT strategies

Learn how to be less sympathetic in the workplace and embrace accountability.

Agree that with time, agility to change will increase.

Learn how to keep up with new technologies through industry professionals’ advice.

Be more assertive in the workplace.

1.2 Personal Brand Development and Presentation

After conducting my personality evaluation together with analysis of SWOT and TOWS, I now have identified anchor points that can build and sell my brand that is shaping my brand. Those points can show what I stand for and who I include family, community building, leadership, marketing, and business development. In this case, leadership stands in for both organizational and self-leadership that demonstrate my personality, professional (marketing) values, and my family. Having a good time and being flexible to my family, especially my kids, tell me much about my personality. In the case of community building or voluntary activities such as community clean up exercise, tree planting, and various community or optional action plans will show my brand. In the case of marketing and business development, it entails upholding professional values to sell my brand.

Having identified my anchor points that shape my brand, I had to rework my professional goals to develop a better personal brand. I will provide more details in table 3, figure 1, and table 4. My first step in reworking my professional goals was to amend my Twitter page. Amending my Twitter page will help me put my current anchor points to my Twitter page. It will help me expand my professional network since other professionals will be attracted to my new well-updated Twitter page. It will also save time as I will stay focused on pursuing my passions.

1.3 Strategic Tools Application to My Brand

According to Saldanah (2019), to define a personal brand, the SMART goals action plan helps achieve both existing and future professional objectives. A perceptual mapping and action timeline will further reinforce my SMART goals action plan.

Table 3. SMART Goals Action Plan.

Timeline Goals Complete (Yes/No)

Short-term (0-1 year) Finish my Graduate Certificate in Business Administration

Rebrand and acquire more customers for my brand (Tulsa Downtown Groceries)

Come up with subsidiary online marketing business

Increase my professional network

Carry out volunteer activities in my township

Find out business development chances in my workplace

Expound my knowledge in leadership and management

Kick-off a financial investment Medium-term (1-3 years) Done with my MBA

At least gather marketing management experience in the industry

Have a mentor who will gear me towards professional excellence

Have a visit to developing countries’ and conduct community-building activities

Invest my more finance through buying shares Long-term (3-5 years) Reduce work commitments and focusing on my family

Employed as a business developer in a prominent company

Initiate at least three non-profit business initiatives that can build a community

At this stage should have at least ten years of professional experience

Be an expert consultant in the field of online marketing

Extend my community development trips to 7 months in developing countries

Continue buying shares from companies as part of my financial investment

Offer mentor services to MBA and marketing management students According to Saldanha (2019), to visually display current, short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals basing on your SMART goals action plan, use of a perceptual mapping is crucial.

Perceptual Map is provided next.

-3333759525GREAT MARKETING PROFESSIONAL

SUCCESSFUL LEADER & MANAGER

UNSUCCESSFUL MANAGER

POOR MARKETING PROFESSIONAL

MID-TERM (1-3 YEARS)

CURRENT

SHORT-TERM (0-1 YEAR)

LONG-TERM (3-5 YEARS)

GREAT MARKETING PROFESSIONAL

SUCCESSFUL LEADER & MANAGER

UNSUCCESSFUL MANAGER

POOR MARKETING PROFESSIONAL

MID-TERM (1-3 YEARS)

CURRENT

SHORT-TERM (0-1 YEAR)

LONG-TERM (3-5 YEARS)

Figure 1. Perceptual Map (GroupMap, 2020).

According to Saldanha (2019), the Y and X-axis show fundamental anchor points: marketing and leadership/management.

Having done perceptual mapping, I created an action timeline table to better track my SMART goals action plan. The action timeline visually shows and tracks my professional goals to ensure they are on track.

Table 4. Action Timeline.

Quarter Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 Q19 Q20

Short-term (0-1 Year) Medium-term (1-3 years) Long-term (3-5 years) According to Academy (2020), timeline color elements can be modified when strategic goals described in the SMART goals action plan are not achieved.

2.0 Conclusion

Having provided a careful and thoughtful self-reflection, having conducted personal analysis by SWOT and TOWS analysis, and having mentioned my anchor points that shape my brand, I feel now I can work towards my career objectives professionally. Additionally, the reflective essay has provided me insights on how to map out both current, short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals action plan. Through this paper, I have known my opportunities and possible future threats that can jeopardize my brand.

ReferencesAcademy, P. (2020) Marketing Theories – PESTEL Analysis, Professionalacademy.com. Available at: https://www.professionalacademy.com/blogs-and-advice/marketing-theories—pestel-analysis (Accessed: 5 June 2020).

Perceptual Map, Perceptual Map Template – GroupMap (2020). Available at: https://www.groupmap.com/map-templates/perceptual-map/ (Accessed: 5 June 2020).

Saldanha, T. (2019). Week 4 – BUSM1534.