Self-Branding
In concluding the major points of customization marketing with my last blog, I intend to try to acknowledge key questions brought up in the article “Putting, one-to-one marketing to work: Personalization, customization, and choice.”
How does consumer acceptance of product customization perpetuate one-to-one marketing methods? Which elements of the marketing mix should be personalized or customized? Can personalization or customization be a source of competitive advantage? How can the marketing mix of one-to-one marketing serve as a catalyst to businesses developing their own self-branding techniques?
Elements of the marketing mix that should be personalized and or customized are ultimately based on the consumer role and their perception of the desirability of the product. The ability to predict customer choices accurately could be sustainable and lead to a long-term to a long-term advantage in personalization. A variety of economic forces could draw firms into a consumer dilemma, in customization if the critical features of a product become customizable cheaply, and if consumers are capable of defining their needs. Maybe there is a way firms could differentiate themselves in their expertise in their expertise in various aspects of the customer choice process, such as information processing or alternative evaluation, which could lead to sustainable advantages and higher industry profits. Personalization and customization could expand a company’s reach and hone into the creation of personalized self-branding. What is the difference between Business-to-Business marketing in comparison to consumer marketing? What is self-branding and how does it fit into PR 2.0, Web 2.0, and the overall marketing realm?
According the book, Status Update, the term self-branding is primarily a series of marketing strategies applied to the individual. It is a set of practices and a mindset, a way of thinking about the self as salable and marketable commodity that can temp a potential employer and company. Self-branding, is also the strategic creation of an identity to be promoted and sold to others. Without social media technologies that make self-promotion available on a wide scale, self-branding wouldn’t exist or become easily accessible. Although self-branding can promote authenticity and business-targeted self-presentation, some academics healthily argue that practitioners remake themselves as products to be sold to large corporations, that rely on an imaginary sense of what employers might want, and that they sully personal feelings and relationships with market forces.
Professionals in the tech field counter argue that self-branding should not go un criticized and needs to be critically analyzed on both an individual and community based level. The analysis should include how the social becomes economic, and the benefits from that. How should people describe the fantasy of personal branding, and how does market-centered practices fulfill, encourage, or neglect self-branders’ needs. In Web 2.0 culture, self-branders that provide models for social media success and building businesses, is very important. Web 2.0 and self-branders’ are highly connected, emphasizing the importance of social media marketing using their proficiency with social media platforms like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Web 2.0 offers the Internet platform have made it possible for people to apply sophisticated branding strategies used by modern companies to themselves, and social media in particular has allowed individuals with internet access to broadcast to the world in an affordable way. Self-branding have attained and garnered a wide reach within the technology industry. Because websites are affordable and easily accessible in comparison to the television and paper advertisements which can be extremely expensive, self-branders’ benefit from the opportunity to participate more effectively in an attention grabbing society by social media marketing.
As self-branding expert Dan Schawbel states, “As more people tune into media online, you have more of an opportunity to broadcast your brand and command exposure for your personal niche. That is not to say that if you appear on TV, the radio, or in print magazines, your brand wont gain expensive options are out of reach for most personal brands. The internet, by far the cheapest medium you can use to build an audience, is leveling the playing field.”
Web 2.0 participators are well aware of the significance of global technology brands, used Internet technology to align themselves into brands with the same potential significance as those produced by corporations. People in technology and self-branding consulting both use multiple social media accounts, the distribution of content using the Internet and the promotion of this content using social media. The Internet makes it possible to expand and spread personal information on a greatly scale than in the past. Before Internet, the self-brander was forced and limited to buying advertisements in the local paper, or flyers, and attending industry-only events. Within the self-branding ideology, success involves the actions of others, highlighting status through visibility and attention. Visibility and the presence of a network that make self-branding seem possible.
The use of social media to create a branded-self and the opportunity to promote that created identity to businesses by using Business-to-Business Marketing method is an example of enterprise self-regulation, or a technology of subjectivity. Given that the Web 2.0 ideology advocates self-branding as a way to find personal fulfillment and economic success. Self-branding helps maintain a business-friendly self-presentation while establishing an authentic self. Although self-branding is an effective technique for marketing purposes, it is a practical technique and is limited, which only serves for a specific percentage of the population.