Pavel Kostyukov on his personal brand
Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2025 10:57 am
Pavel Kostyukov, head of the Simtu agency and founder of the T5 business club, talks about brand values for employees and clients, and what you shouldn't post on your personal blog. The article will be useful for business owners who are engaged in marketing on their own and are thinking about building a personal brand.
Who are we building a personal brand for?
I used to carefully curate photos and posts that I really liked, but the clients who read my blog were, to put it mildly, surprised. My posts weren't marketing-related, they didn't fit with the clients' worldview, and they probably didn't like my team (though they hid it).
In business, there are two key target audiences for which marketing is built: employees and customers.
When you begin to create your personal image, clearly define your target audience: employees and/or clients.
Main focus: employees or clients?
The main audience can be determined by the type of outlook email database business. Clients are more important where the business is not done by a team, but by a built system - a large online store of headphones or Yandex Taxi. In such companies, the brand is built for clients.
But the owner of a small company generating leads from Avito is better off writing for employees, because the most important thing in such a business is the team.
If you understand that you value your team first and foremost, and love your clients a little less, then write for your employees. Be careful. One of my students, the owner of a management accounting firm, liked to publish posts about his vacation in Italy or Paris. His creative side enjoyed writing such posts.
Was it interesting for the employees to read his blog, and what was going through the team's heads? At the very least, envy: "Not only is this scoundrel in Paris, while I'm setting up management accounting in a stuffy office, but he's also demanding some figures from me!"
Was it interesting for clients who subscribed to the blog of the owner of a management accounting firm to read about how he took his mother to the Moulin Rouge?
Or the owner of a construction company comes into a house and starts filming a video report: "Look! I did some renovation work on a complex site." How he looks in the eyes of foreman Ivan Fedorovich: "You're a gramophone! I saw you on the only site out of a hundred when I came to post my work on Telegram!"
What is the right thing for the owner to do? Come to the same house and say: "Friends, today I am at the site of one of our best foremen, Ivan Fedorovich has been with our company for seven years. Let's see what he did today."
What does Ivan Fedorovich see? He appreciated that the owner knows him by name and patronymic and how many years he has given to the company. And the foreman's emotions are already different: "A father-commander, not a smug boor!"
Another case: "Our company has existed for 170 years, we are among the top 4 window systems companies in Russia. The founder Ivan Ivanov personally monitors the quality of each window."
The client sees in this message self-admiration – he is not interested in how long the company has been in existence – and untruth – it is unlikely that the owner from the top 4 will personally examine each glass unit.
In exactly the same way, the client doesn't care how many years the hotel has been operating in Thailand, and whether it is in the top 4 of the local hotel market. The client is interested in a family resort without drugs and screaming after sunset.
You can write: "In our hotel, unlike others, they don't swear or fornicate." There's a catch - we don't consciously perceive the particle "not" and still read: "In our hotel they swear and fornicate." This is how you should write: "In our hotel "Family Hearth" they express themselves culturally and family people stay."
Who are we building a personal brand for?
I used to carefully curate photos and posts that I really liked, but the clients who read my blog were, to put it mildly, surprised. My posts weren't marketing-related, they didn't fit with the clients' worldview, and they probably didn't like my team (though they hid it).
In business, there are two key target audiences for which marketing is built: employees and customers.
When you begin to create your personal image, clearly define your target audience: employees and/or clients.
Main focus: employees or clients?
The main audience can be determined by the type of outlook email database business. Clients are more important where the business is not done by a team, but by a built system - a large online store of headphones or Yandex Taxi. In such companies, the brand is built for clients.
But the owner of a small company generating leads from Avito is better off writing for employees, because the most important thing in such a business is the team.
If you understand that you value your team first and foremost, and love your clients a little less, then write for your employees. Be careful. One of my students, the owner of a management accounting firm, liked to publish posts about his vacation in Italy or Paris. His creative side enjoyed writing such posts.
Was it interesting for the employees to read his blog, and what was going through the team's heads? At the very least, envy: "Not only is this scoundrel in Paris, while I'm setting up management accounting in a stuffy office, but he's also demanding some figures from me!"
Was it interesting for clients who subscribed to the blog of the owner of a management accounting firm to read about how he took his mother to the Moulin Rouge?
Or the owner of a construction company comes into a house and starts filming a video report: "Look! I did some renovation work on a complex site." How he looks in the eyes of foreman Ivan Fedorovich: "You're a gramophone! I saw you on the only site out of a hundred when I came to post my work on Telegram!"
What is the right thing for the owner to do? Come to the same house and say: "Friends, today I am at the site of one of our best foremen, Ivan Fedorovich has been with our company for seven years. Let's see what he did today."
What does Ivan Fedorovich see? He appreciated that the owner knows him by name and patronymic and how many years he has given to the company. And the foreman's emotions are already different: "A father-commander, not a smug boor!"
Another case: "Our company has existed for 170 years, we are among the top 4 window systems companies in Russia. The founder Ivan Ivanov personally monitors the quality of each window."
The client sees in this message self-admiration – he is not interested in how long the company has been in existence – and untruth – it is unlikely that the owner from the top 4 will personally examine each glass unit.
In exactly the same way, the client doesn't care how many years the hotel has been operating in Thailand, and whether it is in the top 4 of the local hotel market. The client is interested in a family resort without drugs and screaming after sunset.
You can write: "In our hotel, unlike others, they don't swear or fornicate." There's a catch - we don't consciously perceive the particle "not" and still read: "In our hotel they swear and fornicate." This is how you should write: "In our hotel "Family Hearth" they express themselves culturally and family people stay."