By Simone Brett-Murati

In recent years, growth in the toy industry has primarily come from online retail: customers now search, find and buy online. But the key issue is that people buy from people. Only potential customers who feel comfortable buying will actually buy. These days, this first impression is made online in most cases. But toys are interchangeable. How do retailers and manufacturers manage to hold onto their customers, even when the same products are often cheaper online and available elsewhere? By making use of personal branding as a new form of marketing, retailers and manufacturers can leave digital footprints with their name and build up an online reputation.

The talk on "Local personal branding – turning your name into a brand" by Simone Brett-Murati at the Toy Business Forum at the Spielwarenmesse on Sunday 5 February at 1 pm will show you how to do that in just three steps.

Step 1 – Choose your platform

The first step is all about choosing the right platform for you. Where can you most easily reach your core demographic? 

Retailers and manufacturers who wish to also target a business audience are best off choosing LinkedIn. For manufacturers with local production facilities, LinkedIn is perfect for positioning themselves to a wide audience of both private customers and media countrywide regarding the topic of "We manufacture regionally and preserve jobs". LinkedIn is also the right place for retailers and manufacturers wanting to find dedicated staff.   

Speciality retailers who wish to become better known regionally are best off using Instagram and TikTok. TikTok is currently the fastest-growing platform. Retailers can rapidly reach thousands of followers on this platform for free without any need to advertise. Both TikTok and Instagram are suitable for posting product-related and promotional content for private customers and their circles of friends, and for linking directly to a shop, for example.

Step 2 – What’s your branding story?

The branding story is essential for digital self-marketing. This means that the story you tell should stick in your customers’ minds. 

There are four reasons why customers buy from their preferred retailer – and price is not the decisive factor. Rather, it’s a matter of whether the expectation with which a customer enters the store is actually fulfilled. This presentation will explain how retailers recognize what their greatest strength is from the customer’s point of view and how they can make use of it online.

Step 3 – Personal branding content

The third step is bringing your personal brand to life with content. Neither on LinkedIn nor on Instagram and TikTok is it solely about products. In personal branding, the goal is to use storytelling to incorporate your own personality in the narrative.

Posts should, therefore, be published not only from company accounts but also from personal member accounts. For business owners, this means making formerly private accounts public for all members of the platform – as is common on LinkedIn, for example.

Tips from the expert:

• Go through your account in advance and delete any information or content that no longer fits the current you or any that seems too private. 
• The best and fastest way to reveal your personality is with short videos recorded on a smartphone. The best length for such videos is about 30 seconds.
• Instead of merely posting a picture of a new game on a Facebook store page as before, retailers now post a video of it, introducing it in their own words.  
• Not only does video content spread faster than image or text contributions, what is even more important is that the reactions are more emotional and more numerous – and that’s the direct route right into the hearts of customers.  
• If video isn’t yet your thing, you can use image and texts to tell your story. What story connects you, as a retailer, with a particular game? What stories does your staff have to tell? Those who advise customers in the store every day and then transfer their expertise to the digital world can give interchangeable products a face.

If you want to start building your own digital personal brand, you can learn a lot from professional brand communication. Download your free guide here.

Learn more about personal branding as well as sales marketing on LinkedIn. 

About the Author:

Simone Brett-Murati is the founder of the agency Eskimos mit Kühlschränken (“Eskimos with Refrigerators”) and an expert in digital sales marketing and personal branding for business leaders and entrepreneurs. She also authored the Amazon e-book Social Selling Praxishandbuch – Werde zum LinkedIn-Influencer für deine Kunden (“Social Selling Practice Guide – Become a LinkedIn Influencer for Your Customers”).