What different kinds of domain names could you choose?

When it comes to domain names for personal brands, broadly speaking, you can go one of three ways:

1. Use your own name. So you could have YourName.com, YourName.co.uk, or YourName.net – whatever you decide to go for. A few highly-successful online entrepreneurs out there, like Marie Forleo or Chris Ducker, do this.
2. Use your business name. A couple of examples that come to mind here are Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income and us at Jammy Digital!
3. Use a keyword. Your domain name includes a keyword that your ideal customers or clients may search for on Google. An example of this is Mark Shaefer, whose domain name is businessgrow.com.

We’re going to look at the pros and cons of each option in more detail.

Why would you use your own name as your domain name?

1. It makes it easier for people to find you online

When you meet someone at a conference or an event, don’t you tend to remember their name, rather than their business name?

When people mention you, recommend you, or refer you to others, they are more likely to use your name. Because it’s generally more memorable and easier to remember.

Whenever we Google Pat Flynn, for example, we never search for his actual business and website name – Smart Passive Income. It’s quicker and easier to just search for Pat Flynn because his name is what we remember first!

2. It makes it easier for you to change business direction

If you start off in business by offering a service, but then decide to switch to something else, you can make that transition quite easily if you use your name as your domain name.

Generally speaking, you can take your name in whichever business direction you want! It’s certainly more adaptable than a business name or a keyword-rich domain name.

So if you want the flexibility to change direction or course-correct in business, pick your own name. That gives you the space to test a few things out without feeling too restrained.

A good example of this is Janet Murray. Who started out talking about PR, but as her business has grown, she now talks about growing your audience and wider marketing tactics.

What are the downsides of having your name as your domain name?

1. It makes your website harder to sell  

If you’re a personal brand using your own name as your domain, you might struggle to find a buyer for your website. That’s if you ever decide to sell it.

Unless you find somebody else with the exact same name and offers the same services, it may be trickier to sell your website on.

2. It makes it hard to work out what you do

Another reason why you may decide against choosing your own name as your website domain name is that your name doesn’t immediately tell people what you do and how you help.

If we had used MartinHuntbach.com or LyndsayCambridge.com for our website, for example, it’d be a lot harder for our clients to work out what it is we do!

3. Your name may be hard to spell

If people struggle to say or spell your name (like in our case with Martin Huntbach!) you may be reluctant to use your own name as your domain name.

And that’s part of the reason why we decided to use Jammy Digital and not MartinHuntbach.com! Of course, if you have a nice comfortable name that everybody can easily spell, then it’s a different story altogether!

4. It makes it harder for you to change your business structure

While Martin first started our business on his own a few years ago, Lyndsay has now joined and co-owns the business.

Had we gone for MartinHuntbach.com, it may have been harder to communicate to our audience how Lyndsay had joined the business.

If you’re ever thinking of changing the structure of your business, you may find the transition harder if you’ve used your name as your domain name.

Why would you choose your business name as your domain name?

Using your business name as your domain name is a common choice for personal brand websites. And here are some benefits of doing this.

1. It makes it easier for you to sell your website

Because your business isn’t linked to a specific name or person (i.e. you!), you might find selling your website easier, if you ever decide to.

A great example of this is Martin Lewis, founder of MoneySavingExpert.com. A few years ago, Martin Lewis successfully sold his website. And while we’re just speculating here, it’s reasonable to believe that he may have struggled to find a buyer, had he called his website MartinLewis.com.

Of course, this point is only relevant if you’re planning to sell your website. But even if you’re not setting up with the intention of selling, you never really know, do you?

2. It makes what you do clear

By using a business name as your domain name, you can be 100% clear and specific about what it is you do.

Using the MoneySavingExpert.com example once again, just by looking at the website name, you know exactly what you’re going to get! But before Martin Lewis became associated with the brand, you wouldn’t have known what Martin Lewis did. Had he called his website MartinLewis.com, his story may be entirely different!

Why would someone NOT use their business name as their domain name?

1. It makes it harder to change business direction 

While using your own name as your website domain allows you to change business direction fairly easily, your business name can tie into a niche or an industry.

And obviously, that can be frustrating if you want to tweak or change business direction months or years down the line.

When we first started out, we offered both SEO and web design. And when we gradually stopped offering some of the services that we originally provided, the word digital in our business name meant our services still fell under the umbrella of digital marketing. So that worked out well for us. But of course, had we decided to become estate agents, we might have had a slight problem with our domain name!

2. It makes it harder to build a personal connection with you

Occasionally, if you’re a personal brand using a business name as your domain name, your customers and clients may not feel that strong personal connection with you.

But this is something you can easily fix.

An example of this is Pete Matthew, who runs Meaningful Money. A lot of people know Pete Matthew because of the incredible effort he puts into his podcast and his content marketing. Yes, he’s using his business name as his domain name. But he still builds rapport with his audience by being at the forefront of his brand. If you follow his work, you’ll know his name.

So if you are going to use your business name as your domain name, it’s important you get yourself, your name, and your face out there!

3. It makes it harder for people to find you

As we mentioned earlier, people tend to remember names and faces more than they remember business names. This means someone is more likely to look for your name in Google, rather than your business name.

And sometimes, when we search for someone’s name, their social media channels may come up in the search results before their website. Because of this, sometimes finding your actual website may take a bit longer – not a huge issue, but keep in mind that this may feel frustrating to some.

What about including a keyword in your domain name?

It certainly used to be easier to rank on search engines for a particular keyword if you had that exact keyword in your domain name.

But that’s not really the case anymore.

Yes, having a keyword in the domain name still has some weight, but not as much as it used to.

1. Including a keyword in your domain name makes what you do clear and could help your rank higher

Had we picked WebDesignBlackpool.com as our domain name, there would be no doubt about what it is we do, right?

And for many small local businesses, that’s still common practice. Assuming your local competitors don’t know much about SEO, if you included a relevant keyword in your domain name, you could still potentially rank higher than your competitors.

However, Google has changed so much over the years that just stuffing your domain name with keywords isn’t really going to cut it anymore.

What are the disadvantages of using a keyword in your domain name?

1. It can make your website look spammy and old-fashioned

As a user, if you’re looking for someone online, you’ll either expect their name or their business name to pop up. Having something else that sounds a bit generic (like AccountantsManchester.com), in this day and age, can come across as spammy and old-fashioned.

2. A keyword ties you in

Using a keyword within your business name ties you in even more than a business name does. If your website is WebDesignBlackpool.com, and you decide to move to Manchester or start selling flowers, that’s not really going to work!

Overall, we wouldn’t recommend this practice to personal brand website owners.

Our favourite domain name option for personal brands

If you’re a personal brand, our recommendation is to use either your name or your business name. And of these two choices, we encourage our clients to use their own name. After all, you’re building a business based on your knowledge and your expertise!

Yes, you may have a complicated name (bet you can’t beat Martin Huntbach). But plenty of successful people online have not-so-obvious names. And they still make it work, especially when they have the full weight of their business behind them. Go all in, and people will link the business name with your name.

And of course, if your aim is to sell your business a few years down the line, go with your business name!

Always buy the domain for your own name!

One last piece of advice we’d like to share is to always buy the domain for your own name. Renewal will cost you around $10 a year. And you can have a landing page with forwarding rules so that when someone types your name in Google, they’ll be redirected to your main website. Martin does this here.

It’s a really easy, cost-effective way to futureproof your business.

What’s Next For You?

Once you’ve decided on your domain name, that’s when the real fun starts…creating your website! And here are some further resources to help you from here:

How to write website copy for SEO 
How does website design impact content marketing? 
9 Essentials of a personal brand website 

If you’re still at the stage where you’re considering what to your call your business, then you’ll need to decide that before you choose your domain name. This article by the guys at ATOMIC – how to choose a brand name, will certainly help you with this!

Want to take your personal brand business to the next level? 

Once you have your new website up and running, your next job will be driving traffic to it. The best way to do this is through SEO. And the best way to be successful at SEO is through SEO content writing! Check out our SEO content writing service, or find out what an SEO content writing service is and how it can help your personal brand business!

Martin & Lyndsay

The post How to choose a domain name for your personal brand website appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Choosing your domain name can take forever!

Should you have your name as your domain name?

Should you use your business name as your domain name?

Or even, should you include a keyword within your domain name?

It can be tricky. In this podcast episode, we go through the pros and cons of different domain names and which ones are right for you and your business.

In this episode, we’ll cover…

• The pros and cons of using your business name as your domain name
• The pros and cons of using your business name as your domain name
• The pros and cons of using a keyword within your domain name
• Our favourite method for choosing a domain name

Time Stamps: In a rush? Get to the section you need to below!

1.40 – What are the options available to you when choosing domain names
3.40- Why would you use your name as your domain name?
6.10 – What are the downsides to having your name as your domain name?
8.37 – Why would you use your business name as your domain name?
11.18 – What are the downsides of having your business name as your domain name?
14.39 – Should you use keywords in your domain name?
16.34 – The downsides of using keywords within your domain name
18.25 – What’s our favourite method for picking a domain name?

Useful Resources and Links

Waitlist for Membership Community

Content Marketing Academy

Smart Passive Income

Marie Forleo

What To Do Next

Thanks for listening to our episode. If you found this episode useful, please feel free to share it via social media using the links above.

If you want to know about search engine optimisation (SEO), website conversions, content marketing and website copy, then join our FREE Facebook Group.

We would love it if you subscribed to our podcast and left us an honest review. This helps us reach more people and produce more podcast episodes.

If you have any questions about this episode or you want us to cover something new, then contact us on hello@jammydigital.com or leave a comment at the bottom of the page!

• • Join Our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe and review
  • Contact Us

Episode Transcript Below

Welcome to episode 11 of the Make Your Mark online podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about how to choose a domain name for your website. Before we get into the episode, this podcast is sponsored by the Make Your Mark online membership. This is our signature membership community where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. It will be launching on the first of October and we’d love for you to check it out. We currently have a wait list you can sign up to, if you go to jammydigital.com/wait. We will only be opening the doors for two weeks at its lowest ever price, so don’t miss out. Okay, let’s get on with the show.

Today we’re talking about domains. This is something that’s really important, isn’t it Martin, for all businesses?

Yes, of course. I mean if you want a website you’re going to have to, at some point, buy a domain name or hundreds of domains that you never use, which is exactly what we’ve done [crosstalk 00:01:09].

Yes, Martin’s got loads.

Oh, God. For some reason I just keep renewing them every year. It’s like-

You do.

I’m really going to start-

I get the invoices. I’m aware.

The craziest business ideas that we had five years ago and for some reason we’re still buying domain names.

Yes.

Well, we’re actually talking about your main domain name, so what you’ll actually use for your core personal brand business website. It’s really important because there are a few different ways you can go about this, which is exactly why we decided to have a chat about it.

What kinds of different domain names could you choose?

Okay, so when it comes to domains then for personal brands, what are the ways that you can go about it? What options are available?

Okay, so there are three main things that we see people do with domains. The first thing is you actually use your name, so martinhuntbach.com or lyndsaycambridge.com. A few of the highly successful entrepreneurs out there, like Marie Forleo, uses her name within her domain name. Chris Ducker, he uses his name. It just means that you’re essentially taking your name and you’re the personal brand, so that’s what I’m going to have and whatever it is dot com, dot call it UK, dot net but it’s your name. That’s one option that you have.

Another option would be to use your business name. For instance that’s what we decided to do, Jammydigital.com. Although technically it’s not a personal brand type business, lots of other personal brands decide to use a business name like Pat Flynn, for instance, has Smart Passive Income. Chris Marr has the Content Marketing Academy. That is a fairly common way to go as well.

The third option isn’t used as much but it used occasionally. It’s where people decide to use a keyword. Potentially something that somebody might search for on Google and you actually use that word as your domain name. Now I’m not sure this is exactly what Mark Schaefer has done with his website businessgrow.com, but potentially he could have used MarkSchaefer.com or he could have used MarkSchaefersolutions.com if that’s his business name. For whatever reason some people decide to try to include a keyword within that domain. You do see it fairly frequently with local businesses, web design companies. I’ll just use WebDesign.com or WebDesignBlackpool.com. You do see it from time to time and occasionally with personal brands as well. Those are the three potential options you have available.

Why would you use your name as your domain name?

Let’s break it down then. What are the best options? Why would you use your name, for example, as your domain name? What are the advantages of doing that?

Well it’s a lot easier to remember somebody’s name. If you bump into someone at a conference, for instance, or a local networking event people generally remember people more than they remember business names. It’s just more memorable and that’s a great thing that you can do if you use your business name, people can actually refer to you when they’re making recommendations or check out this person. It makes it a lot easier to find you online.

Yes definitely, and it’s a good point that you say that actually because whenever I Google Pat Flynn I always put into Google Pat Flynn, I never actually put in Smart Passive Income. Not that I forget it, I know actually that that’s his business name, I know that it’s his domain name, but for some reason just psychologically I think I just Google Pat Flynn because yes I remember his face and his name. Yes, it’s much, much more memorable. That’s a really good point.

Yes definitely

What are the other reasons someone might use their name as their domain name?

Well it’s easy to change business direction. We know from our own experience that we’ve changed our business quite a lot in the past five years, and sometimes you offer one service, you might offer something else, and if you use your name as your domain name it’s quite easy to make that transition and nobody bats an eyelid. If one day you decide that you’re no longer a SEI expert, you’re a web design expert, then nobody would know because you got your name as your domain name. If you decide to sell houses one day nobody would bat an eyelid, well they might do, but generally speaking it’s not going to raise any red flags if you decide to change your business direction because your name is something that you own and you keep, and you can take it in whichever business direction you want. It’s more adaptable.

Yes, that’s very, very true actually. Yes because, say for example Chris Marr, Content Marketing Academy, he for some strange reason decided he wanted to do social media management instead. Then Content Marketing Academy wouldn’t make sense obviously as his domain name. Whereas if his name was ChrisMarr.com then he would be able to change direction. That’s just an example, but yes it’s a really, really good point actually that you can sort of change direction quite easily. Which I supposed if you’re new to business we noticed that when we were quite new to business that we changed quite a lot at the beginning so that’s always quite a good advantage, isn’t it that you have that sort of flexibility really and space to move without sort of feeling restrained just by something simple, by your domain name.

What are the downsides of having your name as your domain name?

Yes exactly, but there are a few negatives to potentially having your name as your domain. For instance it would be quite difficult for the likes of Chris Ducker and Marie Forleo to sell their website if they ever decided to pack it all in and do something else because their name is their domain name. Unless you find somebody else with the exact same name, that offers the same services, and has a similar reputation, it’s going to be fairly difficult if not impossible for you to sell a domain with your name and have somebody else take over it. That’s one of the downsides to it, it’s not saleable.

Another reason is that it’s not immediately clear what it is that you offer.

Yes.

If you use your name MartinHuntbach.com or whatever, it’s not immediately clear how that person can benefit. For instance, we have Jammy Digital as our name and it’s kind of digital. We’ve included the word digital in it so you can kind of start to think about what it might be.

Yes.

Whereas if we only used our name then it’s not going to be clear at all, I could be doing anything.

I suppose the advantage of having the flexibility of having to move around in your business is also a bit of a disadvantage because then it’s kind of not really clear what you do.

Exactly.

Yes, so that’s kind of the downside of it really.

Yes exactly, and it can make it even more difficult using your name as a domain if people struggle to spell it or if they struggle to say it like our names, for instance.

Like MartinHuntbach.com.

Exactly. I actually do have MartinHuntbach.com but it just acts as bit of a landing page.

No one’s going to be able to spell that.

Nobody’s going to be able … Exactly, which is part of the reason why I didn’t decide to build my brand on my name. It’d be great if I had a nice comfortable name that everybody could spell and say without kind of cocking the head to one side and saying, “What? What did they just say?”

That’s an interesting one actually because you bought MartinHuntbach.com and originally it was you started the business, but I actually joined and now sort of co-own. If you’d have put MartinHuntbach.com that would have been really difficult kind of transition.

It would have.

Why would you use your business name as your domain name?

I’d have just been plus Lyndsay, the end of it. That’s also a really good point actually. Sometimes if other people join your business that can be a sort of downside to just having one name, although it’s probably quite rare. Yes, that’s a really good point as well. What about the business name then? This is fairly common for personal brands too. What are the benefits of that?

The first thing is that it’s very saleable. We’ve already discussed this in the previous point. If you have a business name as your domain name, then somebody else can buy your business off you in the future, they can buy a domain name that’s linked to a business because it’s not linked to a person. Generally speaking you’d probably get a lot more money if you ever did decide to sell a business. For instance, Pat Flynn, I know that he has the domain name PatFlynn.com, but he has now built his brand around Smart Passive Income. He could potentially sell that for a lot more than he could if he just used PatFlynn.com. People might buy it for the domain name quality, they might buy it because of the amount of traffic he’s got, but definitely going to count in his favor because he’s using SmartPassiveIncome.com, it’s a lot easier to sell.

Yes, it’s a really good point actually. I think a good example of this is actually from Martin Lewis who had MoneySavingExpert.com and he sold it recently, in the last couple of years, for a lot of money.

Millions and millions.

Millions and millions of pounds. Perhaps if he was called MartinLewis.com rather than Money Saving Expert it might not have been as easy to sell, so that’s a really, really good point actually. I suppose it depends if we want to sell or if we think we’re going to sell in the future.

Exactly, you just never know. You never know, and the thing is is technically speaking Money Saving Expert is definitely still Martin Lewis. When you say Money Saving Expert, you might not know it if you’re not in the UK, but he advises people on how to save money and how to save money on bills and whatever. He is deeply ingrained within Martin Lewis, the Money Saving Expert. They actually, when they bought it, they actually hired him, I believe. He knows how it works. He then got paid even more money for working with them. Yes, swings a round about.

If you can build Money Saving Expert.

Yes.

If you can build that business you’re golden.

Exactly.

What are some other good reasons to use your business name as your domain name?

Well I mean you can really make it clear what you do. That example, for instance, Money Saving Expert you know pretty much exactly what you’re going to get.

Yes.

Whereas with MartinLewis.com you’re not sure. It could be an insurance broker, it could want to fix your roof, you just don’t know. That’s the thing really. A major benefit is you potentially can explain a little bit more about what you do rather than just using your name, which can be a bit cryptic sometimes.

Why would someone not use their business name as their domain name?

Okay then, so why might we not use our business name as our domain name?

Okay, so if you use a business name it does actually tie you in. When we said before that you can change your business direction with your name, you can’t do that as much, especially if you’ve got something like Smart Passive Income. If you decide to change your business it does tie you into a niche or whatever kind of industry. Sometimes you can have quite a broad explanation and that gives you a little bit more wiggle room, but if you want to dramatically change it, it does kind of tie you in, which can be frustrating.

Yes, I think that’s a really good point actually because when we set up Jammy Digital we offered SEO, we offered web design, I think we offered social media logo design, everything in the world. It all at least fell under the umbrella of digital, so we’ve slowly got rid of some of those services, but it didn’t actually matter because it was quite a broad word that we used, digital, which covers all our things. Whereas if we wanted to be estate agents then that’s obviously not going to work, but at least it was broad enough to begin with where we could kind of move around a little bit in at least our niche, which was digital marketing.

Yes absolutely.

That’s a good point. Are there any other reasons why someone might not want to use their business name as their domain name?

Occasionally when you have a business name as your domain name it can be a little bit less personal. It’s not as easy to connect with somebody, especially if they’re a personal brand. I can refer to you by your name. I want to build a little bit more rapport with you. I might consume some of your content. It’s just not as easy if you use a business name, but again there are pros and cons to it, but that’s one thing that we’ve found.

Yes definitely. I think they are obviously things you can do to kind of combat that. I think there are quite a few examples. I know Pete Matthew comes to mind. He runs Meaningful Money, so that’s his … Obviously business name is his domain name, but a lot of people know Pete Matthew because he puts so much effort into his podcast, into his content marketing. I think it’s about yes, if you’re going to sort of use your business name as your domain name then you kind of have to put yourself forward as well for a lot of it. It’s the same with Chris Marr at the Content Marketing Academy. Everyone knows him just as much as they know CMA, Content Marketing Academy. You kind of just have to make sure you ramp up that effort really in terms of content marketing and getting yourself out there and putting yourself out there and your face out there.

Exactly, and another thing that you might potentially find if you use a business name is that like Lyndsay said before, it can actually be quite difficult for people to find you. When you were searching for Pat Flynn, which is naturally what people do, they’ll remember a name, they’ll remember a face, and they go and type into Google. If your business name is your domain name then it kind of takes somebody a split second to work out okay, which result do I click on here?

Yes.

Because if someone types in your name-

Your Twitter comes up.

Exactly.

Yes, all sorts of things come up. Yes, that’s a really good point.

Your actual website might be knocked down the rankings a little bit. It might be on the first page but it might be the fourth or fifth one, which takes people an extra second or two to find your website, which can be frustrating.

Should you have a keyword in your domain name?

Yes definitely. Okay, so what about the last one then, which was using keywords in your domain? Is that a good idea?

I understand the appeal with this one. I understand that if you are a public speaking coach, for instance, and you have PublicSpeakingCoach.com then the appeal is that okay, when people type that into Google they’re going to get to my website. In reality that used to be the case, it used to be easier to rank higher on search engines for a keyword if you had it in your domain name, but it’s not the case anymore. It actually does have some weight, but not as much as it used to. I generally wouldn’t recommend this one unless there’s a real reason for it, but I’m yet to find one. One of the main pros is the fact that it does offer some weight but not enough for me to decide to build my entire website on it.

Okay, so I mean I know that it’s not one that you’re very keen on but are there any other reasons why someone might just want to use a keyword in their domain?

Yes, obviously you’ll make it abundantly clear what it is that you do. I mean if we chose, for instance, Web Design Blackpool then people know what they’re going to get. It’s immediately clear, it wouldn’t be immediately clear if somebody used their name. There’s that I suppose.

Do you think this is quite good for businesses then that are very, very local, quite small local businesses? Do you think it would be suitable for that? I mean I’m trying to find some good points of using this, sort of Accountants Blackpool or Web Design Manchester. Is there any kind of good stuff coming out of it?

What are the disadvantages of using a keyword in your domain name?

It depends really on how much competition you have. There’s still an argument to say that if there’s no other accountants in Blackpool that know anything about SEO, just by buying that domain name and adding some content to your website you might potentially rank highly on the first page of Google. Yes, but there’s so many websites popping up all over the place now that there’s too much in regards to SEO and branding are going to add more than just stuffing your keyword within your domain. I would say that this one is not so great of an option, but I do see people do it, which is why we wanted to include it. More often than not it can be a bit confusing. I mean if you search for somebody online you want their name to pop up or at least their business name. It’s kind of like three layers deep. It’s not the name of the person, it’s also not the business that they run, but it’s something else and it just looks a bit spammy I think in this day and age.

Yes definitely. I think it looks a little bit old fashioned as well, doesn’t it? Just not very professional. Yes, I absolutely agree with that.

Also it ties you in. You can’t get away from it. If you’re stuffing WebDesignBlackpool.com into your domain name and you decide to move house in five years to Manchester then it’s not really going to work. You kind of shot yourself in the foot a little bit there.

Yes, plus it just you just so … It’s just kind of boring if I’m honest. I mean imagine if our domain name wasn’t Martin Huntbach or MartinandLyndsay.com, it wasn’t JammyDigital.com, it was web design Manchester.

Oh God.

It just doesn’t excite anyone, does it?

No.

It’s just really boring.

No, exactly.

We can definitely see the bad points on that one, can’t we?

Exactly, but some people do still ask that question, “Is it best if I pop the keywords in my domain?” Ninety-nine times out of 100 we say no. It’s far better to choose a domain with your name or your business name.

What’s our favourite domain name option for personal brands?

What’s the best option then? Have you got a favorite personally?

Where possible I think you should try to use your name. Again taking everything into account, the pros and cons, and I think that the benefits far outweigh the negatives when it comes to choosing a domain name and including your name. The fact that you can change direction, the fact that you can brand yourself as much as you like, and it doesn’t actually take anything away from your name and your business. Again, including your business name has it’s benefits, but for personal brands people search for you online. People will recommend you. People won’t always remember the name of your business. It all depends if you want to sell it further down the line. If that’s your main objective then by all means. I would always choose to go with a brandable thing, whether that’s branding you or branding a business name, there are pros and cons to each and there’s no clear defined answer that’s going to work for everybody. Generally speaking if I was to go out by myself and want to build a business behind my knowledge and my experience I would generally build it behind MartinHuntbach.com.

Okay, that’s really interesting. Even if you couldn’t spell Huntbach.

The thing is you still have people refer people to you. People hear us on podcasts, people see us speak at local workshops, and people read guest posts. People will naturally find your name and there’s lots of people on the internet who have more complicated names to spell but they still make it work, especially if you’ve got the full weight of your business behind it. It’s still a great idea. I do understand the appeal of a Smart Passive Income, for instance.

Yes.

You can still do it, and like I say, if you go all in on it people will closely link the business name with your name and that’s fine if you can find that balance, but more often than not the best case scenario for most personal brands is to actually just put your name behind it. There is one last thing that I wanted to say, which is even if you decide to go for a business name domain name, you should still buy your name. I mean I did it. I didn’t intend to use it originally. We’ve got LyndsayCambridge.com. It’s the best thing to do is even if you decide to go with a business buy the domain name. You can set up forwarding, so you can actually if somebody does type your name into the address bar at the top of the page you could potentially redirect people to your main website. Especially if you decide to use it in the future just get it, pay the 10 pound a year, whatever it is, and then just store it. If you don’t decide to use it then that’s fine, but I would always recommend buying it.

Yes, it’s a really, really good point actually. We have MartinHuntbach.com, LyndsayCambridge.com, don’t visit LyndsayCambridge.com. There’s some really crap videos on there.

Now everyone’s going to visit.

That sounds actually really dodgy. It’s just some videos doing book reviews, not very exciting I’m afraid. Yes, that’s a really, really good point. Buy your name as your domain name. It’s always good to have that anyway because you don’t know when it’s going to be useful. I actually read, I forgot where I read it, but people are buying their children’s name as their domain names and then give … I don’t know if Martin might be doing that, [inaudible 00:21:38].

Thought I’d buy it today. Thought I’d buy it today.

Don’t worry Huntbach will be available, it’ll be fine.

It will be.

It’ll be available, we don’t need to spend 10 pound a year until he’s 18 and needs it or whatever. Yes, people actually do, they’re starting to buy their children’s names, the domain name.

Crazy.

The Make Your Mark Online Membership

Because in the future you don’t know when they’re going to need it. Yes, that’s a really, really interesting one. That was a really, really good episode actually on how to choose your domain name, episode 11 there. Just before you go I just wanted to remind you that our wait list is up for our Make Your Mark online membership community. Pop your name and email address in there and you’ll be signed up to the wait list, that’s when you can join us at the lowest ever price. We have confirmed the price now, it will be $29 per month or $290 each year.

How cheap is that?

It’s very cheap.

So cheap.

Cheap, but that will be a limited price Martin. It will only last two weeks that price and then it will be going up after that. Get your name down quickly, make sure you join us for that really, really low price offer. Thanks for listening.

Martin & Lyndsay

The post Ep 11 – How to choose a domain name for your website appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Transitioning from a traditional business to a personal brand: what you need to know

Transitioning from traditional, service-based business to a personal brand can seem super-scary.

Often, we’re afraid to get out from behind our logos and let our audience get to know the real us.

When you have a personal brand, you can build trust, charge more for your services and become an authority in your industry.

In this episode, we look at how you can transition into a personal brand and what how your website should reflect this.

In this episode, we’ll cover…

• • Why someone would want to transition into a personal brand
  • What are the risks in becoming a personal brand
  • How someone can transition into a personal brand effectively
  • How someone should change their business name/domain name

Time Stamps: In a rush? Get to the section you need to below!

3.40 – Why would someone want to be a personal brand? 
5.05 – Neil Patel: I wish I never built a personal brand – what’s our take on this?
6.16  – What are the risks involved in transitioning into a personal brand?
6.45 – Changing the name of your business without warning your clients
8.20 – How cutting your services entirely might cause issues
12.10 – Issues with changing your niche
12.45 – Difficulties selling your personal brand
15.00 – How might someone transition into a personal brand?
16.23 – Try to avoid changing your niche
17.30 – How would someone change their name domain name?
19.12 – Putting your face on the website
22.10 – Having a personality

Useful Resources and Links

Neil Patel: I Wish I Never Built a Personal Brand

Jammy Digital SEO webinar 

What To Do Next

Thanks for listening to our episode. If you found this episode useful, please feel free to share it via social media using the links above.

If you want to know about search engine optimisation (SEO), website conversions, content marketing and website copy, then join our FREE Facebook Group.

We would love it if you subscribed to our podcast and left us an honest review. This helps us reach more people and produce more podcast episodes.

If you have any questions about this episode or you want us to cover something new, then contact us on hello@jammydigital.com or leave a comment at the bottom of the page!

• • Join Our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe and review
  • Contact Us

Episode Transcript Below

Lyndsay:           Welcome to episode seven of the Make Your Mark Online Podcast. In today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about how to transition your business into a personal brand and why you might want to do this. Before we get into the show, we wanted you to know we are running a free online workshop all about SEO for personal brands. Truth be told, the stuff we’re going to be talking about in the workshop will be valuable to most businesses. This is taking place on the 6th of September 8 P.M. or 3 P.M. EST, and it’s going to be really good, isn’t it, Martin?

Martin:             Yeah. It’s going to be absolutely awesome. You’re not going to want to miss it, but it is kind of worth pointing that we’re in 2018, so it is this year. If you’re watching in sort of two years time-

Lyndsay:           Oh yeah. Good point.

Martin:             … you probably missed it. Put your diary away, but yeah, we’re really excited about it. It’s one of the most common topics that we get asked about SEO and we wanted to make sure that this was our first proper webinar.

Lyndsay:           Yeah, definitely. We’ve sort of joined a few free webinars, haven’t we, Martin?

Martin:             Yeah, in the past.

Lyndsay:           Over the past five years. We have noticed sometimes it can be sort of 45 minutes of sales pitch and then five minutes of actual actionable tips. This is something on this webinar we really wanted to avoid. We really want to give you guys real actionable tips that you can takeaway and you use in your business straight away. We’re going to be giving you a workbook about a week before the webinar goes live, so you can actually work through that on the actual webinar itself. It will be really actionable, really juicy for you.

Martin:             Yeah, definitely. We don’t actually have anything to sell you right now anyway, so that’s why it’s just going to be content-driven. I mean obviously you already know about the membership and we’ve got a wait list for that, but other than that, we don’t have anything to pitch here. That’s why we’re focusing the majority of this time just giving you valuable tips.

Lyndsay:           Exactly. Exactly. You do actually have to register for the webinar because there are limited spaces available. If you just head to jammydigital.com/webinar, add your name and email on the page, and we’ll send you your unique link to join the webinar. That’s all you need to do. Head over there now if you can and let’s get on with the show. Before I begin the actual show, Martin, we both had really bad colds this week. I was kind of hoping that for this podcast I would have like sexy Phoebe Buffay voice.

Martin:             I think you do definitely. I could just imagine you singing Smelly Cat.

Lyndsay:           This is Martin sweet talking. No.

Martin:             Hopefully our listeners have actually seen Friends before. Otherwise, that’s not really going to make sense.

Lyndsay:           They’re going to be so confused right now.

Martin:             Yeah.

Lyndsay:           I sound a bit more like a squeaky frog I think.

Martin:             You’ve given me a cold, which is just glorious.

Lyndsay:           I like to share. Today we’re going to be talking about transitioning from a service-based business to more of a personal brand. That’s right, isn’t it?

Martin:             Yeah. This is a common concern that quite a few of our clients have had in the past. It’s the idea of transitioning from a traditional type business, maybe a freelancer or a service-based business where you’ve really kind of had your logo stand in front of your face really, and actually moving more into a personal brand can be a bit concerning. You’re not sure if you’re going to lose clients. You’re not sure if they’re going to sort of like the switch. All these kind of things go through our heads and that’s kind of why we wanted to do this episode. We wanted to kind of go through these and see if there’s any actual validation there if you need to worry at all.

Lyndsay:           I mean why would someone even bother doing this? It seems like a lot of work just to transition. What are the actual benefits of it?

Martin:             Well, I think it’s kind of the benefit of a personal brand really, which is very, very powerful. I mean you want to stand out. There’s so many businesses out there who hide behind a logo. It’s a lot more easier if you stand out if you are a person. Few businesses are just too scared to sort of get out and say, “We are the expert and we’re prepared to stand in front of you and show you our face and be more of a personal brand.”

Lyndsay:           It makes you more memorable, doesn’t it?

Martin:             You see, we’re built to connect with people. It’s what we do. We see faces all the time. Being on a personal brand website, it allows you to connect with that person more and feel like you … You have a little bit more rapport with a person if you can actually see what they look like. It’s amazing, especially when we get phone calls all the time and they say, “Hi. Can I speak to Martin? Can I speak to Lyndsay,” and having that face on your website is extremely powerful.

Lyndsay:           Yup, definitely.

Martin:             Maybe you want to offer coaching and consulting, maybe you want to speak on stage, all these different types of scenarios, that’s how a personal brand can help really. You can charge higher fees because people want to deal with you as the expert. I don’t think anybody would argue that being a personal brand isn’t more beneficial to your business. It just is. We’ve seen it time and time again. I know we read an article this week about Neil Patel who sort of brought up the question really about … Yeah.

Lyndsay:           That was a really interesting one actually because he said that he sort of regretted building a personal brand. I think that was more and we’ll come onto this later sort of risk involved with building personal brand is that it’s attached to you and your name. There can be sort of disadvantages to that, but we’ll come to that a little bit later. For anyone who is listening, perhaps go and check that article out because yeah, I mean we talk about the advantages of a personal brand, but we also want to talk about the disadvantages of it as well.

Lyndsay:           It’s not just clear cut that it’s the most amazing thing ever, but we’ve certainly seen I think from our clients that the benefits do outweigh the disadvantages.

Martin:             Oh yeah, definitely. Personally, from my perspective, I suppose that kind of article was maybe a little bit click bait. Maybe he doesn’t actually believe it, but he has an opinion about the pros and cons to it essentially. That’s more of what the article is. Without the article, we wouldn’t even be discussing it. Without him being a personal brand, we wouldn’t be discussing it.

Lyndsay:           Yeah, definitely. Okay. Since we’ve talked about the risks, what are the risks involved with sort of building a personal brand?

Martin:             Okay. I don’t actually think there are a lot of risks involved with becoming more of a personal brand because you’ve already got the business behind you. You’ve already got a steady stream of customers hopefully and becoming more of a personal brand can only benefit you. However, there are a few technical reasons that you might want to be careful. For instance, if you change the name of your business completely without warning your clients, maybe you go from webdesignservices.com to martinhuntbach.com and you don’t tell your clients that that’s happening, then it might actually cause a little bit of a disconnect.

Martin:             I’m not saying there would be a problem, but if you don’t tell people and somebody googles the name of your business and it’s not there anymore, then that’s a problem, but it’s not from a customer sort of mindset perspective. They’re not going to be that bothered, but not telling them might sort of … Warning signs might flash really.

Lyndsay:           Okay. That’s quite interesting. Yeah. I think obviously it’s best to sort of tell your clients in advance if you are changing the name of your business. If they’re used to dealing with you everyday, then they’re not going to be bothered so much that you’ve changed your name to you because they know it’s you anyway. Yeah, I think that most clients …

Martin:             Just about informing them. Just about being upfront about it really.

Lyndsay:           Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Martin:             The same goes for your domain name. If you do change that domain name, from a technical standpoint, people are not going to be able to find you online as easily. That’s why it’s important that if you change your name, you change your business and things like that, you really do want to be careful about how you go about it. It comes down to planning. It comes down to communication. Like I said, most people don’t mind if you are becoming more of an expert and you’re putting your face on your website and you’re offering different types of services. They just care if you don’t tell them because it just wouldn’t make sense to somebody.

Martin:             Well, cutting your services entirely might cause problems. If you’ve got clients paying you for a certain service each month and you want to keep them happy, just by swapping your services entirely from one day to the next, it might concern a few people if they’re continuing to pay you. Well, it’s like, “Are they still offering this service anymore?” That’s why we kind of suggest that people drip feed new services in potentially.

Lyndsay:           Yeah, definitely. We find this a lot with people who want to sort of transition from a done for you into a more of a coaching role, a consorting role, more speaking, more that kind of business. They do need to change their services slightly. I mean even from a business point of view, you can’t just switch completely from one to the next because you’ve got to kind of slowly build one and then sort of face the other one out. You kind of got to think about it that way anyway, haven’t you?

Martin:             Yeah. I mean we got a little bit of experience in this. Although we are personal brands, we very much stand behind Jammy Digital as the agency, but we actually did this with a service that we have and had and still have clients paying us for SEO, but we stopped selling SEO. That’s another thing that you need to be aware of. If you stop services entirely, then you may have to have some quite difficult conversations with some clients. Maybe you’re taking them clients off your retainer, maybe you stopped dealing with that service entirely, or maybe you are stopping to advertise that service, but you’re still keeping your existing clients on.

Martin:             At any given stage, as long as you speak to your clients about it, you’ll probably be okay.

Lyndsay:           Yeah, definitely. We actually wrote a blog post, didn’t we, actually saying why we stopped selling SEO. I actually at the time thought, “No one’s really going to be bothered,” but people actually did read it and take the time with some wine. I think that’s quite a good way of dealing with it. If you’re really open and upfront about why you’re perhaps transitioning or changing your services, if you’re open and upfront about it and say why, then people are a lot more understanding, aren’t they? They actually find it quite interesting. I was really surprised at how many people actually read that blog post and commented or got in touch with us.

Martin:             That’s the thing. If you do it secretive, then that’s the problem.

Lyndsay:           Yeah, definitely.

Martin:             If you are quite like smoke and mirrors about it, then that’s when people will be like-

Lyndsay:           Hiding like a ninja.

Martin:             …”Don’t you offer SEO? I can’t see on your website at all now.” Yeah, it can be a bit concerning, but again it all comes back to communication. It’s more of a business decision that you have to make if you are cutting services because you’re talking about money, you’re talking about income, you’re talking about all of the extra stuff that comes with it. Be careful of that without the communication.

Lyndsay:           As well, you need to make sure that you still tell people that that was a service that you did because it actually works in your favor. If you’re say going from a done for you service into consulting, you need to tell people that you’ve had 10-15 years experience of actually doing this for companies, of actually making a change in their business, and actually have a proven track record of actually doing the thing that you say you can advice people about. It’s a know about thing that you’re saying that you transition from this into this. Don’t hide it.

Lyndsay:           Actually be proud of it and say that’s what you’ve done before. This is what you do now, but you’ve got this experience under your belt.

Martin:             Too many people start businesses. Everybody’s a coach these days. I mean it’s nice to actually know that somebody out has done it there like Lyndsay said-

Lyndsay:           Yeah, exactly.

Martin:             … because so few people have and just say that they’re an expert, and everybody’s a social media expert these days. It’s a real positive.

Lyndsay:           Yeah, definitely. Sometimes it’s nice to know that that person has got 10 years of actually doing it for businesses and it’s really worked for them. Okay. Is there any other things, any other risks that might be involved with this?

Martin:             I think kind of leading on from that one really is if you change your niche entirely, rather than just chopping services off and swapping them about, if you change your niche entirely when you become a personal brand, then you’re essentially starting from scratch again. You need to know that. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing occasionally. If that’s the avenue you want to take, then go for it, but just be aware. If you’re dealing with solicitors one day and then you decide to deal with estate agents, then you’ve got to start from square one really. Building up that audience again is going to be vital.

Lyndsay:           Yeah, definitely. I think the one sort of final thing really is kind of what Neil Patel touched upon in his article was that he found it more difficult I think to sell his personal brand. I think if you’re building businesses just to sell them, then maybe a personal brand isn’t the right direction. Most clients that we speak to are more passionate about the big … They really want to kind of have it forever type thing. They don’t envisage sort of selling them.

Lyndsay:           That’s not to sell that they won’t do at some point, but I suppose if you’re building businesses up just to kind of sell them on, then maybe a personal brand sort of business isn’t right for you, although it kind of does work for helping to build a business up. It’s kind of like that catch 22 really. You’re sort of stuck with it. As you said, it is harder to sell because if I’m selling lyndsaycambridge.com, no one else can take that on really but me.

Martin:             No, because no one spells Lyndsay the way that you do.

Lyndsay:           No one spells Lyndsay the way that I do, so it’ll be impossible for starters.

Martin:             My name would be impossible.

Lyndsay:           No one would know that, Martin.

Martin:             I can’t even spell it.

Lyndsay:           No. Neither could I.

Martin:             It’s basically the reason you didn’t take my name when we got married.

Lyndsay:           Exactly. I don’t know how to spell that.

Martin:             Nope. Not worth it.

Lyndsay:           Exactly. Yeah, that’s a major sort of downside to it. However, one of the plus sides to having your name attached to your business is that that follows you wherever you go. If you want to set up a new business, all the contacts that you’ve made, everything that you build up through your content marketing through your name, everything attached to that actually follows you. If you want to set up something new, then that audience knows who you are. They know of your reputation. They know how good you are, and they’re going to follow you wherever you go. That’s a great thing.

Martin:             Yeah, it definitely is. It’s true. I mean people search for people on the internet these days, don’t they? I mean what happens when somebody googles your name? It’s nice to know that there are lots of different things that have happened in the past. Maybe you’ve had guest posts here, here and everywhere and you’ve appeared on podcasts and you spoke on stage. Nobody googles the name of your business unless it’s really, really memorable. I think it’s important, that personal brand. We’re not really debating whether or not you should move into a personal brand. We’re just kind of going through the concerns really.

Lyndsay:           Yeah, definitely.

Martin:             I think we definitely covered a few of those concerns if our listeners have them.

Lyndsay:           Definitely. Okay. Say if someone is quite committed then to transitioning into a personal brand, how might they do this quite well? How might they do this effectively?

Martin:             I think once you’ve listened to what we’ve just been talking about, hopefully a few of the concerns have sort of gone really because you shouldn’t really be that concerned. You have free reins really to do what you want to with your website. We do have kind of a set strokes really on what you could do. One of them is try introducing the services bit by bit. We spoke about this a little bit. We’ve actually done this recently with our website. We’re just offering the membership coming up soon. We’ve not got rid of any services and we don’t intend to, but we have moved our website around a little bit to make room for it.

Martin:             If you are wanting to change direction and become more of a personal brand, maybe offer coaching, speaking, things like that, just add the new pages to your website. Introduce them gradually, rather than to just get rid of everything and swap it all out. That might scare your visitors. Introduce services bit by bit. That’s one of the tips that we have.

Lyndsay:           Okay. That’s a really good point. What else can you do then to transition effectively into a personal brand?

Martin:             Well, most people don’t change their niche when the transition into a personal brand. If you are offering marketing services for solicitors and now you’ll be marketing advice to solicitors, then use the same language. If you have a big bold statement that says what you do, then tweak things rather than start from scratch again. Just be careful. That’s all. That’s all I would say. Just use your website as what it would be if you were to speak to that person on the phone.

Martin:             “Hi, Mr. Customer. Up until now we’ve been offering services to help you with so on,” whatever it might be, “And now we are also offering advice and coaching. I just wanted to make you aware we are having a change around with our website.” If you are that concerned, then have that conversation with somebody, but use your website to do the talking as well. I’m not saying you have to justify that you are offering coaching, but if you have those clients who are paying you a certain amount a month, they are the bread and butter of your business, then feel free to have a conversation with them and use the same sort of language that you would on the phone call on your website as well.

Lyndsay:           Okay. That make sense. I actually have a question for you, Martin.

Martin:             What?

Lyndsay:           What would you do about a domain name? Say if someone had, like you said, like webdesignservices.com, that’s an awful name-

Martin:             Yeah, it is.

Lyndsay:           … or speakingcoach.com or whatever, would you advise that they change their domain name? Is the risks of doing that … How would they go about doing that?

Martin:             That is one of the things that pops up, whether or not you keep your business name and you just become more of a personal brand, or whether or not you set up a brand new website all together. If you do change the business name and you change the domain name, make sure you speak to your web designer or your SEO company and make sure that they’re aware of it, so that if somebody does type in your business service website, it redirects to your personal brand type website.

Lyndsay:           Because you don’t want to lose any traffic, do you?

Martin:             Exactly. That’s really important. You can set up redirects and make sure that when somebody types into Google or finds that on search results, they’ll automatically get redirected to the website that you want.

Lyndsay:           That’s good because I think a lot of people are really scared to think of using that traffic. Yeah, I think that’s really good advice. They make sure they have someone there to help them with that transition.

Martin:             Yeah, exactly. There’s probably too much on that topic to cover in this episode, but it is important that you don’t just set up from scratch again and don’t tell anybody. Really we’re talking about sort of transitioning your current website into a personal brand, but you can change your domain name whenever you like. You just have to make sure that you tell Google Webmaster Tools or Search Console and you actually set it up on your website. Like I said, there’s a lot to it, but it’s important that if you do, you are redirecting people.

Lyndsay:           Okay. Good point. Okay. Is there anything else that we need to do perhaps with our websites to make that transition a little bit more clear?

Martin:             If you are becoming more of a personal brand, then that means you’re going to have to show images of yourself on your website. Up until now you might not have done that or you might just have a meet the team page. Part of becoming a personal brand is people knowing what the hell you look like. Show your face. You’re going to have to make sure that you are owning that on your website.

Lyndsay:           Okay. It’s interesting actually that you said the meet the team page because I think a lot of people really struggle with, “It’s my personal brand, but I actually have a team of people behind me.” Maybe they use a team of freelancers. Maybe they have staff. How does that play into it because they’re not just one person? How does that work?

Martin:             Well, like I said, people connect to people. This is why it’s important to show images of yourself, but it doesn’t mean you can’t show your team as well. Maybe you show a couple of images of yourself on the homepage, but one of the images might be you with your team. You have to understand that people, they want to know that there are people behind a business because it’s more trustworthy and they can connect to it. We know that. You’re the captain of the ship and people don’t mind if you have a crew behind you as long as you are the expert and you are the leader as well. You can be a personal brand, but also have lots of people in the team. Look at people like Richard Branson for instance.

Lyndsay:           Well, yeah. That’s a really good point actually because I think that a lot of people when transitioning to personal brand, they do worry that they’re going to lose that credibility, particularly if they work with sort of larger companies or really corporate companies. They think, “Are they going to think that I’m just like a freelancer? Are they going to think I’m too small?” That’s a really good point, sort of you’re the captain of the ship type thing. If you try and get that across, then that should put people’s mind at ease.

Martin:             It all comes back to communication. I mean if you have those clients, those five or six clients, that your business can’t live without, then have a chat with them. You can even make a positive out of it because there is a positive and say, “By the way, we’re also offering coaching services as well. If you are wanting anything from us, generally people hire us on an hourly basis or a monthly retainer basis. I do a bit of speaking on stage. The website’s getting a bit of a makeover, so I’d love to know what you think.”

Lyndsay:           Yeah, definitely.

Martin:             Just by saying that, having that conversation, people don’t care. They don’t because they want to work with you because you are the expert.

Lyndsay:           I think that’s a really good point. When people do work with large sort of corporate businesses, they kind of make them into something that they’re not because you still have to deal with whoever you’re dealing with within that business. They’re still working with a person and they still know that they deal with you day in, day out. There shouldn’t be really anything to worry about.

Martin:             Yeah, but the great thing about a personal brand and making sure that you are the personality that is leading that ship, you get to have a real personality as well. Your clients know you quite well and they get to know your little personality quirks. It’s okay for that to come across. Occasionally what we think is if we don’t have a personal brand business and we have a traditional business with a logo and we might even write about ourselves in third person, which is never a good idea.

Lyndsay:           No, don’t do that.

Martin:             But when you actually step out and people actually know that you are the person who is behind the business, people connect with you more anyway, but you get to be yourself more. You get to have certain content your website that you might not have done before. You’re able to connect with people. It just all comes back to when you have a personal brand and it’s done effectively. You do generally have a better sort of connection with your website visitor.

Lyndsay:           Yeah, definitely. We find that personal brands find sort of their website much easier, especially writing content because then they kind of write it … They write it in first person, but they kind of can put that personality into it, which is a lot harder to do when you’re kind of a business brand rather than a personal brand. I think that’s a really good point actually that you can actually start to have a real personality actually within your business and people start to get to know you and who you are. That’s a really good point.

Martin:             Definitely. It’s really important as well and we always talk about the C word, we always talk about content.

Lyndsay:           I didn’t you were going to say that.

Martin:             Sometimes I like to surprise you. We have content on our websites that can do a lot of the talking for us. That’s why we created our SEO blog post, which was why we stopped selling SEO services. We’ll continue to do that for any transition that we make in our website. You show your blog posts and you show a podcast episodes, if we decided to stop doing this podcast for instance, which we’re definitely not doing because we love it, but if we did, we’d probably have an episode where we said why we’re stopping the podcast and what we’re doing instead, but we’d always use the content to communicate what it is that we’re doing.

Martin:             The last thing you want to do is just do it and hope that people don’t notice because people will and they just won’t tell you about it. They might just start visiting your website or they might just hire somebody else for instance. All about being open and honest.

Lyndsay:           Yeah, definitely. Most people are so understanding, aren’t they?

Martin:             Mm-hmm (affirmative). They really are.

Lyndsay:           They get why you’ve made certain decisions. They just get totally behind you. I think it actually further builds trust, doesn’t it, rather than stops any trusts.

Martin:             Yeah. Because you are a personal brand, this is a really nice side effect that we found when we’ve been offering coaching and consulting and things, is that your existing clients will see you in a new light. They’ll see you in this kind of, “Oh, they’re in demand. They’re exclusive.” It has a real positive impact on how your current customers view you, as well as the new customers as well. That’s the power of having a personal brand is that exclusivity. It’s that okay, they know what they’re talking about and I’m prepared to pay for it.

Lyndsay:           Yup, definitely. That’s a really nice point to end on, and I think we’ve really highlighted the sort of benefits of a personal brand. If you are thinking of transitioning, don’t be scared about it. If you do need help, just come and join us in our Facebook group if you need advice on that. I’ll pop the link to that in our show notes as well so you’ll be able to join us. Ask us some questions about it because I think a lot of people find it really scary, don’t they?

Martin:             Yeah.

Lyndsay:           We’ve only have seen sort of clients get a real benefit out of it. Not just clients actually. Just people that we’ve talked to in general have told us that they’ve seen real benefits from doing it. Hopefully you’ll have a really good transition into a personal brand. That was episode seven. I hope you found it useful. Just before you go, don’t forget to register for our SEO webinar, which takes place on the 6th of September. Like I said, spaces are limited. If you don’t turn up early, you might not get a space. Make sure you turn up nice and early with your workbook and pen at the ready.

Lyndsay:           Just go to jammydigital.com/webinar. We’ll see you next time on the Make Your Mark Online Podcast.

Martin & Lyndsay

The post Ep 7 – How to Transition into a Personal Brand appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.