Personal Branding and "pocket brow brands"

2. Personality or a Brow Brand?

The Role of Personality in Branding

Our extensive research initiatives have made it clear that a solid, reputable brand is a critical factor in establishing trust with potential clients. This trust is closely tied to the authority that an artist can command, which can be significantly enhanced when tied to a well-known brand. The question arises: Should an artist also focus on personal branding, integrating their personality into the larger branding strategy? Best Earners Are Not Anonymous

For many artists who are just starting out, the idea of using your personality in branding can be unsettling. However, the short answer to this concern is this: leveraging your personality actually lowers customer acquisition costs considerably. Any other approach tends to be significantly more expensive. This concept becomes particularly crucial when we turn our attention to top earners in the field.

These exceptional artists, who collectively take in more than 82% of the overall revenue in the industry, make up a mere 3.5% of all students who enter training programs. When it comes to these high-earning artists, potential clients often value their individual personality as much as, or even more than, the brand they associate themselves with. Interestingly, if we dig a bit deeper into this phenomenon, we find that the situation is somewhat reversed for those actively working in the field but not among the top earners.

3. Brow Brand vs. Personality

A nuanced picture emerges when we examine the artists who are still active in the field 18 months after completing their training. For those artists for whom brow services are a secondary source of income compared to other revenue streams, aligning with an established brand name in the field becomes a more beneficial strategy. However, if you're focused on building a career in specialized pigmentation services like Powder Brows or microblading, your personality plays an equally, if not more, important role compared to the brow brand you associate with.
From this, we can draw two clear conclusions.

First, if offering brow services is more of a side hustle for you, then merely associating yourself with a reputable brow brand is adequate. Second, if you aim to join the ranks of the top earners in this industry, a dual approach is needed: align yourself with a recognized brand and leverage your unique personality.

Personality branding preparation 1 on 1

Practical Preparation for Personal Branding The need for personal branding may vary depending on your career aspirations within the brow business. Nonetheless, it's always a smart move to lay the groundwork for your personal brand as a form of "future-proofing." To start, you should consider three immediate, practical steps: a) register a .com domain with your name, b) secure an Instagram handle that includes your name, and c) create a Facebook business page named after you.

Securing a .com Domain Name

You can check the availability of a .com domain featuring your name through various platforms such as GoDaddy, Namecheap, Sav.com, or other regional providers. The registration fee usually hovers around $10 USD. If you find that your desired domain name is available, it is highly advisable to register it promptly without overthinking. There are several compelling reasons to make this move.

Search Traffic and Exact-Match Domains

Even though there are differing opinions among digital marketing experts about the significance of an "exact match" domain name for Google search queries, we've consistently found it to be highly beneficial for improving search rankings. If you choose to scale your brow business in the future, and people begin to Google your name, then an exact match domain name could give you a substantial advantage. We have repeatedly observed that websites with domain names that exactly match your name will usually rank higher in search engine results compared to those websites that utilize variations or derivatives of your name.

The Risks of Neglecting Domain Registration

Failing to register your name as a .com domain carries potential risks that can be significant. Drawing from our extensive experience in developing hundreds of brow artist brands, we've seen numerous cases where someone else has gone ahead and registered the exact .com domain of a brow artist. More often than not, this leads to a missed opportunity for the artists themselves. But, even more concerning are instances where that domain has been redirected to completely unrelated sites, products, or, in worst-case scenarios, to content that is unfavorable or damaging to the artist's reputation.

Challenges Reclaiming a Lost .com Domain

When it comes to reclaiming a .com domain that matches your name, the task is often an uphill battle, even for professionals. Obtaining it without a substantial budget is virtually impossible, and even when you're willing to invest heavily, attempts to recover your domain frequently come up empty-handed. From a legal standpoint, your options are considerably restricted. Generally, you're limited to actions such as having compromising content de-ranked or removed from search engines. However, the success rate for these legal maneuvers is unpredictable. If the domain's server is located in countries like Asia, Russia, or any post-Soviet states, even professionals skilled in less conventional, 'black-hat' methods have been thwarted by similarly skilled and unyielding opponents.

The Importance of Branding with Your Name

Arguably, the most crucial reason to register a .com domain that matches your name is directly tied to building your personal brand. Unless you frequently change their name due to marriage, for example, or as part of a branding strategy, your given name is essentially what you have to work within your branding efforts. When establishing a strong personal brand, having a domain that matches your name is generally more impactful than a modified, albeit catchy, version. Therefore, it provides yet another compelling reason to secure your .com domain as soon as possible.

Matching Handles: Essential but Less So Than Domains

While having matching handles on Instagram and Facebook is also beneficial, these are generally less crucial compared to owning a .com domain name. The reason is that social media platforms offer more flexibility with web addresses. For instance, if you own your .com name, you could opt for a handle like [yourname]com on Instagram and use [yourname].com on Facebook.

Dealing with Handle Misuse

When it comes to unauthorized use of a handle that matches your name exactly, you generally have better odds of resolving the issue on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Although customer support from Meta platforms can sometimes be slow to respond, they do eventually acknowledge international law and take corrective action. In contrast, negotiating with a black-hat hacker from random country who demands $3,000 for your matching .com domain has no such guarantees, making the domain name an even more critical asset to secure.

4. The Role of a Brow Brand

The second critical component of successful branding in the brow business is your association with a reputable brow brand. This is not merely an "option" to consider; it's an absolute necessity, especially if you aim to become a top artist in the field. Various studies confirm that offering brow services without the backing of a reputable brand is significantly more challenging.

The Trust Factor

When we examine two scenarios— an artist beginning with neither a personal brand nor a brow brand versus an artist associating themselves with a reputable brow brand— the difference in gaining customer trust is a staggering 6.3 times! Essentially, attempting to market brow services as an "anonymous no-name" is a losing proposition.

Comparative Impact on Pricing

This trust gap is greater in the brow services industry than in many other sectors, including groceries and small-ticket items. It also directly impacts your ability to set prices. Aligning yourself with a recognized brand not only enhances customer trust but also provides you with greater pricing flexibility Two Basic Ways to "Skin the Brow-Brand Cat"

There are two fundamental approaches to identifying yourself with a brow brand: cooperating with an existing brand or forging your own. The first path might appear as a logical choice, especially if you've recently graduated from brow training. However, as an emerging artist in the field, it's crucial to be cautious when contemplating the idea of linking your professional identity to a brow brand. Let's delve into why one should carefully analyze this decision before reflexively becoming a "marketing ambassador" for a brow brand.

Pocket Brow brand or real brand - due diligence

Checklist to Go Through - Due Diligence: Is it a "Lightweight Pocket Brow Brand" or a Real Brand?

When it comes to many brow trainers and their "brow brands," you first simply need to analyze three things: a) Instagram reach, b) Google image search, and c) trademark check. These three steps give a pretty good idea about the actual influence of making the connection with the brand. This means that it's not so intuitive that the academy you work with would actually be a brand that the owners have spent time and resources to develop, and that may give you an advantage. In many cases, promoting that sort of "lightweight pocket brow brand," which is just a reflection of a real brand, does not enhance you as an artist or your brand; it just makes a brand with a very small reach a bit more popular.

Instagram hashtag Post Count

When you make an Instagram hashtag search with the term #[browacademy] that you attended, the results are telling. Anything under 1,000 results should make you think long and hard about whether connecting your identity with that brand really pays off or if you just believe in the dream and vision of the academy owner who wants you to promote her. As we shall soon see, it might be more feasible for you to create your own brow brand in such cases. Whereas, if the brow brand name that you want to associate yourself with has thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands (in some very rare cases, also millions) of posts that come up with that hashtag, the situation is different. Then, associating yourself with that brand probably works to your advantage, not the other way around.

Google Image Search

This is a good indication of what this brand is associated with. Sometimes, some words may produce a higher ranking when it comes to all terms but signify something entirely different when it comes to actual brand associations. Whereas, if you image search the brand name (without spaces), you often better understand its reach. Google is getting harder to fool, and its goal is to give you as accurate a picture as possible. If you see that even on a local level, the brand has weak reach and associated images signify, let's say, a Korean boy band, then there is little chance for you to get a remarkable "marketing boost" by associating yourself with the brand.

Trademark Search

This is one more easy step to take, which gives quite a good idea about the actual weight of the brand. Why? Because when it comes to being "a brand," one almost always needs to register a trademark to protect it. All sorts of background stories or explanations for why one has not done so when developing a brow brand are rather sketchy. Namely, this indicates that the owner is not interested in making the first and principal investment in creating the brand and accepts a constant risk that someone else could just spend approximately USD 1,000 to file an application and perhaps get the trademark. If you find a correct trademark that belongs to the academy and is registered in the categories related to brow services, then there is a much higher probability that the owners will at least take developing their brand seriously.

To search for trademarks in the European Union, you can use the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) database. The official website is: https://euipo.europa.eu/eSearch/ The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) provides a search database for trademarks in the United States. The official website is: https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks-application-process/search-trademark-database

The Power of a Generic Name .com Domain

There's a unique scenario where a trademark may not be necessary for a brand: when the name is so generic, it can't even be registered. However, acquiring a ".com" domain for such a generic name often costs 50-1,000 times more than registering a trademark. It's highly unlikely that a random individual would own such a domain. If a brow brand owns a .com domain that consists of generic terms related to the brow business, the brand can usually be taken seriously. This demonstrates that they've made significant investments in branding. Based on our digital marketing team's experience in facilitating the sales of such domains, we can assure you that good, brow-related generic domains are usually priced in the multiple six-figure range.

Associating with a Brand Name When It Adds Value

The takeaway is that associating yourself with a brand is beneficial only if it amplifies your brand. Otherwise, you're essentially just promoting their brand, not your own. If your due diligence shows that a brow brand has weak reach on Instagram, Google image search yields many unrelated results, and there's no trademark, you might want to consider the "second option of skinning the branding cat": creating your own "pocket brow brand."

5. Creating your "Pocket Brow Brand"

Creating Your Own "Pocket Brow Brand": As Easy as 1-2-3

Creating your own brow brand might seem daunting initially. However, you may find that you're not that different from the brow brand owner you just graduated from. The situation is analogous to the well-known story about outrunning a bear: You don't need to be faster or more skillful than the bear—just faster than the slowest person in the group. And this difference is often marginal. What does this mean in practical terms? Your small "pocket brow brand" could outperform your brow trainer's "international academy" brand in a matter of weeks if you play your cards right. In that case, you're no longer the slowest one "escaping the bear."

The Best Way to Get Started: Brandsnap.ai

Many artists have used text from leading academies or established brow brands as input for Brandsnap.ai, a free AI-based naming service. The system often generates superior options for a "pocket brand name" compared to those of the "pocket academies" artists have trained under. Brandsnap.ai stands out because it analyzes the provided information semantically, not just lexically. This results in brand name suggestions that are more closely aligned with the essence of your brow business rather than merely rehashing generic terms.

Setting Up Your Website

The next step is creating a quick, five-minute website. Here are three platforms that have proven to be effective:

Squarespace: Offers customizable templates and easy drag-and-drop features. Squarespace
Wix: Provides a variety of templates and a user-friendly drag-and-drop builder with multiple add-ons. Wix
Webflow: A web design tool that allows for advanced customization. Webflow

Regardless of the platform you choose, the feedback has been positive. If you opt for Wix, their logo maker often generates logos that are of higher quality than those of the pocket brow brands artists have graduated from.

Third Step: Utilize AI for Text and Launch the Site

What does leveraging AI for text mean? Simply open a document on your computer or Google Docs, copy text from your trainer's pocket brow brand and other sites, and feed it into a language model like ChatGPT. Transfer the improved text to your website. According to students, the whole process takes roughly an hour from start to finish. Some artists even feed the generated text back into ChatGPT (GPT 4, paid version) multiple times for further refinement. Surprisingly, these AI-generated texts often surpass the quality of the original content found on pocket brow brands.

Launch the Same Day

Believe it or not, some artists have managed to create a brow brand, build a website, and populate it with content all during a lunch break, using just their mobile phones. Remarkably, these quickly-assembled brands often perform as well as, or better than, the pocket brow brands of their trainers. Even more noteworthy is the fact that these sites, particularly when built on platforms like Squarespace, Wix, or Webflow, can sometimes achieve better search rankings. While they won't outperform established brow brands, they do provide a credible online presence for budding brow artists.

Obviously,it should be taken with some grain of salt. However, we hope you get the idea. Speed is important! Get started, and do not wait for something perfect to fall from the sky to your lap. Take action today!

6. Conclusions

If you want to build a career in the brow business, your strategy may depend on your goals. If offering brow services is a secondary income source, aligning yourself with an established brow brand, such as an academy, may suffice. However, if your aim is to become a top earner, you'll likely need to establish both a brow brand and a personal brand that truly resonates with you.

The foundation for your personal brand starts with securing your name as a .com domain if it's available. Doing so not only improves your search rankings but also prevents anyone else from exploiting your name, thereby reinforcing your brand identity.

Before aligning yourself with a brow brand, it's crucial to determine whether it's a legitimate brand or just another "pocket brow brand." To do this, conduct due diligence by checking the brand's reach on Instagram through hashtag searches, performing a Google Image search, and investigating for trademark registration.

If the brand passes these checks, partnering with it can enhance your marketing efforts. On the other hand, if you're dealing with a "pocket brow brand," you may find it more advantageous to create your own. A streamlined approach to this involves using Brandsnap.ai to generate a brand name, registering that name as a domain, and setting up a website populated with AI-optimized text from a platform like ChatGPT. This approach improves your marketing efficacy and presents a more appealing option than becoming a "brand ambassador" for another pocket brow brand.