Читать книгу A Guide to the Scientific Career - Группа авторов - Страница 135

A community pediatrician has a unique service approach that ensures patients have short waiting room times, can easily reach a staff member by phone, and can quickly get answers to questions. He has four business partners, who are also pediatrics‐focused healthcare professionals. They attend national meetings and meet with each other monthly to stay current with guidelines and new treatments. He is interested in branding himself along with his business. He knows that his audience includes his local community of potential patients as well as his peers, who may make referrals. He has naturally adapted his practice to provide what his key target audiences value most and is ready to begin the positioning and branding exercises.

The most important aspect of personal branding is your positioning, or where you fit in your target audience's mind. This is a process of matching authentic attributes that you possess with a need that is valued by your audience. The ideal place to begin is to think from the other side of the desk, or from the perspective of your target audience. Start by creating goal scenarios that you may already have in mind based on inspiration from mentors or that you develop based on decisions you have already made. Process each scenario by imagining that you are a member of your target audience who is tasked with identifying someone of value for a specific need or problem. In other words, take yourself out of the equation and work through each scenario to identify the key characteristics of value. Force yourself to maintain an anonymous perspective, keep you and your attributes out of the picture at this point.

After completing this exercise, for each scenario, assess yourself for fit within the audience's needs. Be realistic; you want to be able to fulfill the audience's perception of value. It may be that you are capable of the tasks but that you need to work on demonstrating the capability to the audience.

The next step in building your positioning is to consider the “competition.” This can be peers, colleagues, or others who are attempting to fill the same needs with the same audience. How can you uniquely stand out in a way that your target audience truly finds valuable?

After building all of your scenarios, assess each for how it best fits you, or which feels the most authentic or important to you. You may see how you already fill those needs or how you may strive to add skills or attributes that meet the target audience needs. It may be tempting to decide on what your audience should want or need, but it is often easier to address a need that is already appreciated than to try to reeducate your audience on new concepts. Most importantly, the ideal positioning (and your brand) will be based on what is authentic and consistent with who you are and what your interests and skills are. The following case highlights a community surgeon who works hard to set himself apart from potential competitors. By studying what matters most to his audience, he is able to more easily home in on the way to communicate his value in terms they will relate to.