How to Build a Personal Brand Strategy That Actually Works: The Brand Umbrella Method

If you're someone who gets confused about what you want to be known for, what you're providing to your customers, or how to bring your messaging together, let me introduce you to the brand umbrella. This is something I've been teaching my clients for years when it comes to building a personal brand strategy with an organised hierarchy of messaging.

What Is a Personal Brand Strategy Umbrella?

Visualise an actual umbrella. At the top, you've got the catchall – the thing you want to be known for. For me, that's personal branding for women, helping them become bold and powerful voices in the world so they can claim their space with confidence.

Your brand umbrella isn't just what you do – it's what you're here to do in the world. It's the thing you love to talk about, the mission you're on, the big vision you have. What do you want your work to do in the world? Who is it for? What's the opportunity for them?

When you get really clear on that, everything else cascades from it.

Level 1: Your Hyper-Specific Ideal Client

The next level of your personal brand strategy is getting super deep on who exactly you're here to serve. And I mean specific – not “I work with people to do X.” That's speaking to nobody specifically.

You want to be so clear that if you called out into a crowd of people, they would literally raise their hand. They'd know you're speaking directly to them.

I work with women who are action-takers in service-based businesses who want to build their personal brand, become visible, build their authority, create digital products, and potentially get on video, podcasts, or write a book to get their message out there.

See how specific that is? Someone who wants to stay behind the scenes or doesn't want to be visible knows immediately that's not them – and that's perfect.

One of my clients is a leadership coach who works with leaders within SMEs (small to medium enterprises) who have teams. She helps them empower their teams to be self-led. If you're a leader with a team in an SME, you know that's absolutely you.

I know we get scared to narrow it down because we worry about excluding people. But here's the thing – people who really want to work with you will still come, even if they're on the outer edge of your specific client callout.

Level 2: Your Content Themes and Personal Brand Strategy

Because we're building a personal brand, your content themes aren't just the topics you talk about. Yes, I might talk about branding, sales, and marketing, but it's also my lessons, what my clients are doing, what I'm doing personally.

When people follow me on Instagram or TikTok, they might see me going away for a girls' weekend or doing a session with a client. Think about your content pillars in a holistic way – that's what's required for personal branding.

Look at people like Grace Beverley or Leila Hormozi. We love seeing their personalities, what they're up to, the business side, the conversations they're having, how they're thinking about things, their projects, what's going on in their lives.

You get to decide how much you share, but start thinking about your content in both business and personal terms. For me, it's about 70% business, 30% personal – find what works for you.

Level 3: Your Aligned Product Suite

Your brand umbrella also includes your products and services. This is a real opportunity to audit and assess: do all of these serve my overarching brand umbrella, purpose, vision, mission?

If you've got things that aren't aligned, they're going to feel disjointed. We want a cohesive cascade from your brand umbrella and mission to your client, to your message, to your aligned product and service suite.

Really understanding your client and your message will help you create products and services that are so aligned to what your clients need right now, it's going to be bang on.

And here's the truth bomb: if you don't love your product suite, you're not going to sell it. If it feels heavy or not what you really want to put out there, you won't talk about it – which affects your sales and marketing.

Level 4: Your Marketing and Sales Strategy

The final level is your marketing and sales. What exactly are you selling? When are you selling it?

I work with my clients on Monthly Energised Marketing Offers (MEMOs) – every month you have a clear understanding of what you're marketing. Are we running ads? Is there a call to action? Are we launching? Is something evergreen? Are we emailing our list?

Think about what you do really well that's going to help you get your message out there to your exact client, communicate the value you offer them, and then offer them the product and service.

Don't be scared about selling. The whole point of building a brand and going out into the world is to sell our products and services. If you want to help someone achieve a goal because you're passionate about it, but you're not selling what you have so they can experience that transformation – what's the point?

Making Your Personal Brand Strategy Work with AI

If you're using AI (and you should be – why not save time?), you want it to be authentically you. Within Claude or ChatGPT projects, I create documents on who my clients are, what I do, my background, my brand story, my tone of voice. I also add transcripts from podcasts and videos so it gets my wording.

I share everything about my products, building a library that is my business. When it's creating for me, it's pulling from that source of knowledge and truth.

Your message is only going to be as good as the information backing it up – your insights, what you're seeing in the world, how you're communicating that to your customer, what your customers are saying to you, and how you're reflecting that back so they feel like you're reading their mind.

Your Personal Brand Strategy Action Steps

Get really clear on these four levels:

1. Your overarching mission – what you're here to do in the world
2. Your hyper-specific ideal client – so detailed they'd raise their hand in a crowd
3. Your content themes – business expertise mixed with personal insights
4. Your aligned offerings – products and services that serve your mission

When you don't have consistency of message and you're not clear on your pillars, it's really hard for your message to cut through the noise. Remember, brands are built on repetition. We need to talk about the same things over and over again in different ways.

When you get really clear on all of these things, your business will flow so much better and feel so much lighter whilst actually hitting the mark.