There are a number of reasons to use your face as your logo and your name as all or the predominant part of your business name:

  • People remember and distinguish between faces

Everyone’s memory works differently, but if you have spent any time with someone, you will remember their face and distinguish them from other people. If you bump into them or see them somewhere, even if you can’t immediately recall their name, you will at least know they are familiar to you.

Distinguishing between faces is a fundamental human skill, distinguishing between logos isn’t. I know this from personal experience because despite my uncanny resemblance to Brad Pitt, so far no-one has asked for my autograph yet.

By 3 months of age a baby learns to distinguish between faces it knows and those it doesn’t. So take advantage of this and display your photo as much as you can to help people who haven’t met you yet to distinguish you from others.

Unless of course your target market suffers from prosopagnosia, otherwise known as ‘face blindness’. People with this condition have difficulty recognising people based on their face. But if that thought worries you, there are far more people who are colour blind so they wouldn’t appreciate the effort you put into the colours of your logo much either.

  • You are your unique selling proposition

“In advertising, not to be different is virtually suicidal.” – Bill Bernbach

You are the one of the few truly unique things your business has that no other Mortgage Broker can copy. Ultimately, your unique selling proposition is you, so differentiate yourself by bringing yourself to the fore.

Don’t be afraid to be unusual and different because blending into the crowd will ensure you are quickly forgotten. It’s better to be weird and remembered than unremarkable and forgotten.

  • Familiarity is the first step to trust

The more often people see you and your name, the more familiar with you they become. People do not race to trusting others they are unfamiliar with, so this is a necessary first step towards building that trust which is crucial to your business.

  • Make yourself recognisable

I said previously in this chapter that ‘a brand is recognisable and trusted’. By putting your photo at the front of your marketing you are at least giving yourself a chance to be recognisable – trust is something we are working towards, but we can at least get the first part underway.

  • It makes people feel like they already know you

The hard part of Mortgage Broking is getting people you haven’t ever met before to meet you for the first time with a positive predisposition towards you. Having people see your photo over and over again helps to break down this natural resistance.

In particular, when someone reads something written by you and it has your photo prominently on it, they start to feel like they are speaking to you. There is a huge difference in the conversations I have with people who have been given a copy of my book with my photo on it, or even with those who have received several emails from me with my photo on them. There is more familiarity from them towards me which makes moving towards a meeting much easier.