When building a personal brand as an IP expert, the natural starting point is your own expertise — the technical fields you know, the cases you’ve won, the patents you’ve filed, or the strategies you’ve designed.

But the real shift happens when you ask a different question:
Who is your expertise for and what does it help them do?

This isn’t just a branding exercise. It’s a business-critical mindset shift. Whether you’re aiming to attract new clients, gain internal influence, or open doors to speaking or publishing opportunities, your personal brand only becomes powerful when it’s anchored in relevance. And relevance requires a clear understanding of your audience.

Why audience clarity matters

Most IP professionals work in highly specialised areas. That can make visibility feel difficult — as if you need to appeal to everyone to gain traction. But the opposite is true.

The clearer you are about who you’re trying to reach, the easier it becomes to:

  • Choose the right tone, topics, and channels for your content or communication
  • Position yourself as a problem-solver, not a service provider
  • Build recognition among the people who make decisions, influence others, or turn to experts like you in moments that matter

As marketing thinker Seth Godin puts it: you don’t need a huge audience. You need a minimum viable audience. That is, the smallest group of people who need what you offer and are ready to listen.

For IP professionals, that might not be thousands of LinkedIn followers or a full conference room. It might be:

  • Five CTOs in your sector dealing with patent thickets
  • Two general counsels trying to align IP with sustainability goals
  • A product manager who needs to understand why trade secrets matter

Defining your audience this precisely helps you speak their language, address their real pain points and become truly relevant.

Decision-makers, influencers, and end-clients

To identify your target group more clearly, it helps to divide them into three key types:

  1. Decision-makers
    These are the people who approve budgets, select experts, assign mandates, or choose who to trust. In law firms, that could be partners or managing IP counsel. In industry, it might be innovation leads, CEOs, or procurement professionals.
  2. Influencers
    They might not make the final decision, but they strongly affect it. Think of R&D team leads, in-house IP specialists, board advisors, or even conference organizers. Building trust with this group creates advocates who open doors behind the scenes.
  3. End-clients
    These are often the people who feel the problem most urgently — but may not yet be aware that IP expertise is the solution. For example, a product owner struggling with copycats, or a founder confused by licensing terms. Reaching them requires clarity and empathy, not technical depth.

Understanding which group you’re speaking to helps you choose what to emphasize. A decision-maker needs to trust your track record. An influencer may care about your methodology. An end-client needs to see that you understand their struggle and can guide them through it.

From problem to positioning

Your brand doesn’t need to start with what you know, but with what your audience needs to solve. Here’s a simple framework to guide that:

  • Who do I want to help?
  • What problem do they face?
  • How does my expertise solve that problem better or differently?

This is how you build a brand that speaks for you, even when you’re not in the room. Because in the end, a strong personal brand isn’t about standing out. It’s about being the answer someone is already looking for.

Until then, a question to reflect on:

Who are the three people you most want your expertise to matter to and which specific problem do they struggle with that your expertise can solve?

About the columnist

Giulia Donato
Branding & Communication Advisor | Executive Coach | Lecturer
people & brand strategies
www.donatostrategies.com