Is Your Brand's Persona Working?

More importantly, does your brand actively have its own persona and voice, or is that something you’ve never really considered?

Small businesses can fall into the trap of their business basically becoming an extension of their personal presence. Bigger companies, conversely, can end up with no personality.

Neither are very effective when it comes to marketing your business to potential customers.

What is a Brand Persona?

When you focus on “building a brand” over “building a business”, you are subconsciously making the decision to build a presence with a specific messaging that will make your product or service more attractive to consumers.

This messaging is essentially your businesses voice – the start of a fully fledged brand persona. People like to deal with businesses that they can connect with on a human level. So by bringing your brand to life in the way of brand values, practices and tone, it makes it easier for consumers to form an emotional connection to your business that goes deeper than simply choosing one product provider over another.

Personality vs Personal

Walking the line between showing personality to make your brand unique and oversharing your personal life in an effort to “show the human side of the brand” is a particular problem for entrepreneurs and small business owners.

I know that I’ve ended up unfollowing many a solopreneur whose profile promises professional, and then their feed delivers a collage of their private lives with one or two business posts thrown in. It can get a bit too personal.

At the end of the day, as much as you want potential clients to connect with the human behind the brand, any content strategy for a brand profile should be marketing first.

Developing a brand persona separate to the business owner

There are many reasons why it’s a good idea to develop a distinct personality for your brand, including:

• It allows the brand to exist in its own right, which will help growth further down the line.

• The brand can embody exactly the values and personality traits that fit the business, industry and target market – separate from what the owner is like in real life.

• Potential customers can get a feel for the business itself, it’s strengths, values and capabilities.

Developing the ideal brand persona for your business should be a mix of external and internal influences. Your brand will be more authentic when it stems from your core reasons for starting your business. It should uphold the ideals you personally want to bring to your industry and consumers.

Just as important, though, is understanding your consumer – their needs, desires and what kind of brand would attract them.

You can only fill a need in the market when you know what the need is.

Allow your Brand to be Organic

Once you have a feel for the brand persona you want your business to embody, remember to allow your brand to grow over time. Much like a real person, your brand should be able to grow and change with the world around it, as well as its own internal growth.

Get to know your brand as a person and entity separate to yourself, this will allow its persona to shine and move in the directions it needs to in order to fulfill your consumer’s needs.