Think of some of the most valued brands today. Nike, Apple, Airbnb, Dove, Patagonia all resonate with specific audiences for different reasons.
These brands have strong personalities and strong emotional ties with customers built from years of being in business.
Individuals know what to expect when it comes to these brands, which is why the businesses have seen continued success. Building a strong brand presence like this comes from having a smart brand persona.
Brand personas are basically the personality that a brand adopts to communicate and connect with its target audience.
It’s a way of humanizing a brand, giving it characteristics, traits, and behaviors that people can relate to.
This persona helps to shape how the brand communicates its message, designs its marketing materials, and interacts with customers. Just like individuals, brands can be perceived as friendly, authoritative, quirky, serious, or any number of other qualities.
Establishing a clear brand persona helps to create consistency in messaging and helps consumers form emotional connections with the brand.
That said, crafting your brand persona isn’t a simple afternoon activity. It will likely require a group effort and should evolve as you learn more about your target audience.
Not sure how to get started? Here are three better ways to craft your brand persona:
Article Contents
1. Start With The “Why”
Before you can recruit your team to help brainstorm your brand’s persona, you need to establish the “why.”
Why will deciding on a personality for your brand help you succeed? Why will creating a niche persona help you better engage with your target audience?
Why will this help set you apart from the competition? Answering these questions will help you identify the main objective for this exercise.
Avoid falling into the trap of stopping at defining your brand’s personality and not going into your persona. A brand’s personality is a general vibe of the brand, including tone of voice.
A persona builds upon this to create a literal character of your brand or your ideal target. The end result is a clear depiction of your brand, something that customers can feel inspired, motivated, or driven by.
If you’re feeling stuck, you may want to bring in outside expertise. A digital PR agency can assist with crafting your persona since they specialize in understanding consumer behavior, market trends, and effective communication strategies.
Their expertise can provide valuable insights that can help refine your brand persona to better resonate with your target audience.
2. Speak With Your Customers
One of the best ways to determine what your audience wants is to ask them outright. New technologies have made it easier than ever to connect with your customers, no matter where they live.
Chatbots on your site can prompt recent purchasers through a series of questions to elicit responses.
SMS messages can welcome new customers and ask them for feedback. Email newsletters can send out a promo code in exchange for completing a quick survey.
When you speak with your customers directly, you can identify what motivates them and learn how to best address their needs. You’ll see how they speak, including what types of verbiage they use.
This will be important in terms of how you come across to your audience. Speaking with overly zealous language may not be the right tone for a younger demographic, for instance.
Rather, you may want to lean into using slang and acronyms that they use amongst their friends.
Chatting with your current customers will also show what kind of role your brand plays in their lives. An eco-friendly detergent company may be a reliable partner to moms.
But, a foreign language app may be seen as a friend for travel enthusiasts. Both of these are important roles; the difference is how the brand shows up in the consumers’ lives, including how often and in what way. Knowing this can help you forge a better tie to your current and potential new customers.
3. Focus On A Storyline
When building out your persona, focus on creating a storyline. This should be engaging, something that your team can recite easily. The more details the better here.
The story should go beyond the facts, such as gender, age, and geographic location. The more illustrious you can be, the more you will differentiate yourselves from others in the marketplace.
This doesn’t mean you need to add frivolous details for the sake of it. Rather, concentrate on areas that matter.
Listing out other brands where the persona shops or how they spend their freetime can be pertinent information.
However, what they order from their favorite fast food restaurant may be a little too detailed if your brand isn’t in the food space.
Another benefit to focusing on a storyline is that it will be more memorable than reciting straight facts.
Rambling off facts to a potential client isn’t as interesting as a story that they can call to mind. A story can also develop over time as you gain more audience insights.
Takeaways
A compelling brand persona can help set your company apart. You’ll be more efficient in your marketing tactics, focusing on those that appeal most to your persona.
All of your tactics, from media banners to content, will tie back to your persona. This can help solidify your brand’s positioning and leave a more lasting impression on your audience.
