Do your marketing communications bring life to your brand? Do they “speak” your voice? Do they connect you with your customers? And yes, do they have a unique Brand identity? In simple terms, does your company have a brand persona?
What is Brand Persona?
A brand persona is a collection of personality traits, attitudes and values that your brand showcases from time to time to connect with the target audience. It is a technique that helps you to better understand the target market by bringing the typical consumer to Brand’s life. An object, an image, an animal or even a cartoonish character of your company can all be personas.
Well, a strong Brand Persona doesn’t happen overnight. You simply can’t just take some colours and put together a logo. You can’t simply have a conversation with people and build it. Same you can’t do an event and tell what is your Brand Persona. You need an approach to design and create a persona strategically. You need to create a Persona that brings life to your Brand. A Persona is what connects you with your customers. The Best example you can take is from Apple. What Apple did in 2006 with its “Get a Mac” campaign, is a perfect example to introduce you to Brand Persona. They simply showcase the Mac and the PC guys. They introduced themselves to the camera and banter about what each of them can or can’t do.
Why do you need a Strong Brand Persona?
How many of your past relationships worked out without the Connection or matching the vibe? Most probably – None. Same goes with your Brand. Your brand persona creates a real connection between your brand and the customers. If you don’t create a persona intentionally, some type of personality will come out of what you do. And that might not work for you.
A strong persona can take your relationship with the customer in a long way. It helps to establish a valuable and human connection between customers and your brand.
Now, you will have a question that, how can we build a strong and powerful Brand Persona. No need to worry—it’s not as difficult as you might think. Here we present you some tips which can help you.
How to build Persona?
- Know the Brand’s Scope
Let’s assume your Bakery specializes in making Customized cakes with some imported or unique ingredients in it. You need to include the customers who are open to taste such kind of Cakes. You need to examine the Purchasing behavior and the frequency of Customers. You need to keep Brand preference and extent of loyalty in mind. Price sensitivity is one of the major aspects of Brand’s Persona scope. In addition to that Gender, Age range, Education and occupation also play a vital role. Paint a picture of how your customers should look like.
A good way to think about a brand persona is to question yourself about, How do you describe a typical consumer in the target market? Try to see the Brand Persona like that creamy layer of your cake, which gives the final finish. Who are the people who are willing to taste that creamy layer?
- Make your Aesthetics appealing
We all judge the book by its cover, so the chances of a book with a bad/low quality are quality cover is slim to none. It is human nature to make perceptions. Your brand is perceived based on what your customers see. Be it your Hoardings or your social media, they do judge your Brand by the Visuals. What they see helps them make an image of your brand in their minds. So, before creating any kind of visual or a design you have to think that exactly you want your audience to perceive about your brand through the visuals that you endorse.
Sit and think of how you can use effective visuals to create a strong brand persona. Hire a professional and let them know what you want. Take the perception of people around you, what they think about it and what vibe they are getting from it. Committing to defining and building your aesthetic is one way to connect with customers and build a powerful persona.
- Keep Consistency
Consistency is one of the most significant principals of the overall concept of brand and is the secret of successful Persona. Every brand has its style of tonality to convey important messages to the audience that gives it a unique identity. For example Dove. The brand is one of the renowned brands in the retail industry. It has been dedicatedly maintaining its Brand Consistency through its nature of products, communication and packaging designs amongst others. All the product packaging and communication from the Dove are designed using the similar colour shades, fonts, and play of other creative elements and one can easily recognize the brand products even without noticing the brand name. And that is the power of Strong Persona.
- Understand what makes your brand
Just like for being a better human being, you need to understand yourself first, same goes with your Brand Persona. You need to point out your strengths and weaknesses and work on that for the betterment. This can help your brand seem not only more personal and dynamic, but more authentic too.
Apart from that start looking at how your Brand differs from the others in the market. After all, Branding is all about differentiation. These are the important things in making your brand persona stand out. It is the reason people will choose you over others.
- Know your Competition
We have spoken about standing out of the competition, but the first step is to know and understand What, Who and how your competition is? Learning about your brand’s competition will expand your knowledge about your target audience and consumers so that you can refine your Brand Persona strategically.
Check how do your competitors position their Brand? Do they appeal to a particular age group, gender, or any specific market? Are they a luxury service or geared for the cost-conscious? Do they use environmentally friendly products? The more you know about your competitors’ positioning, the stronger you can work on yours.
It will also help you to communicate with your target audience, distinguish your brand from competitors, improve your processes, and navigate challenges.
Also, try to see Direct and Indirect Competitors both. It will help you to stand out in the saturated market.
- Show the benefits you offer
The most important aspect of your Brand persona is to show customers the real benefits your brand has to offer. If we go back to Apple, it’s much easier to show benefits, when you have a well-developed brand persona. A Brand that can inspire, through its brand persona, a certain feeling in the consumers, must show that its product also presents these characteristics.
Your brand is an important marker of identity for external audiences but they will always seek what benefits they get from your Brand. Your brand Persona is a direct reflection of what your customers should expect from you.
- Portray your Vision and Mission
The more steps you will take to bring the consumers to close, the more they will. Try to treat them like a family. Share your Mission and vision with them. Your Brand’s mission is a statement about why your brand exists? In simpler words, what are you trying to accomplish? A simple example is Google. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Whereas, your vision is a more specific outline of how you see your Brand developing. In other words, where will you be in the next five years? Google’s vision is to “provide an important service to the world-instantly delivering relevant information on virtually any topic.”
Nothing is more powerful in Branding than expanding your customers as family. And brands notice that it’s much easier getting to them if they have a well-developed brand persona.
Make your own Vision and Mission for Brand and share it with your Audience. It will surely help to extend you, customer family.
Having a strong Brand Persona is always a plus point in making you a Market Leader. A great example is Red Bull. Red Bull is just not a leader when it comes to energy drinks. The company is also known in the marketing world for its relation to customers and the extra-WINGS it provides. The idea that Red Bull “gives you wings” is a crucial aspect of their brand persona. They always keep making sure it shows up on every part of their communication. Its Brand persona follows the above-mentioned steps and is as courageous, outgoing, and energetic as it can be. And that is what makes it easy to interact with both professional athletes as well as the party-going and upbeat audience!
If you’d like help in creating or freshening up your brand persona—and incorporating it into a more comprehensive set of brand guidelines, we’d love to help you for the same. Contact us today only as who knows about tomorrow?
