How to Develop a Brand Persona

A brand persona is an important concept in marketing. If you want your business to succeed and appeal to consumers, it is in your interest to develop a consistent, relatable, and recognizable brand persona. Communicating with consumers is not so different from communicating on a personal level, and consumers generally appreciate the same traits in a brand as they do in a person.

What is a Brand Persona?

A brand persona, or brand personality, is the “personality” that would be attributed to your brand if it were a living person. In most industries, consumers want to feel as if they are speaking to a person rather than a faceless corporation. Even though communications and advertisements from your company may be produced and sent by different people with different traits, you probably want your company’s messages to feel part of a cohesive “whole.”

For example, the brand persona of Apple emphasizes and promotes creativity, user-friendliness, and a lack of pretension. This reflects the traits, desires, and aspirations of its target market.

Choose the Right Persona for What Your Business Provides

It is important to choose the right brand persona for your business. For example, if you are selling novelty or humorous gifts, you will need to take a drastically different tone than if you are a funeral director’s service! Some businesses have become very successful by using what would be considered as unexpected personas that use high-risk strategies such as making fun of customers or potential customers. For other businesses, sincerity and a caring nature are vital.

One useful method is to work backward – start by creating a “buyer persona.” A buyer persona is a collection of the traits of your ideal customer and can be either drawn from existing customer demographics or developed as a new desired target market.

Remember that your brand persona should be reflected across all of your communications – whether it is advertisements, responses to emails or social media comments, or even speaking directly over the phone or face to face. It is important to be consistent with your brand persona to ensure that customers return.

Use Social Media

Social media is an easy and effective way to develop and maintain your brand persona. Social media accounts are free to create on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and enable you to communicate directly with customers and potential customers. While many companies have received incredibly bad publicity as a result of their poorly conceived social media interactions, others have managed to use social media to their advantage – there are many examples of extremely creative social media campaigns that are worth checking out.

Conclusion

It is important not just to choose the right brand persona for your business, but to take care to develop and maintain it across all channels of communication and media that your company uses. Ultimately, developing an effective brand persona is an incredibly useful tool in increasing your customer base and profits, as consumers will respond positively to the “human touch” that a good brand persona displays.