How To Create a Brand Persona
Have you ever imagined what your brand might be like in human form? How its personality traits, opinions, and behaviors would help it form connections with your customers on an emotional level? This is your brand persona in action.
Your brand persona serves as a valuable template for building strong connections with your target market, staying consistent across communication channels, and supporting your internal and external interactions. In this guide, we’re breaking down what a brand persona is so you can create an effective strategy for your business.
What is a brand persona?
A brand persona is a character or profile based on your company that serves as a personified representation of your brand as a whole.
The element of personification
A brand with humanistic traits throughout communications, marketing campaigns, and design processes creates an entity with which customers can easily form an emotional connection.
A guide for marketing and customer-facing activities
Different brands have different personalities. Think of the following examples:
Apple: Sleek, innovative, and minimalistic
Patagonia: Adventurous, eco-friendly, and passionate about the journey
Nike: Motivated, hardworking, and willing to push boundaries in pursuit of greatness
Coca-Cola: Cheerful, nostalgic, and optimistic
Chanel: Luxurious, elegant, and refined
These descriptions tend to be uniform across the board because each company uses its unique brand persona to inform every aspect of outreach, advertising, marketing, and beyond.
A tool of communication
Effective branding will always have guidelines for a company’s tone, personality, and messaging. The persona you build helps you align your business’s voice with its values and mission statement.
Whether someone’s reading social media posts, an advertisement, or a targeted email, they should be able to recognize your brand’s unique language.
Related: What’s a Brand Framework and Why Do You Need One?
What elements does a brand persona encompass?
So, how do you build a brand persona that reflects your company’s identity? Start by defining the following characteristics:
Brand voice and tone
What you say and how you say it form a fundamental part of your brand identity. While your brand’s tone may shift to match various situations, its voice should remain consistent across all of your communications.
Visual identity
Your business’s aesthetic elements, including the logo, fonts, and color palettes, support better recognition and reinforce your brand persona.
Visual identity extends to photography, design styles, and iconography, too.
Visual identity should be cohesive throughout every aspect of your business, including internal and external communications, marketing materials, product branding, and your company’s digital presence.
Core values
What are the non-negotiable principles and beliefs that guide your company’s goals, actions, and decision-making processes? Core values aren’t empty promises.
Instead, they’re ideals that drive your actions every step of the way. Consider what values your business aligns with and incorporate these into your branding strategy.
Personality traits
Your brand persona will include human characteristics that give your company a uniquely likable personality. Is your business playful or serious? Confident or humble? Approachable or elite?
Think about your brand’s overall demeanor and of your typical customer to nail down this important element of your company’s identity.
Read more: What Are Brand Assets?
How to start building your brand persona
Ready to build your brand persona? Here’s a guide to get you started:
1. Understand your target audience
The ultimate objective of a brand persona is to connect with customers in meaningful ways so that they want to continue using your products or services. Start building these connections by understanding their goals, their pain points, and what makes them tick.
Consider various market segments, organized by demographics, psychographics, and behavioral patterns, to build a strong picture of your average customer. If you don’t currently have the information you need, you can conduct surveys and interviews or perform in-depth data analytics to round out your knowledge.
2. Define your mission and values
Most people want to spend their money with companies that hold similar values and goals to their own, so you can think of these elements as the heart and soul of your brand. To take your connection beyond a transactional relationship, you’ll need to define the following:
Mission: The reason your company exists
Vision: Your brand’s trajectory
Values: The principles guiding each action
3. Develop your visual identity and messaging
Consider your company’s voice, tone, and messaging to define your approach to communications. This is a key element of your brand’s personality and includes a curated vocabulary, value propositions, and tag lines.
When customers interact with your brand, they should feel that all communications come from the same “person” (AKA your business). Of course, words and messages can only go so far in creating a recognizable brand.
As you design a logo, select brand colors, and establish branding guidelines, ensure each element accurately and genuinely reflects your company’s personality.
4. Keep evolving as your brand grows
Your branding persona isn’t a static entity. Be prepared to adjust various aspects of your brand’s identity as your business grows, your target audience fluctuates, or socio-economic factors evolve.
Over time, you may need to update your language, visuals, and even your underlying mission statement if you find that your direction has changed. Perform regular brand audits to identify elements that are no longer working and ensure that your brand persona still feels authentic and relevant.
Related: What Do Branding Agencies Do for Businesses?
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