How To Create a Brand Persona for Your Business

Brand persona vs. brand personality

When building a brand, it is important to understand the difference between brand persona vs brand personality.

Your brand's persona is an all-encompassing term that includes any and all identifiers, types of messaging, and overall objectives you have in mind. Your brand's personality may include quirks, personality traits, and the tone of messaging you choose to use to best appeal to prospective users and/or customers.

Brand persona vs. brand identity

Along the same lines as the brand persona vs brand personality, there is also the overall brand identity. While your brand's persona may take on the personality of an individual over time, your brand identity will likely maintain a more corporate and professional appearance.

Your brand identity may include color schemes, logos, slogans, and official objectives that can help to distinguish your brand from others. Additionally, your brand identity is often less about tone, specific wording or visual elements, and more about overall goals and objectives.

Why is brand persona important?

Having brand consistency is essential, especially in markets that are overly saturated or highly competitive already. When you have cultivated a brand persona for your business, you will help it to stand out from existing competitors, even if you are new to the industry yourself.

A brand persona helps brands to stand out and helps you to set yourself apart while promoting the products, services, or information/content you offer.

A brand persona for a business can also help with resonating with target demographics on a more personal and intimate level. With the right brand persona, it is much easier to connect with those who may have a genuine interest in following and supporting your business.

Brand personas examples

From catchy slogans to uniquely colorful logos, there are many different ways to go about developing a brand persona. Before you get started with the process of learning how to create a brand persona of your own, it is important to familiarize yourself with some common brand personas examples, such as:

Corporate

The corporate, or sophisticated persona, presents itself in a modern fashion with elegance, grace, and style. Corporate personas may not have much pizazz or personality but may be optimal for official organizations such as banks and lending corporations.

Friendly

A spirited and friendly approach is useful when attempting to build an organic and loyal following for a brand. Friendly brand personas are ideal for smaller local companies as well as businesses that are highly niche in nature.

Caregiver

The caregiver persona is a common persona used to help with describing brands. Caregiver personas tend to the needs and wants of customers while also remaining kind, empathetic, and understanding of the customer's individual struggles.

Rugged/Tough

For athletic and outdoor brands, adopting a rugged voice and approach to your brand's persona is best to relate to the audience you intend to reach.

Influential leader

A competent expert or leader in a field can also help to develop a brand's voice and/or persona over time, depending on the goals you have in mind for your business and brand.

Creating a brand persona in 3 steps

Developing your brand's persona or your own personal brand requires a bit of creative brainstorming and introspection.

Once you are familiar with your own goals, you can move forward with fleshing out the brand persona that is most fitting for your business and its customers.

1. Determine your company values

What makes your business and brand stand out? Does your company offer something unique that helps to set it apart from the rest of the market you represent? Why should customers turn to your brand over existing companies? Is your company aligned with specific political values or goals? If so, how can you work this to your advantage when it comes to attracting new followers or customers?

Determining your company values and knowing what it is that you want to achieve with your brand goes a long way in developing a brand persona from scratch.

2. Know your customers

Getting to know your customers is also key when you are building a brand from the ground up, regardless of the products or services you are providing.

Who are the customers that are interested in what it is that you have to offer and align with your brand values? What demographics are most likely to find your products and services interesting or useful? Ask yourself the following questions in your quest to learn more about your target audience of customers:

• Age: What ages am I targeting with the products or services I offer?
• Gender: Am I interested in appealing to a particular gender, or are my products and services suitable for all?
• Location: Is it important for me to appeal to a certain region or zone based on where my products and services are useful?
  Once you have a deeper understanding of your customer's wants and needs, you can then use your brand's persona to appeal to them on a more personal level. Incorporating your brand's persona and personality traits into your marketing efforts can significantly impact the level of engagement you receive during each of your launched campaigns. Knowing when to use the appropriate branding voices while attempting to generate sales can help you to attract customers while building brand loyalty over time.

3. Find a symbol that captures the values of your company and customers

Before you launch any business to the public, it is imperative to have a professionally designed logo that best represents what your business has to offer as well as your designated brand persona. Spend time researching existing popular logos, logo design trends, and symbols that are most relevant to your own type of business.

Finding or creating the perfect logo is not always an instantaneous process. In fact, you may need some time to work with a professional designer to find a symbol that is ideal for representing your business and the type of consumers you are trying to reach.

If you are unsure of where to begin when it comes to selecting a logo, consider some of the following existing examples to help with drumming up a bit of inspiration:

McDonald's Arch

The McDonald's "M" Arch is one of the most well-known logos used across the US and in hundreds of countries across the world. The golden arches are used to represent "McDonald's", but they are recognizable from miles away.

Starbucks

The Starbucks logo is also infamous and is known around the globe as a woman who appears as a mermaid. While there is no specific link between a mermaid and Starbucks drinks, the image of the mermaid is unique enough with the logo's two-tone simplistic design that it stands out amongst other top coffee competitors.

Domino's

When you think of Domino's, you may think of the dominos game or you may think of Domino's pizza. For Domino's pizza they are in luck. The Domino's pizza logo uses a red and blue domino piece to represent the name of the pizza chain as well as the blue and red colors used for its brand persona.

Google

Google often changes its logo, but sticks to using primary colors, including red, green, blue, and yellow. While the logo has changed and shifted throughout the years, the color consistency has helped Google to remain identifiable.

Use brand persona in your digital marketing

Creating a persona for your brand is essential in today's highly competitive world, both online and off. When you know the difference between a brand persona vs brand personality and you implement a unique brand persona of your own into your marketing strategy, the possibilities become virtually endless.

Incorporating your brand's persona into your digital and offline marketing materials can help to solidify your brand's image and the image you wish to convey to others. A brand persona that truly aligns with your company's goals, mission statement, and objectives can help you to reach as many of your prospective clients or customers as possible in any market.