YOUR BRAND PERSONALITY

 

Hello and welcome back. This is part three in this brand fundamentals mini series where we’ll be looking at your brand personality.

 

By the end of this short tutorial you’ll have an understanding of what a brand personality is, how to develop one and why it’s so important in terms of connecting with your followers.

 

WHAT IS A BRAND PERSONALITY?

 

Well this one does exactly what it says on the tin. This is the personality of your business and brand. But what does that mean exactly? If you want your followers to feel a connection with you, there has to be a human element to your business.

 

As I said, your brand is the personality of your business. But what is the personality of your brand?

 

I’ve got some great news for you. You get to choose. You can allow your business to develop a reputation all of it’s own and let your followers make up their own mind about you or you can create its personality with intention and direction.

 

You can make a conscious decision about how you want to be seen and help influence that reputation in a really positive way.

 

How do you want your peers, your clients and your prospective customers to feel about your business? How do you want to be perceived and described?  What energy do you want to put out into the world through your brand?  What do you want to be known for in terms of customer experience?

 

Think about yourself, what is it that people really like and appreciate about you? Is it that you are always willing to give your time to help them with a problem? Is it that you are honest and trustworthy? Is it because you are hilarious and always make them smile. The things that your friends appreciate in you are not dissimilar to the things that your clients will appreciate about your brand.

 

And these are all things to think about when developing your brand personality because the most important aspect in the personality of your brand is you. As I said, I’m mainly focussing on creating more of a personal brand where you play a bit part as the face of your business. The process is a little different to creating a company brand.

 

Now a great exercise I love to do with my clients is to have them write down their own perfect testimonial as if it were written by their ideal client. How would yours read? Why don’t you give it a go? Take a break here to bullet point all the great things you’d love to hear them say about their experience of working with you and using your product or service.

 

I hope you managed to get down at least five comments in your perfect testimonial that outline how you want others to experience your brand. Now this should give you some insight into the areas that need improvement or that you really need to start shouting about. Because how do they know they’re going to have that experience unless you them?

 

Are you conveying these aspects of your brand to your ideal client? Do they know that you have an easy ordering system that takes just two simple steps? Do they know that they’ll get unhindered access to you via email for questions and concerns if they sign up to your membership? Are they aware that you have a no quibble returns policy?

 

Are you getting all this great stuff across in your content? These are all aspects of your brand personality. Now, the purpose of your brand's personality is essentially focussed around how your brand makes people feel.

 

It’s designed to give them something to relate to and feel a connection with. In the same way that you, as a human, have a multitude of things that make you you, so does your brand. Here’s a few things to consider and I’d really recommend doing some work around these areas especially your vision, mission, colour palette and energy;

 

Number One

 

Your Vision - what is your big vision for your business? What is the positive change you want to see and influence in the world of your client? This is your WHY and it’s what the majority of people will buy into. If you can sell your why it will always be more powerful than selling the what because people make purchasing decisions based on emotions. They will later justify it by attributing rational thoughts to the decision. But if you can convey your why, you’ll start to win people's hearts.

 

Number Two

 

Your Mission - How are you going to influence this positive change. How does what you do help your client to get there? What is your end goal for your clients?

 

Number Three

 

The Language you use - The language you use is an important one and one that often gets overlooked So, what kind of language do YOU use naturally in conversation? Are you very polite, super formal or a little bit sweary? Does this fit well with your brand or does it need to be tempered? If it needs to be tempered too much, is there a chance that you’re trying too hard to adapt to your audience and losing yourself a little? 

 

Is your brand super formal using only professional language? Or is it the type of brand that uses street lingo and swears every other word? Who are you and who are you trying to attract? Ideally you’d adjust show up as yourself but in the world of business this isn’t always possible and sometimes we do have to tone it down a little. But it’s definitely worth some consideration.

 

Number Four

 

Your Colour Palette - colour psychology is another often overlooked aspect of brand development. I’ve had many conversations with great business women who chose colours based solely on what was pretty or what they thought might attract the right people But colours have the power to induce emotions and pre-conceptions about what your client should expect from your business and they deserve a great deal of thought before settling on the right palette.

 

Number Five

 

Your Vibe or Energy - Some brands have a cool, calm energy, others are more edgy and modern and then there are those that have huge personalities that are vibrant and fun! If you had to describe your own energy to me, your own personal energy, forget about your brand and your business for a moment...could you do it? 

 

And if I asked you to paint a picture with words of your brand's energy? That’s more difficult right? It’s difficult because it’s something that so few of us consider consciously. Try to see yourself and your brand almost as one and you’ll find things become more straightforward at least.

 

Understanding the energy you give off isn't so much a choice as it is an awareness. You cannot be something you’re not and you cannot generate an energy that’s not natural to you.

 

It’s important to acknowledge So see if you can jot down a few words that describe your energy, ask some friends if you struggle and then go back over some recent posts. Look at the words and the images you’ve chosen. Are you conveying that energy, that vibe?

 

Number Six

 

Your Images - Are you showcasing your best self? Are you showcasing yourself at all?  Are you using professional quality photos to represent your brand? Because if not...even if you have the most exquisite product in the world your prospective clients will question it's worth because poor imagery will devalue your product and your brand every time. 

 

If you often find yourself explaining the worth of your products or receiving emails from potential clients who are questioning the price then I urge you to review the images you’re using to market your business because they may be letting you down.

 

Images also have the potential to tell a great story about you and your business, photos are so quickly processed and easy to access for the majority so they are a resource that should never be overlooked. So, all of these things have the potential to tell a story about your brand, to convey its personality, to create an impression in the minds of your prospective clients.

 

Consider that each time your potential customers see a picture you post or read the words you publish, each tiny bit of data is adding to their perception of you and your business. But before you invest in any of these things, it’s so important to be sure about your brand personality.

 

HOW DO YOU DETERMINE YOUR BRAND PERSONALITY?

 

With my 121 clients, I always do this work before identifying the ideal client because when you have identified who you want to work with, it’s too easy to fall into the trap of changing yourself to pleased the viewer

 

But if you build a brand that’s designed too much with your ideal client in mind then it becomes very easy to lose yourself in your business. You are the real deal. You are the reason people buy into your personal brand. Don’t try to please everyone because you’ll end up pleasing no one and boring everyone. Be marmite! A big part of the branding mindset is to accept on your deepest levels that it's totally ok that not everyone is going to like you. In fact, you should really aim for that.

 

The people who standout in history are NOT the ones who tried to please everyone, they are the ones with polarising opinions and the ones who weren’t afraid to shout about it! So be different, be marmite and be ok with blazing your own trail. In my opinion, we should all be showing up as our authentic selves in our brands. So ultimately your brand personality is the very best of your own personality.

 

So your activity for this tutorial is to take a good look at yourself and write down all the words that come to mind when you consider who you are, your strengths, your quirks, your energy and how you make others feel. Think about how you speak, the language you use and all the ways you communicate. Ask your friends how they might describe you in five words as it’s always great to get an outside perspective!

 

Then collate all these awesome adjectives and decide which ones make the cut, which ones do you want to shine through in your brand? Now here’s a curve ball just to throw a spanner in the works. Whilst it’s dead easy to design a brand based on your own personality. It’s not what everyone wants. So I want you to know that it is also possible to define the personality in other ways.

 

I would be careful to avoid mimicking other brands too closely and there should be aspects of you in there somewhere otherwise it can start to get away from you and showing up regularly as a different version of yourself will feel uncomfortable both to you and your audience. So maintain authenticity. But there's absolutely no harm in developing a brand personality that is more aspirational. Perhaps even a version of yourself that you’re striving to be.

 

So get to work on listing your own personality traits, those that your friends might use to describe you and the aspirational adjectives that define the person you aspire to become. Then narrow it down to a selection (maybe 5-10) words that you would like to use to define your brand personality.

 

I hope you’ve found this really useful and if you’d like to know more, have any questions or would like to work with me then you’ll find a link to my website alongside the video.

 

Head on to the next video in the series to find out how to create your ideal client profile.

 

Thanks for watching.