This is a guest post from our friend Alexandra Hosey from New Era Lending.
Your brand is the face of your company–and building a strong brand personality takes time, dedication, and a critical assessment of your mission. Using these 5 tips, you can make sure your brand represents your business and reaches your audience.
1. Ask yourself a series of questions. The first step to creating a brand personality begins with an assessment of your company, and the best place to start is with the company leadership–namely, you.
Ask yourself:
- Who am I? You can’t expect a rally of brand loyalists to support your business message if you’re not even sure yourself what your essence is. Decide who you want to be, what your company will represent, and how you see your business contributing to the industry.
- What is my brand personality? Successful brands come to life. They almost feel like living, breathing creatures with personalities and human characteristics. Is your brand fresh and trendy? Edgy? Reassuring? Powerful?
- What are my priorities? Your business priorities need to support the essence and personality of your brand. Your priorities may include sales, growth, and marketing, among others.
2. Define your consumers/customers. To succeed, a business needs a specific audience. Some of these are large scale, i.e. age bracket–such as adults in general. Other brand audiences are specific, such as female shoppers searching for beauty products. Consumer audience can even narrow further, such as female shoppers searching for anti-aging beauty products that are hypo-allergenic. When you truly define your potential customer base, you can then determine which marketing strategies will most effectively reach those audiences.
3. Dare to be different. You want your brand to be noticed–to have an identity that stands out from the crowd. Be courageous enough to stand on the edge of “typical” so that you firmly make your own message. Just be careful to strike a balance between unique and average. You want to create something unique without alienating your consumer base.
4. Surround yourself with a system of support. Your business team should support the company priorities and understand the personality of your brand. Consistent brand messaging is key to building a strong brand persona, so it is vital to have members in your leadership team and employees who stand behind your company’s message and promote the brand ideals.
- Truly take time to get to know your employees and contractors. When was the last time you had a team meeting? Make it a regular part of your workweek.
- Keep an open line of communication. Make yourself available to your team leaders and employees. When they feel like they can come to you with their ideas, questions, and concerns, they are more likely to actively support your brand message.
- Find ways to share your personal brand story. Your business circle needs to hear the who, what, when, and why behind your company. This builds loyalty and furthers that sense of purpose, building from the inside out.
5. Know what you show. Your company actions speak as much about your brand as anything you actually produce. If you want to create a brand for a sophisticated audience, make sure your company activities and all of its marketing tools exemplify sophistication. By the same token, if your brand message is trendy and cutting edge, your business can and should be closer to that edge of “normal.”
These five steps are your launching pad for building a strong brand personality. After you define your company and the messages you want to send, it is time to start formulating a plan. Create a timeline for your launch or relaunch, set goals for the actions you want your audience/consumers to take, and consider all of your platform options for marketing. Taking the time now to make these plans will not only save time and money in the future, but help you truly develop a strong brand with the personality that delivers.
Bio
Alexandra Hosey is a born problem solver who has been creating on the web since 2010. She is a digital marketer for New Era Lending, a lender that helps companies fill in cash flow gaps. After getting her Master’s in Marketing, Alexandra helped an East Village restaurant get on the first page of Google organic search results in short five months and increase their revenues by 300%.
Alexandra is passionate about fashion and traveling. She is the founder of kova by sascha contemporary womenswear line.
