Growth toolkit for startups: Define and make use of your brand personality

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Toolkit for startups: Brand personality

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A good story always needs a good character. Somebody to relate to, to believe in, to align with.

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The same is true in business.

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We think we’re logical beings but time and time again we make decisions based on emotions. A purchasing decision is no different. Customers, whether businesses or individuals, buy based on brand characteristics that they are attracted to and that align with their own.

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Your brand personality connects you to the people you would like to attract — investors, influencers and customers.

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It is an essential piece of your wider strategy, in partnership with your brand values, your WHY, and your founder story.

There are a number of different theories that can help you define your business personality. As a marketer, I understand that your brand personality can be key to communicating efficiently and ensuring people want to listen. But also that, as a founder, you have little time or budget to spend on defining this, therefore, this is my simple guide to defining your brand personality and how to use it.

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Health warning: your brand will and should develop over time. Many businesses pivot or tweak their target as they test which segment of the target market they benefit most, or indeed what their key benefit is. Also as the business positioning transitions from Start-up to Challenger to Market-leader, the personality may also be redefined.

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Therefore, do this exercise.

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Sleep on it.

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Discuss it with friends.

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And move on.

First, define it

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Stanford researcher, Jennifer Aaker, penned this Brand Personality Traits model twenty years ago and it is standing the test of time, and many marketing teams. Most brands find that 3–5 personality traits under one of the key traits help to define them.

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One exercise that helps here is to consider sitting on the other side of the table to your brand:

• How would you expect your brand to act?
• To talk to you?
• Or to tackle and solve an issue?
• How would you describe your brand if it was a person?

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I think it’s important here to make sure your brand is someone you want to talk to in the context of the issue that the brand is solving.

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Given that this model twenty years old, some of the adjectives may feel dated. For the purposes of solving this quickly for you, this framework is a useful tool but don’t feel constrained to only choose these. The important factor is developing a character that suits you and your business to help you move forward.

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As an example, here is the brand personality that I’ve developed for my own brand.

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Your turn, try putting pen to paper:

1. Choose 3–5 brand personality qualities that define your brand

2. Why did they describe your brand?

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Then, make use of it

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Be comfortable with the brand personality that you’ve defined as this will ensure creating content more straight forward and objective as you will be confident in the way that your business looks and speaks.

1. Brand design: Logo design, brand colours, website layout etc.

2. Tone of voice: How you speak to your audience, be it in a pitch deck or a blog

3. Community development: Your personality will also help to define in what ways you interact with your audience. For example: an inclusive, problem-solving, chatty brand will likely start a Facebook Group to give their audience a chance to share and solve problems together

4. Marketing strategy: Again, your personality will define where people see you and how you will reach them. A thought-provoking, business-focused B2B brand will be more comfortable on Twitter and LinkedIn and will probably limit the amount of unicorn emoji’s in its comms.

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Brand personality will also help shape content and copy moving forward as well as also aid future discussions of subjective viewpoints!

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I’d love to hear what you have developed. Please drop me a line if you’d like to share or if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line, and check out my blog on How to talk about your business so people listen.

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