Why a strong brand personality is important for your small business

Take a moment to consider the brands you interact with most often. Have you ever stopped to think about just exactly why you feel drawn to them? Naturally, a part of our purchase decision is based on the products we want or need but, if you have two businesses with almost identical offerings, what makes someone choose one over the other? asks Shayne Tilley, Head of Marketing, 99designs by Vistaprint

Often the deciding factor is a vital part of the branding piece at play – the brand’s personality. This is a set of human-like traits, such as how it speaks and acts, that shapes its public perception.

As we are naturally drawn to certain types of people based on their personal characteristics, the same is true for brands. A strong personality is essential to forming long lasting emotional connections with your ideal customers.

Knowing what personality you want your brand to embody is important backend work you need to do before developing your visual brand identity. It is one of the most effective strategies for making choices on a logo, fonts, colours and tone of voice that align best with your business objectives.

If you’re reading this wondering “but, who am I?” (after the last two years, existential crises are forgiven), I have good news. There are three simple questions you can ask yourself to create a personality that best represents your business.

Three questions to find your brand personality

Who is my ideal customer and what are their personality traits?

Before you start defining your personality as a brand, your number one priority should be understanding and catering to that of your ideal customer.

This goes deeper than surface level factors like age, location and occupation. You need to know in detail what traits they possess and admire, how they behave and make decisions, as well as what their values and beliefs are.

Your brand lives to serve your customers, so aligning with their preferences is probably more important than aligning with your own. It has to be relatable to them: while you might want your brand to be a rebel or cheeky trouble maker, if your audience primarily values efficiency and steadiness, they may look somewhere else.

Your customers, afterall, are the ultimate judge of character so if it’s not hitting the right notes with them, they won’t buy into it.

What adjectives would I use to describe my brand?

If you’re having difficulty deciding on the personality of your business, the quickest and easiest way to start is to simply make a list of traits you would like your brand to be associated with.

Writing adjectives down like “adventurous,” “thoughtful,” or “refined” can help you hone in on your personality, whereas words like “convenient,” “high-end,” or “transparent” can help you solidify what you can offer customers and where you sit in the market. It can be tempting to look at what other brands are doing in your space but try to carve your own niche, as what might work for one business, might not necessarily translate to your objectives or audience.

Also remember to keep in mind your customers’ preferences outlined in step one. The words on your list should appeal more to their expectations than your own.

If my business was a person, how would they act?

Taking this one step further, if you still can’t decide which direction to go with your brand personality, try visualising your brand as a living, breathing human!

How would they greet you if you bumped into them on the street? Is it a formal handshake or a hug? What are their interests, hobbies – what do they like to talk about? Do they like to dress to impress or are they more casual? Are they a joke teller, or more of a straight shooter?

Developing a full brand persona does require a little bit of imagination but this is an incredibly effective (and fun) exercise for understanding how you will relate to your customers, and vice versa. Here you can also ask yourself, would my customers want to be friends with my brand if it was a person?

Additionally, giving tangible attributes to abstract personality characteristics can be instrumental in guiding your choices when it comes to nailing down your visual identity, the kind of content you share, and how you communicate as a brand

At the end of the day, in order to be successful, your brand personality should be authentic, memorable, trustworthy and provide real value to your customers. While the impression your brand leaves on the world is greatly influenced by the people doing the assessing, through great design you have the power to mold and shape this perception to capture their hearts and minds.

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