Brand Strategy
THE POWER OF A B2B BRAND PERSONALITY
By INK Team
“At the end of the day people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou
Just like people, brands with memorable personalities stick in our minds.
That’s because emotions play an important role in our ability to store and recall information. We remember the brands we like and trust, and they become our go-to when making a purchasing decision. When we start to think of brands more like people, we get a better idea of what they might say or do out in the world. Those compelling personalities enable brands to build long-lasting, trusting relationships with their customers.
But personality isn’t just for consumer brands. In fact, B2B companies, especially in the technology space, are often most in need of building an emotional connection with their audience. Think about it – data, hardware, and intangible systems are about as far from human as it gets. But even Alexa has a personality.
WHAT IS A BRAND PERSONALITY?
A brand personality is simply a set of human characteristics associated with a brand. It creates an emotional foothold that turns a product or service into something your customers can connect with — a connection that creates brand affinity and staying power.
A strong brand personality creates consistency across customer touchpoints, differentiates a company in its product category, and can even become the central driver of customer preference. But to form a lasting connection, a brand personality must be derived from deep customer understanding. It has to make both practical and emotional sense. In other words, what is the most truthful way your brand can connect with your customer?
To develop a brand personality that sticks, start with research.
STEP 1: CONDUCT COMPETITOR AND AUDIENCE RESEARCH
Know Who You’re Up Against — Understanding the Competition and Industry
It’s important to understand the personality conventions in your industry. Evaluating the brand personalities of your competitors will help determine how your brand can stand out both in the competitive landscape and in the mind of your customer. It reveals where there are opportunities or white space.
In certain categories, product offerings can be more or less the same with product-focused messages that aren’t emotionally compelling. When the benefits are similar, brand personality can be a key differentiator.
When researching competitors, ask:
What words, phrases, tone, and voice do competitors use in their messaging?
What emotions are they trying to evoke with the imagery on their website and other marketing channels?
How do they describe their company and employees? Any mention of company culture?
Do they have spokespeople? If so, what do they talk about and how do they talk about it?
How would you characterize their leadership? Are they authoritative, funny, unconventional?
What are customers saying about them online? Try G2 or Capterra as a starting point.
What do their logo, color palette, and design choices say about who they are?
Exercise
Look at your competitors’ websites, social content, and advertising — pay attention to how they portray themselves through the words and images they use. Assign three or four personality traits to each competitor that best summarize what you’ve gathered about the brand from your research.
For example, Apple uses words like “transformative,” “unprecedented,” “mind-blowing,” and “pushes boundaries,” which communicate innovative and spirited personality traits.
Know Your Role – Understanding Your Audience, Showing Your Value, Keeping Your Promise
Our interactions with and expectations of others depend on the role they play in our lives and the value their relationship provides. Think of your advisors, coworkers, and friends. Most people want their close advisors to be reliable, competent, and wise; or a friend to be warm, honest and empathetic. When someone delivers on our expectations of their role consistently, it builds trust in the relationship and affirms its value. Brands are no different.
Knowing your customers inside and out will help determine your brand’s role in their lives. Before building an effective brand personality, learn who your customers are and what they care about. Get personal. By deeply understanding their ambitions, frustrations, and outlook on life, you can see how your offering can provide true value. Go beyond what you think you know and relate to them as people.
When researching your audience, ask:
What role can you fill in your customers’ lives, and what promise can you make to them?
What are your customers’ biggest pain points?
How can you address their pain points to make their jobs easier?
What do they expect from brands in your industry?
What’s the primary want or need they’re trying to satisfy?
What kind of role do they want you to play in their lives?
What personality traits characterize your audience?
Does your brand align with who they really are? Or who they aspire to be?
Developing a brand personality based on an understanding of your customers’ needs will lead to more meaningful connections.
Exercise
Use this template to develop personas for your ideal or existing customers. Personas allow you to get the most important information about your customers all in one place, so you can craft a personality that speaks to their specific characteristics.
Think about how you might tailor your messages differently when you’re speaking to the chief technology officer (CTO) compared to an account manager. What do your customers need and want? And better yet, what is stopping them from getting that? What can your company do to provide them with a solution to overcome that obstacle and address their needs? What does your brand strive to be in the lives of your customers?
Look for areas of overlap among your personas – a strong brand personality would resonate with the ideology of both the CTO and the account manager.
STEP 2: USE A PERSONALITY FRAMEWORK
Brand personality frameworks provide an organized approach to creating brand personalities that are focused, actionable, and based on human psychology. There are two primary frameworks to choose from: The Five Dimensions of Brand Personality or the 12 Brand Archetypes.
Jennifer Aaker’s Five Dimensions of Brand Personality are easy to understand and useful when you need to quickly establish human characteristics for your brand. The 12 Brand Archetypes are a more robust approach that can also provide a foundation for storytelling. No matter how in depth you’d like to go, both frameworks serve to humanize B2B brands and connect them with their customers.
The Five Dimensions of Brand Personality
This framework takes the top personality characteristics consumers consistently associate with brands and organizes them into five distinct categories.
The five dimensions of brand personality closely mirror the Big Five personality traits of people: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. But because brands are entities, and not people, we interact with and perceive them differently:
Think about each of these categories and take a close look at the accompanying characteristics. Then ask yourself:
Which one or two of these categories best represent your brand or the brand you aspire to be?
How do you live up to these characteristics now, or how do you aspire to deliver on them in the future?
Which of these characteristics does your brand represent most truthfully?
Exercise
Based on the characteristics of each category, rank the categories from most to least relevant to your brand. Of your top two categories, consider combining characteristics to form a unique set of brand attributes.
The 12 Brand Archetypes
We’re hardwired for stories. The 12 Brand Archetypes represent the range of human desires and characters used in storytelling. The archetypes are based on Carl Jung’s theory that universal conscious and unconscious symbols are deeply ingrained in us all.
There are 12 distinct archetypes, which are divided into four groups based on their ultimate purpose. Each archetype exists to fulfill a distinct human desire. Think about what your customers are seeking from their interaction with your brand. By taking on the brand attributes of their archetype, brands portray their ability to fulfill the customer’s emotional need.
You can use your brand’s archetype to tell your brand’s story — and to help determine what your brand will say, do, and look like in its interactions with customers.
Most brands will have one core archetype that defines them. However, a single archetype may not capture all of the unique needs of your customer, or the category might be crowded with brands adopting the same archetype. By adding a mix of traits from a secondary archetype, you can satisfy the unique needs of your customer and differentiate yourself in the market.
Is your brand a guide? A caregiver? A hero? Can it provide safety? Advice? An avenue for fun or a path to freedom?
Exercise
Choose two archetypes that align with your customer’s needs. Explain how your brand is able to fulfill those needs. Consider the most essential role your brand can play in their lives, the human desire it can satisfy, or the purpose it serves.
STEP 3: TEST YOUR PERSONALITY
Testing is a surefire way to validate your decisions so you can move forward with a memorable idea that connects emotionally with your audience. Testing can also help avoid wasting time and money, and the headaches that follow if you put a brand personality out into the world that doesn’t make sense to the people who are interacting with your brand.
Conduct an online survey
An online survey allows you to target a specific audience and requires minimal effort on the respondents’ end. See what resonates with your audience by presenting different personalities through headlines, mock advertising, and mission statements.
A/B test on your website
A/B testing different personalities on your website is an effective way to see how your audience reacts in a realistic setting. You’ll be able to see which brand personality does a better job of meeting your goals by looking at metrics like how long users stay on the site and how they navigate through it.
Measure advertising campaign conversions
Use digital ads to test how different brand personalities and messaging impact audience engagement with your brand. The most compelling personality will drive more clicks and conversions.
Workshop with your team
If you’re working with a tight budget, you can still test your ideas by bringing your colleagues into the mix. Team members from different departments (e.g., sales, customer service) can advocate for the customer when considering brand personality.
Set up a workshop to discuss the role your brand plays in the lives of your customer and get feedback from the team on how the brand personality reflects who your customers are as people.
CREATING AN ICONIC STORY
You’ve done the research to understand your customer and competition. You know how your brand can provide value and the role it plays in satisfying your customers’ wants and needs. Now, it’s time to release your brand into the world.
Let your brand’s personality come through in your marketing executions and use it to guide the time, place, and manner your brand interacts with customers.
Developing your brand’s personality will drive the emotional connection that keeps you in the hearts and minds of your audience. Brands that use human-centered personality frameworks will resonate beyond the products and services they provide. They become iconic storytellers — heroes, outlaws, and explorers.
Source:https://ink-co.com/whitepaper/b2b-customer-relationship-brand-personality/#post-gated-content
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