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ou have a product or service. You have a company name. You decided on a logo, a website and a Facebook page. Many businesses stop here, thinking they've done what they can, and customers should just trickle in. While this sounds like a wonderful fairytale — it's just that, fiction. Your brand personality goes beyond the basics of what your business has to offer and starts creating relationships with prospective customers. Your brand should create an experience — an interaction with any customer is an opportunity to create a memory so you're top of mind when they are ready to purchase. And in this day and age of social media and engaged audiences ... relationships are crucial.
Your product or service exists to solve a problem or fulfill a societal need, and people that are vaguely aware of your business will understand what you're here to do. For example: a restaurant is an alternative to cooking at home, a place to dine and socialize. Great. So if you're a new restaurant with a logo, website and Facebook page — this is what people will know of you ... there's a new place to eat. That's your purpose — but what's your promise? In our restaurant example, there's plenty of niche restaurants that will start to set you apart from other brands. For example, your menu is full of food items grown locally because you have a passion for gardening and believe in eating food that you can trace to its roots. A potential customer aspires to live responsibly, and to them this means choosing to eat more sustainably. So, your promise to use locally-sourced products in your meals provides the opportunity for your patrons to fulfill that aspiration.
Now that you've got a promise, how do you share it with people? The words you choose and the tone of voice you present your message in make a difference to how people will receive your brand.Let's take our restaurant. Again, your promise is to use locally-sourced products in your meals so your patrons are comfortable knowing what they eat. Now, are you serious about this — or do you like to have a little fun? Should your messaging be cutting edge and innovative, or more traditional? Is your atmosphere upscale, or laid back? Deciding where you land on these spectrums will help create messages that fit within your business' style.And then, we need to also consider your customer's style. This is known in mainstream marketing as building out customer personas - pretend people that fit within our ideal target market, so we know exactly how we talk when we create marketing messages. We need to talk in a way that these people will appreciate, so they will listen and the conversation will resonate.
Now that you understand your promise and your voice — does that logo you created still match with your brand personality? Do the colors reflect what you're looking to showcase? Is the design exemplary of the way you want customers to experience your brand? People first encounter your brand in various ways, and making the ideal impression the first time goes a long way toward cultivating customer loyalty.
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