Our process. Part 2. Strategy - Brand Personas.

Okay, so we clearly defined the problem you are solving with your service, last week, uncovering what you do differently than everyone else. The next step in our regenerative branding process is a deeper dive into the people you serve. Your Brand Personas.

For us, that means, as a B2B company, we first looked at our different offerings and then got into the details of where the companies we like to work with are in their journey, what they struggle with, and how we can best support them.

Defining your Brand Personas helps you to understand your customers and really meet them where they are at, which, in turn, allows you to be supportive rather than just sell at them.

We defined 3 types of companies at different stages as our ideal clients for the different services we offer. And really dug into what they might be going through and needing most at each stage.

So, while we love helping start-ups bring their groundbreaking new ideas to life, we also, often help mid-size companies who feel a little unclear, uninspired, or lack connection with their audience, by taking them through a rebrand process. And as you can imagine, each of these company personas goes through very different challenges, usually hangs out at different events or platforms, and looks for different qualities in a collaborator.
The start-up persona we typically work with would most likely have raised a seed round or gotten some angel investment to kick things off, which means they have a convincing idea and are now at a stage where Brand becomes super relevant, needing to prove demand for their product and that they can connect with a wider audience and build community, before raising the next round. This is where our work becomes so important, and where we love digging into their purpose to build a really strong identity so that they can create that emotional equity with their desired audience.
We look at their needs and biggest fears, as well as their hopes and dreams. You can do that with general research, or ideally, by talking to a few of those ideal clients. You define clear demographics, outlining this persona (these are the tangible and statistical data points), as well as their psychographics (their speculated behaviors, motivations, and concerns). This means you give your persona a name, a job title, an educational background, as well as an emotional connection, by coming up with questions and concerns they might have, and how they would define success.

The more mature companies we work with on rebrands, usually have not invested in their brand at the start and now, find themselves a little unclear and confused, hopefully, with a great product, but not an aligned brand, or the right audience. They need help remembering why they do what they do, defining a purpose, and orienting the company around it. The way we find and express the brand’s soul is similar in both cases, even though this one, obviously takes the existing brand into account, but the brand persona is a totally different one, with different needs and problems.

Our third type of brand persona is built around companies with existing brand clarity and defined purpose. In their case, it is often a matter of wanting to bring this purpose to life in a way they haven’t mastered yet, within their communication and visual expression. We help them by creating more meaningful, long-lasting photo or video content that connects on an emotional level, or a campaign that brings their brand values to life in a more resonant way.
This persona might be the hardest to define, as they can be at different stages in their company’s life cycle. What matters most in this case, is that we identify their emotional needs and understand what this fictitious person spends their time and energy on, what they care about most, and so on.

If you are a B2C company the brand persona process is similar, you look at who buys from you and what they value about your product. You find the overlap and create these fictional characters, define their age and background and what motivates them, in as much detail as possible. You can even imagine (or look into the data) what else they buy, where they vacation, and how they live. There are no limits to this process. Everything is an important piece of information to shape your brand with these ideal customers in mind.

For example, we know that our people believe that brand matters immensely and that they need to make people feel something. They also know that they are too busy building a new company or product to worry about this too much and want to find an expert to trust with this process. They want the quality and experience but are not willing or able to pay the big agency fees. They value having direct access to us instead of getting handed off to another team at the agency and never speaking to the founder again.
We know that our people don’t necessarily fit into one niche (like wellness brands, for example) but instead, like us, believe that we can’t keep doing business as usual, and set out to build something that goes against the norms of their category, be it by finding a new way of manufacturing, or a more inclusive way of being.
They value a more regenerative way to build a business but don’t necessarily have a clear idea of how to build this into their brand in the right way. Often they struggle with the pressure of expected growth through their investors and need the assurance that a thriving business is possible with the right care and commitment. These are just a few of the emotional points we have identified, you can dig deeper into the demographics, and see what else you can uncover, Sherlock.

All of this helps you to understand the transformation your product or service can take a customer through, and allows you to speak to that later on, in your marketing.

Much love,
Lisa & Tim