What Is a Brand Personality? The Key to a Recognizable Company

What is a brand personality? Why is a brand important for struggling businesses?

One way to differentiate your company is by developing a unique approach to delivering your products or services. Even if you don’t have a unique product or service, the way you deliver it can make your company stand out and grow more successful.

Continue reading for three elements that will help you build your company’s brand.

Develop a Unique Brand for Delivering Products or Services

Some branding experts call this unique approach a brand personality. But what is a brand personality? Like differentiation, having a unique brand personality makes your company more recognizable and encourages loyalty. As people grow more familiar with your company, they’ll likely prefer it to less familiar competitors. And when people relate to your company’s brand personality, they see its products or services as a way to express their own personalities and thus become long-term customers.

Mike Michalowicz says there are three elements to consider when developing your approach:

1. The aspect of business you prioritize. Michalowicz says you can choose to prioritize either quality, price, or convenience when delivering your products or services. Instead of being mediocre in all three areas, focus your energy on becoming the best in one of them. This leverages people’s interest in the extreme that we discussed above. For instance, if you choose quality, you’d focus on providing extremely high-quality products. People will be attracted to the idea of receiving the best products, so they’re more likely to buy from you, even if your company is more expensive or less convenient than your competitors.

(Shortform note: Some business leaders are more flexible with their company’s priorities. Prioritizing a particular aspect of business may be helpful at one point, but not another. Thus, they recommend ranking quality, price, and convenience in order of importance, and reevaluating that ranking as your company’s goals change. This provides the same benefits as Michalowicz’s method—as you focus all your energy on becoming extremely good at your current priority—while also making it easier to adapt. For example, a young company may initially prioritize price to attract customers and later focus on quality to retain them.)

2. The type of task you’re most skilled at and most enjoy. Michalowicz says to focus on completing these tasks and leveraging your strengths as much as possible. Doing tasks you hate and lack the skill to properly complete wastes time and energy, so outsource those. For instance, if you hate bookkeeping and lack the skills to complete it quickly and accurately, you’ll spend a lot of time struggling with it. In contrast, if you hire a bookkeeper, you can spend your time and energy on leveraging your strengths, such as landing new customers.

(Shortform note: Just knowing that you have to complete an unpleasant or difficult task is distracting and draining, some business experts say, even before you start doing it. This can make it more difficult to complete your other tasks—and to leverage your strengths. Thus, they suggest delegating these tasks even if it seems financially unwise, implying that the benefit of increased focus and energy will offset the cost of outsourcing. Technology can make this easier and cheaper—for instance, you could hire a remote assistant for a few hours a week to handle things like email or transferring data, instead of hiring a full-time assistant.)

3. Your experience and personality. Your past experiences and personality inform how you operate your company. Since these elements of your life are unique to you, they make your company more unique, too. For example, a reserved individual may gravitate toward digital marketing and interacting with customers online, while an outgoing person may market through in-person events and personal relationships with customers.