Getting emotional

Yesterday evening we ran the second in our Brand to Deliver seminar series. The theme was Brand: Giving your business personality, and to help us explore that issue was Celia Delaney of Delaney & Hart and Dave Thomas of Bluegrass Computer Services.

We took a good look at personality, to better understand; what it is, how you communicate it and why it's valuable. So what did we say?

What is the personality of your business?
Well, the personality of your business is who you are, what you do, how you do it and where you're going. (To find out more about this, take a look at the series of posts: What your brand says).

How do you communicate your personality?
You communicate the personality of your business through your brand, and you do that through each of the brand touchpoints: Your products and services, your people, your communication and your working environment.

Celia looked at how you communicate your brand as an individual. What people see and hear when they meet you determines how they feel about you. So what do you think people see and hear when they meet you?

Dave looked at how we can use social media to communicate the personality of your business. It's about dialogue, not monologue. The best conversations, and the best communicators start as the best listeners. Do you listen to what your customers say?

I explained that there are many ways to communicate the personality of your business, it depends on what's appropriate for you. For some organisations it might be their literature; for others it might be packaging; or it could be a website.

Why is your personality valuable?
So why is personality so important? Why is it valuable? Well, it's the reason your customers buy from you. Buying is an emotional process, not a logical one. A logical decision would be to always buy the cheapest option available - but we seldom do. We use some other criteria to make our decision: Trust, confidence, honesty, reputation. All these criteria are based on emotion. And the most important emotion of all is loyalty.

Customers aren't loyal to the products or services of a business, they're loyal to the personality behind those products and services. So what is the personality of your business? How do you communicate it? And what is its value to you?

If you'd like to answer those questions do contact us, via email at jonathan@alderandalder.co.uk or call us on 01392 248107. You can also join us at future Brand to Deliver events.

Our Brand to Deliver seminars are invitation-only events and have limited places, but if you would like to receive an invitation to the next one, send an email to jonathan@alderandalder.co.uk.