Why Your Organization’s Personality Matters To People
The word “authenticity” gets used a lot in marketing discussions. I use it quite a bit myself. But it’s one of those cliches that has actual weight behind it.
When it comes to how we make consumer decisions, whether it be healthcare, recreational, or otherwise, we tend to align ourselves with businesses and brands that we can identify with.
It’s one of the reasons that influencer marketing has become so powerful. We want to feel assured that we’ve made the right decision with our dollars. We want the confidence that there wasn’t a better option or a better deal that we might’ve missed out on. That we’ll be well taken care of. Or even that we might aspire to live more like the brands we support.
Of course, it’s very much the same when it comes to medical and healthcare marketing. People want assurance that they’re going to get the best care, services, or products available to them. And there’s no shortage of information informing them what their options are.
But what story is your information telling them? Can they get a clear sense of what your brand represents and why you’re the best choice in spite of all of the other alternatives available to them?
If you’re not fully confident in how your business’ brand is portrayed in your marketing, then we can help you inject your culture into your campaigns, better engage your audience, and grow your business.
Here are some ways to ensure that your personality, your culture, and your values are accurately and consistently portrayed across your marketing campaigns.
Use A Brand Style Guide For Accuracy And Consistency
A brand style guide can act as the foundational text to your business’s brand, its personality, and your values.
All too often, brand style guides are mistaken as records of solely the visual aspects of your brand, but in actuality, they can contain so much more. And it’s usually better for your business if they do!
While brand style guides should contain visual identity guidelines, such as your logo, your brand colors, and your brand fonts — elements that outline how you look — they should also include elements that outline how you sound.
Your brand personality should have a tone of voice. You have a way of communicating your services and products that is specific to your style of communication.
- Do you prefer to sound academic and scholarly in the way you deliver information?
- Or do you prefer a simple, conversational tone of voice?
- Perhaps your delivery is more lighthearted and humorous
- Or maybe, it’s something altogether different
This is what makes your brand style guide an essential part of your marketing strategy. You can point to the adjectives that best describe how you want to be perceived and how you want your audience to feel when they read your content.
The more consistently you deliver that style of message across your marketing campaigns, the clearer your voice and personality will be to your audience. Over time, the difference between you and your competitors will clear as a bell.
You can infuse this specific voice in everything that you do and across every medium you market in. No matter if it’s written content on your website, video content on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram, or even in printed materials.
Consistency will help you cultivate something that is entirely your own. Speaking of things that are entirely your own…
Invest In Assets That Reinforce Your Personality and Create Differentiation
Stock photos have their place. Stock video has its place. And sometimes, even pre-written content has its place.
But more often than not, we recommend that you invest in creating original content for your brand personality — written content, videos, photos, and the like.
Why? Well, for a few reasons. One, when you have original content, it is entirely unique. High-quality, relevant, useful content is also incredibly valuable. It’s valuable to those who are searching for it, and it’s valuable to search engines that are scouring the web looking for credible information to evaluate. Building this authority — this authenticity — will drive even more opportunities to your website, which can help you grow your business.
Secondly, what’s yours is yours. You don’t have photo licenses to renew. Or you’re not paying for the same content that who knows how many other people have published on their sites.
We’ve worked with other organizations who have lost assets, campaigns, and even access to their own websites when they’ve ended a vendor relationship. We don’t believe that should happen to anyone.
At Formada, we encourage our clients to invest in original content, and even connect them with vendors that can help them get marketing assets that will help their personalities shine through in their campaigns.
This is one of the reasons why we regularly invest in professional photography for our own brand. We know that there’s a lot of competition out there in the digital marketing space, and that our key differentiator is the talent of our people.
And because of that, we want our people front and center. We offer personalized service. Personalized content. Personalized campaign strategies. It only makes sense that our people are featured in our marketing.
Don’t Be Afraid To Experiment
Being authentic matters. So does having a comprehensive style guide. As does original content. All things lead to building a strong brand personality. But another thing I want to encourage you to do is to try things.
The beautiful thing about marketing is that it doesn’t have to be permanent. There’s room for experimentation. And in that experimentation, there’s so much that can be learned — about your customers and about your business.
If you’re looking for someone who can help you bring out the best in your brand, develop successful campaigns, and help you grow your business, then we would love to hear from you.
We have built a reputation on delivering results for our clients, and we’d love to do that for you, too. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you achieve your goals.