Are Your Social Campaigns Infused With A Brand Persona?

When Paid Social started creeping into performance marketing, it was the lesser stepsister to the primary channels – PPC, Display, SEO, and Affiliate. Social intrigued many brands I worked with then, but they felt it was a ‘nice to have’ rather than a ‘need to have’ in their marketing strategies.

Fast forward almost 20 years later, and Social has now taken over. You’ll find brands pinning their hopes and dreams on the success of Paid Social; buzzwords like ‘viral content,’ ‘snackable content,’ and even ‘clickbait’ are part of our common marketing vernacular.

One recurring issue with brands’ social media approaches—paid or organic—is that they often feel hollow. As social media evolves, shoppers are less likely to engage with or spend on brands they see as disingenuous or just out to make a quick buck. (There’s even a whole subreddit dedicated to disaster AMAs—proof of how badly fake marketing stunts can backfire.)

We want real, relatable content. We want brands that represent qualities that align with ourselves and our beliefs. Brands must infuse their social content with relatable qualities to maximize their brand power.

But that’s hard, isn’t it?

Yes & no.

Foundational Principle: You can’t take a ‘batch & blast’ approach to organic content or paid ads.

This may seem basic; I think we all learned about the importance of customization in Marketing 101, but it’s one principle often ignored by brands because ‘batch & blast’ is quick and easy to execute. But users, including yourself, want something relatable and tailored to them where possible.

Foundational Blocks of Your Brand Persona

A brand persona (a creation service offered by Greenlane) is going to be your best and most valuable asset. A persona helps users relate to your brand and gives them something to buy into when they engage with or purchase it.

What Does Your Brand Stand For?

Start by asking yourself the following questions:

1. What are the driving principles of your business?
2. Are those principles found in your Social content?
3. What do your customers care about?
4. What are users saying about you?
5. What are users saying to you?

Let’s pretend you’re a fast-fashion retailer and start by reviewing your mission statement. What are the core principles touted as your reasons for doing business? What do you stand for?

Your core principles may be around:

1. Delivering the latest trends in fashion
2. Sustainable manufacturing processes
3. Superior customer service
4. Giving back to the community

The first step to building the foundation of your brand persona across Social is to evaluate the original content you’re creating against your mission statement. Check both paid and organic content. The goal is to uncover if you’re messaging the brand’s value props ineffectively or at all.

Often, the conclusion is that brands need to fold in more content around their value props versus promos and discounts. Using the example above, some content topics could be sustainable business practices, customer service, and community. Infusing content with qualities that make brands more human and easier for users to relate to.

When you are spending money on these platforms to promote your brand, making relatable content is critical, otherwise you’re essentially wasting media dollars.

Talking to Your Customers

The next step after identifying the gaps and opportunities in the types of messaging you’re pushing out is to develop the tone and flavor of your messaging. You might already have touches of this in your content (e.g., are you a fun, edgy, or preppy brand, etc.), but we need to elevate to the next level. Strengthen your brand persona by using this tone purposefully and consistently. Apply it across the different types of content you’ll develop to promote the value props identified in the previous section of this exercise.

Make your paid content work as hard as possible for you by doing a lot of the initial research into creating relatable Social content for your community.

Listen to Your User’s Content

Identifying the appropriate tone for your content can be difficult. The richest source of insight into your user’s perception of your brand persona is the content your current customers are sharing about you. Look at their selfies; are there trends in product styling? What types of settings are common? Is there a subculture gravitating to you, or is there a wide array of individuals attracted to your brand?

Talk to your community in the language they are using to talk about you.

Birkenstock is a great example of how it reshaped its brand image by keeping select elements of its core brand persona and adjusting messaging to maximize its connection to Gen Z’s priorities. 

If you’re like me, someone says, “Birkenstock,” and my brain instantly visualizes a comfy, cork-and-leather slip-on sandal with connotations of crunchy, granola, and, dare I say, a little “tired?” I had a pair growing up so that leathery smell is embedded in my brain.

I don’t think, “signature sandal of the Gen Z era.” 

How did Birkenstock use other people’s social media content to launch this cool-brand revolution? 

Market research, landscape analysis, and consumer segmentation. They discovered pockets of consumers with values that resonate with Birkenstock’s and then pivoted their branding to connect with and draw them in. One such segment that popped up in their research was the comfort-chic-focused segment of Gen Z. 

While I can’t say for certain what Birkenstock did or did not do next, it seems logical that they would have reviewed social content from this segment or things like photography aesthetics, recurring patterns in post imagery and language, and how they build comfort into their daily lives and then used that information to build out Birkenstock’s brand architecture and new branding strategies across social and other media platforms.   

Now when I think Birkenstock, I think “effortless comfort” and “cool-kid chic.”

User Content:

 Birkenstock’s Content:

As of writing, Birkenstock has not published any videos to their TikTok account, but I have a few ideas of where they should go to gather video inspiration. #birkenstock #birks

Boiling It Down & Rolling Out Your Persona

In a nutshell, a brand persona contains two core components:

• A set of qualities that humanizes the brand to users
• A tone that is relatable to users and aligns with the brand’s flavor

When developing your content calendar for paid and organic Social, look at your planned pieces and ensure there is something for the customer to buy into other than just a selling prop. Ask your team:

1. Does the messaging and imagery align with our brand value propositions?
2. What should the users think they are buying into when engaging with this content?
3. Is the tone consistent with past posts and on-brand?
4. Is our brand persona clear and tangible in this content?

One final piece of advice: stay close to your brand community. They are the best resource for gauging whether your approach is working or needs to evolve over time. After all, the only constant in digital marketing is change.