Developing a brand personality gives you the foundation to develop your content.
Why is this important?
Because thought-provoking, informative and entertaining content is how you communicate online, and your brand personality helps to build trust.
Trust sells.
What is a brand personality?
A brand personality is the human face of your business — the voice, tone and values.
Ultimately, it is your brand image.
Developing a brand personality, therefore, determines how you look, sound and react.
It defines how your brand communicates, expresses your worldview and establishes your brand narrative.
For example, your worldview may go against the grain of conventional wisdom. If your brand personality is not likeable, explicit and persuasive, people will not respond kindly to you.
Because most importantly, your brand personality influences how you make people think, feel and react.
Meaning is not simply conveyed by what you say, but how you say it.
The most effective brands have a personality which makes people feel like they are someone worth listening to.
When people listen, you are in the driving seat to build trust.
When people trust a brand, they are more likely to choose you as a partner.
Create a Brand Persona
Before you start to develop a brand personality, decide what type of persona your brand will have.
There are two types:
Person-led brands
Person-led brands are the easiest to develop. You basically base the personality of your brand on you — or the owner of your MSP if you are not the owner. The brand personality in this type of persona is not invented.
Person-led brands work best when the founder’s personality, story, and credibility is the product.
This type of approach is common in consulting, coaching, and professional services.
Think Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Gary Vaynerchuk. They all have influential brands which reflect their personality traits in their marketing content.
The benefit of person-led brands is that it builds trust fast.
The risk is that the brand becomes too dependent on one individual.
Promise-led brands
Promise-led brands are more common. With this approach, the brand persona is built around the product or service rather than who runs it.
To create a brand persona built around a promise involves demonstrating what the business stands for — values, mission and vision.
When developing a brand persona around the business, the voice still needs to feel human.
This is where writing skills shine. Speak to the reader as though you are talking to them.
The key ingredients to consider are:
- what your audience needs to feel; i.e. safe, inspired, challenged, entertained what values are non-negotiable for your business
- what tone fits both your market and your genuine communication style
- what makes you distinctly different from competitors in the same space (if any)?
The biggest mistake businesses make when creating a brand persona that impresses them rather than resonates with their audience. A great brand persona isn’t who you want to be — it’s who your ideal customer needs you to be, expressed in a way you can sustain authentically over time.
Developing a Brand Personality
Step 1: Define Who You’re Talking To
Before you start developing a brand personality for yourself, it helps to know who you are speaking to.
Who is your preferred ideal customer (PIC)?
Get specific. Don’t rely on standard demographics like type of business, size and revenue, but psychographics.
- What does your ideal client worry about?
- What problems and pain points are they experiencing?
- What do they aspire to?
Your brand needs to feel like a natural fit for them. They want to sense that you understand them.
Step 2: Identify Your Core Values
List three to five values that are genuinely non-negotiable for how you do business — not aspirational ones, but ones you already live by. These become the backbone of developing a brand personality for each piece of content.
A B2B business, like MSPs, is typically built on straight-talking expertise. The values you may want to portray are:
- Transparency/Trust
- Innovation
- Reliability/Proactivity
- Security
- Strategic
Step 3: Define Your Personality Traits
Pick four or five human personality traits that describe how your brand should come across.
A useful exercise is to imagine your brand as a person walking into a room — how do they carry themselves?
Are they the confident challenger, the trusted advisor, or the quietly brilliant expert?
Be specific enough that someone writing content for you could use these traits as a filter.
The easy way to determine this is to pick an archetype for your brand and design your personality around the traits associated with that archetype.
Examples:
Harley-Davidson = Rebel
Personality Traits
- Freedom
- Defiance
- Brotherhood
- Authenticity
- Edgy
Google = Sage
Personality Traits
- Intelligence
- Clarity
- Objectivity
- Helpful
- Vision
Disney = Divine Child
Personality Traits
- Wonder
- Optimism
- Immersion
- Emotionally moving
- Exciting
What is a good archetype for MSPs
MSPs = Ruler
The Ruler archetype is built around confident decision-making, control, order, and security. Like any good Ruler, an MSP is responsible for protecting the realm and defending clients against outside attackers and internal dissidents (rogue software).
For the typical business owner who has neither the time nor the expertise to manage their IT — this is enormously reassuring.
The Ruler says: we’ve got this, so you don’t have to worry about it.
Brand Personality Traits for MSPs
- Authority
- Control
- Responsibility
- Leadership
- Stability
- Care
- Protection
- Loyalty
Step 4: Establish Your Tone of Voice
Tone is how your values and personality show up in actual words.
Businesses — especially brand personalities that are promise-led — are expected to keep an air of professionalism, expertise and authority in their content.
However, being overly corporate and technical is too stiff. It can make your content difficult to read. In other words, boring.
Your tone of voice is guided by your brand personality. What vocabulary is in your language?
Are you a punchy start-up and work with businesses that value data-driven insights, fast growth and innovation-first solutions?
If so, use sharper language and motivate your clients by talking about venturing into new frontiers, breaking boundaries and growth through exploration. The traits you want to portray are visionary, ambitious and intellectually sharp.
Or are you risk-averse and work with business owners that want stability, reliability and strategic growth?
If this is you, use language that exudes reassurance, protection and trust. The traits you want to get over in your brand personality are discipline, dependable and grounded.
Step 5: Decide Your Position
The final step in developing a brand personality is to determine where your brand sits relative to competitors.
Are you the challenger who calls out industry nonsense, the experienced safe pair of hands, or the reliable specialist?
Knowing where you sit shapes what you say — but also, what you choose not to say — which is equally important.
Need Help Developing A Brand Personality?
Your brand is speaking to people whether you’ve defined it or not.
Or at least, you’re trying to speak to people.
But what if they are not listening?
The question is not always whether you’re saying the right things. You’re an expert in your field. What you’re saying is not the issue.
But are you putting ideas, insights and information across in a way that people enjoy reading?
A well-crafted brand personality doesn’t just make you look good — it builds the kind of trust that turns prospects into clients and clients into advocates.
Whether you’re starting from scratch or sharpening what you already have, getting your brand personality right is one of the highest-leverage investments you can make in your business.
Let’s build something that sounds unmistakably like you — and irresistible to the people you want to serve.
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