It is no secret that having a strong brand is vital for business success.
Often, businesses will put a lot of work into their visual branding. They pick the perfect font, hues, and logo to represent their brand.
But often, the efforts stop there. They end up neglecting one crucial ingredient in the branding recipe – the brand voice.
If you want to capture your audience’s attention and create a connection, it’s important to understand what your brand voice is and how to use it.
Think your brand voice needs some work?
Let’s talk about how to discover and define the unique voice of your business.
How Do You Find Your Brand Voice?
What Is Brand Voice?
Every brand has a distinct personality reflecting the values and characteristics of the business. The brand voice is the method of communicating this personality to your audience.
Basically, it’s the way you “talk” to your customers via any type of content – from the captions in your social posts and the content of your blogs to the audio in a podcast or video.
Good brand voice is consistent across all communication channels. Your audience should be able to recognise you at any touchpoint – even without any associated visuals.
Why Is It Important?
Your brand voice ensures the right people find your business. It gets you seen among the crowd and helps your target audience remember and relate to your brand.
The way you communicate can attract potential customers before they even know much about what you offer. Ultimately, it creates a relationship with you and your audience that results in higher engagement and increased loyalty. In Sprout Socials’ 2020 Index, consumers were asked what makes brands stand out. 40% voted for memorable content, 33% said a distinct personality, and 32% mentioned compelling storytelling. Brand voice plays a vital role in all these factors.
Let’s think about it in terms of cuisine…
Are you a fan of Thai food? Can’t go past a good Italian restaurant? Or perhaps you’re addicted to a spicy Indian curry. Chances are, you’d be able to identify your favourite cuisine blindfolded. It’s that unmistakable mixture of textures, spices, and flavours that you’d recognise anywhere. And that’s precisely what your brand voice should be.
How To Discover Your Unique Brand Voice
Discovering your brand voice will take a little bit of work. But the good news is that once you have identified, captured, and documented it, telling your brand story and connecting with your audience becomes easier than ever.
Here are five simple steps to help you find the vocal cords for your business:
1. Identify Your Positioning, Values, and Personality
Knowing your brand persona is essential in building your brand, and makes it much easier to develop your brand voice. What three words would you use to describe your brand? Use this info and your values and positioning as a jumping-off point to help find your voice.
2. Talk to Your Ideal Client
Do you talk to your grandparents the same way you speak to a teenager? Probably not. As well as knowing who you are, you must know who your audience is. Then you can tweak your brand voice to use language and messaging that resonates with them.
3. Conduct a Voice Audit
Review your current content and communications to get an overview of how your voice sounds now. Is it consistent? Are there things that stand out as not meshing with your persona? Having an idea of what your brand voice sounds like now will help clarify what’s working, what’s not, and where to go next.
4. Document Everything
Capture and document the main guidelines for using your brand voice. This will help you and your team be consistent throughout all channels, regardless of who is creating the content. It can be helpful to create a list of do and don’t type statements to shape these guidelines, such as:
● We do want to be professional, but we don’t want to be pretentious.
● We do want to be fun, but we don’t want to be disrespectful.
● We do want to be relaxed, but we don’t want to be lazy.
5. Review and Adapt
Have you noticed that the slang and phrases you used a decade ago aren’t so relevant anymore? Language evolves, and the consumer climate changes through the years. Ensure you review and refine your brand voice at least once a year to make sure it’s still consistent with you and your audience.
Know you need to nail your brand voice but need some help doing it? Then, reach out to me today. Brand voice is just one of the components I can help you with in my marketing strategies.