What do some of your favorite brands communicate to you? What personality do you associate with them? Did you even realize they have personalities? This is their voice, and finding yours is an important part of your strategy.
What is Brand Voice?
Your voice is the distinct personality of your brand. If it was a person, how would it dress? How would it speak, and what other quirks would it have?
This personality, once created, will carry across all forms of communications from blogs to newsletters, website copy, emails, and social media.
Voice and tone are two sides of the same coin: Voice is what your brand itself says to your customers, and tone is how you communicate that message.
Finding Your Voice
This means defining your buyers personas. Once you do that, it’s relatively easy to “talk” in a way that resonates with them. Is your product or service geared towards Gen Z, for instance, or is it focused on B2B? Is it a small business, or an enterprise? If you’re addressing a young audience, you may want to keep your voice relaxed and “hip.” B2B, on the other hand, may require content that is more authoritative or geared to C-suite audiences.
You may find that your tone changes across audiences. How you present your brand when you launch a new product or service will be different from how you address the media or communicate with someone regarding a customer complaint. Messaging should be consistent, yet with a flexible tone to suit different situations.
Take a look at some of your current content. How does your audience engage with your posts, communications, and website? Once you see what your target audience identifies and engages with, you can begin to build your brand’s personality.
Lastly, truly define your voice. What three words do you think best represent you now? This should be a team exercise; break out the whiteboard and have fun with it.
Staying True to Your Voice
Now that you’ve found your it, it’s important to stay consistent. If you have several people on your team touching each piece of content, this may be harder than you think. Documentation will help you maintain brand standards. This should include:
Your business’ mission and values statement: The tone of your mission statement should be reflected in your voice.
Consistent terminology: Every product or service should remain consistent with its name and description, regardless of what platform you’re using to promote it.
Personality: Fun, clever, and irreverent, or authoritative and strictly professional? Once you choose your brand’s personality, be sure to document it so everyone connected with content and website creation stays consistent.
Routine Audits
You’ll need to reevaluate your brand’s voice to make sure that your chosen strategy is working for you, and that your team is working to represent it consistently. You may find that you need to tweak your ideas before finding one that works for your business.
We take branding seriously. We know how important your voice is, and we’ll not only help you find it, but we’ll also help you maintain it. Ready to put our experienced teams to work for you? Contact us now.