What is your brand voice? Do you even have one yet?
In short, your brand voice is the unique manner in which you communicate to your specific customer audience. It is what you say and how you sound that engages that audience and differentiates your brand from your competitors.
Finding a brand voice can be challenging for new businesses still forming their brand identity and for established businesses that want to rebrand to better meet a changing business climate. So how do you go about finding your brand voice? Start here.
Revisit your values
Think of your brand as your personality. You want your personality to leave a good impression on people, but more important, you want your personality and voice to represent your values as a company.
What are your business goals? What is your purpose? What matters most to you? How do you want to serve your customers? What is your promise to them? Once you have detailed your values in a well-crafted mission statement, you will have a foundation for your brand voice.
Understand your target audience
To build your brand voice, you must know to whom you are talking. Who is the ideal customer for your business? Who is most likely to buy your products? And whom do you need to convince to do business with you?
Figure out the demographics of your audience, what they care about, and what they expect from you. Then start thinking about how you want them to feel when they come into contact with your brand.
From there you can start planning out specific messaging and tone of voice that will appeal to that audience.
Describe your brand in concrete terms
Next you want to come up with a concise way to describe your brand, so that everything you create from this point forward fits that description. We recommend this activity.
Meet with or reach out to employees, customers, friends and family, or anyone else who is familiar with your, your business, and your brand. Ask them to answer, “What three words describe my brand?” You do the same thing.
Then look for commonalities to whittle down your list, aiming to get to just three adjectives. Once you have that list, look for other, punchier more concise words that better describe the concept. Most important, make sure that your target audience will both understand the terminology and agree with you on it.
From this point forward, everything you create should fit that description.
Document your decisions
The most important step is to ensure consistency. Your brand voice must be evident across all your marketing materials and website. It must be evident when service reps help customers and when sales reps speak to them. Otherwise, you’ll simply confuse customers.
To ensure everyone in the company is supporting your brand message, write everything down. Create clear guidelines that define your audience and layout specifically how you want to communicate with them. That way, no matter who is creating content, writing copy or speaking directly to your customers, they’ll all sound like a single brand.
Don’t just copy other brands
You can definitely draw inspiration from other brands, but don’t imitate anyone. You want to come across as different and honest. If you have to force your brand voice, it won’t be natural. Instead of just copying someone else, focus on what sets you and your audience apart, and build your messaging around that.
If you need help finding your voice and reinforcing it through your website and other marketing materials, contact us today.