You’ve probably heard the term “brand voice” before but you might not know exactly what it is or how your brand can master it. And to be honest, nailing down a brand’s voice can be a bit tricky. But don’t worry, we’re here to help.
We’ve compiled five easy steps to get you headed in the right direction with your company’s brand voice so that your business can benefit from this powerful marketing tool.
So let’s answer the big question first: What is a brand voice and how will it benefit your business?
A brand’s voice is the consistent language used to showcase the company’s personality and purpose. Your brand voice is not your brand — instead, it’s a big tool that will allow you to reinforce your brand to your target audience again and again. Your brand voice is used across all your marketing efforts: your website, social media accounts, print materials, and much, much more.
Your brand voice is everywhere. So it’s crucial to have it perfected and implemented. Here are our five steps to achieving a strong and consistent voice for your brand.
Clarify Who You’re Speaking To
In order to have a successful brand voice, you have to know who is listening. Who is your company’s target audience? Who wants or needs your services? What kind of language and content would your target audience be most interested in? Answering these questions will allow your brand’s voice to best showcase your company.
You want your brand voice to connect with your target audience so that they will want to engage with your company. Whether your brand voice is playful and fun or informational and straightforward; you want your voice to serve your target audience the best way it can.
Make it Unique
Now that you’ve defined who is listening, your next step is to figure out what will make your brand voice different from all the other brands your audience is listening to. What will make your company stand out?
Evaluating your competitor’s brand voice is a great way to figure out areas where your company can shine over your competition. What do you like about their voice? What’s not as great? You want your brand voice to be unique to your company, so evaluating your competition will allow you to generate ideas of what to do and what not to do.
Create a Chart
A brand voice chart will allow you to define your brand’s voice even further. Start with three words that describe your company’s personality and then attach voice characteristics that coincide with those personality traits.
For us, we describe Key Web Concepts’ personality as creative, forward-thinking, and problem solving and with those personality traits, our brand voice strives to be storytelling, relatable, straightforward, helpful, and knowledgeable.
After you define your brand’s personality traits and write voice characteristics for each, you should make a do’s and don’ts list for your brand voice. Back to our example: our brand voice is passionate yet honest and we try to simplify information to help as many business owners that we can. We don’t over-complicate things, and we strive to never have a “know-it-all” tone.
Make a Plan
Now that you have your brand voice chart done, hopefully you’ve solidified the basis of your brand’s voice. Now it is time to put it into action!
We recommend creating a brand voice guide, especially if your business has multiple employees who write or manage content for your business. Ensuring that everyone is on the same page with your brand voice will help your business stay consistent and allow your brand’s voice to do its job, which is to reinforce your brand.
To create a brand voice guide, just write out your answers to the previous three steps in one cohesive guide so that any employee will understand what kind of brand voice your company is trying to implement.
Revisit and Revise (As Needed)
As your company grows, your brand will grow and develop too. It’s important that you stay up-to-date on your brand’s voice and ensure that everyone involved understands any changes so that it will stay consistent.
Don’t be afraid of change for your brand’s voice! If a certain kind of language is working (especially on social media where you can really watch the engagement data) then be sure to update your brand voice guidelines with what your target audience is enjoying.
Hopefully, this got you started on identifying your company’s voice. Brand voice can be a very powerful tool in marketing and we hope our five steps brought you closer to mastering it.
But if you still need help, then give us a call. We specialize in branding and content strategy and we’d love to help your brand out.
