The importance of finding your brand voice
The companies that stick in our minds always have a brand voice.
Think of Spotify, with its entertaining year-end round up and overarching sense of humour, or Starbucks, with its fun headlines and simple, super-readable copy.
Sure, on-point visuals, social clout, and probably-billion-dollar ad budgets have a lot to do with the split-second recognizability of these corporations, but even if your business lacks those factors, solidifying your brand voice can do wonders.
A brand voice does three vital things:
It builds an emotional connection that creates trust and glows with authenticity,
it makes you instantly recognizable to your audience, and
it creates a framework that ensures consistency across your content (which contributes directly to 1 and 2).
Hm, a brand voice sounds important
It is. But, if you’re starting to sweat about yours, here’s something I can’t prove but strongly suspect: 99% of companies do not launch their businesses with a firm brand voice that does exactly what they wanted and never needs tweaking.
You probably have some brand voice elements in place early on—like your values and mission, thanks to your business plan—but it often takes seeing your content out in the wild to go “Whoops, that’s not quite what I want us to sound like.”
That’s totally okay. Businesses are living entities, right? That means they and their vital components need to evolve to survive. Never mind that most companies adopt new values over time, like a focus on sustainability or a narrowing of their niche down to one vein of customer. These factors all contribute to the dynamic creature that is your brand voice.
Watch your brand voice vitals
Here’s how you can use the three points I mentioned above to really perfect your brand voice.
Deliver authenticity to build connection
Create a brand voice that is genuine. Making up a persona might work, but whoever is writing your content has to be able to adopt it consistently—this builds a stronger connection with your clients and potentials at every interaction, which makes you more trustworthy.
How you position yourself is totally your call, but I really encourage you to be authentic, not just act authentic. Share what you really think. Write what you really care about.
Make sure you’re sharing stories and genuine hot takes. This is the best way to ensure your target people resonate with your voice and, by association, your brand.
Set yourself apart for instant recognition
You probably aren’t the only person or company doing what you do. That’s great—potential clients need to be able to find the service or product provider that resonates with their values and specific needs.
This means having a stance or offering that sets you apart from your competitors, but it also means having a voice that sets you apart. In this saturated market, you want to look, feel, and sound unique.
Identifying the speech patterns and language choices that really make you you mean that, eventually, your followers will know great insight is coming as soon as they spot your classic intro or hear your voice in their feed.
Create consistency for better communication
If you do a ton of work determining your voice and then only adhere to those brand style rules in half the places you post, you’re not going to get much traction. If you sound fun and savvy on Instagram, a potential client is going to look for you on LinkedIn. If you’re buttoned up and hoity-toity there, you’ve undermined your trust and authenticity.
You also run the risk of confusing them, making them wonder if they have the wrong brand, which means they’re unlikely to dig deeper. Make sure they remember you, not three different versions of you. A solid brand voice strengthens recall and your image.
4 steps to your brand voice, briefly
Before you rush off to start fine-tuning your brand voice, here are five steps to making sure it does the work:
1. Nail down your audience
You might have half a dozen buyer or client profiles, but you can’t have half a dozen brand voices. Figure out the tone and style that will charm the highest percentage of people you want to reach.
2. Look back at your core values
You might already have these in your business plan or model. Make sure nothing you are adding to your brand voice flies in the face of your core values. This is a huge contributor to trust.
3. Analyze your current content
What voice or voices do you see and hear in your existing content (on your site, in your socials, on your newsletter, etc). Note how it varies, as well as the pieces you want to keep.
4. Test out your brand voice
After you’ve shared a few things in your new brand voice, ask your followers what they think. Did they find the changes jarring? Did they resonate even more? Did they think it was out of character? Tweak accordingly.
Your brand voice is a vital part of your business, so put in the effort to really make it shine. I promise it will pay off. If you need some help with this aspect, that’s what I’m here for! Let’s chat and get to the bottom of this 🙂
How is your brand voice looking? Did this post spark some ideas for change, or solidify your confidence that you’ve slayed this task? I’d love to hear about how you came up with your brand voice, how you had to adjust, or the challenges you faced in building it. Let me know!