Brand voice is precisely what it seems to be – how your brand sounds, seems, and appears to the general public. It describes how you communicate with the media and the audience and how your brand is perceived by the said entities.
You can think of it like this – if your brand was a person, what would it sound like? Which words and expressions would it use to describe concepts and ideas? How does this person seem to other people? What personality traits does it have? Does it have a distinct style?
Answering these questions will help you define your brand voice. Once you figure out what your brand voice is, use that tone, style, and approach in all your marketing and advertising efforts. This will define how you communicate with your audience, and it will make or break your success.
Why Is Brand Voice Important?
Unless you have a unique brand voice, the fact of the matter is – you won’t stand out in the sea of others. The whole purpose of having a personalized brand voice is to ensure that your customers can always distinguish your brand from others. While visual elements, such as logos, color stories, or products, are also an excellent way to determine a brand, having a specific sound in your written content will make everything more unique.
Believe it or not, there is even factual evidence that supports this claim. According to the Social Sprout Index, where they surveyed customers on what makes brands stand out, 40% said memorable content, 33% said a unique personality, while 32% said storytelling. That means that nearly a third of participants noted that brand voice is very important in standing out from the crowd.
5 Tips for Improving Your Brand Voice
Now that we know what brand voice is and why it’s so important, let’s see how you can define and improve yours. While it may sound very complex and challenging, we promise it’s not. Once you figure it out, everything will be smooth sailing. Here are our top five tips on how to improve your brand voice, stand out from your competitors, and appeal to your audience like never before:
1. Create a Brand Voice Strategy
Having a comprehensive marketing strategy is a must for any company that wants to be successful and known. Including a section about the brand’s voice would be a smart choice; everything will be documented since then. Documentation is important, especially if you have a large marketing team. This document will act as a guide for other departments and collaborators, ensuring that your brand voice is coherent across all platforms and communications.
2. Check How Your Current Brand Voice Sounds Like
Every brand has a voice, be it purposeful or not. What you’ve done and posted so far represents your brand voice, regardless of whether it was intentional or not. So, go through all your old posts, ads, and other written data to see how you sounded up until now. If you’re satisfied with what you see, create a clear definition and move forward with the same voice. But, if you don’t like it, define what you’d like to emulate and change future communications accordingly.
3. Be Cohesive with Your Target Audiences
One of the best ways to define your brand voice is to analyze your target audience and modify your brand voice accordingly. For example, if your target audience is older, you should use a more serious tone and approach, factual evidence, and a soother tone of writing. On the other hand, if you’re trying to cater to a younger audience, you should use a fun tone, include jokes or even memes.
4. Define Your Brand Tone
While brand voice represents what you’re saying, brand tone represents how exactly you say it. The brand tone isn’t one-size-fits-all. Instead, you should use a different tone for different purposes, like we mentioned above. For example, your customer service can’t be as excited as when you’re celebrating your company’s anniversary. Choose a couple of different scenarios and create tone guidelines for each one. E.g., ‘’when posting on social media, we can be playful,’’ ‘’when responding to customer inquiries, we should be more formal.’’
5. Never Stop Evolving
Last but not least, never stop analyzing and optimizing your brand voice. Trends and audiences change, and your brand should evolve accordingly. The same approach won’t work forever, so knowing when to switch it up will benefit your game immensely.
