Your Brand Voice in 5 Simple Steps.
What’s your brand’s personality? Have you taken the time to develop one?
Millions of brands speak to their customers via social media, over the phone, through traditional marketing like billboards and posters, and face to face. It doesn’t matter if you’re a 1-10 person company or a 100-500 employee company, you should make sure that your brand has a voice that consumers can recognize.
While we’re here, we should point out that brand voice doesn’t mean just how you speak and interact with your customers. It’s about how you present yourself to them overall, with respects to your logo, motto, ideas, products, and basically everything you are as a brand.
A brand voice doesn’t just come instantly either. It’s something that takes time and a lot of effort to convey properly. It’s the exactly the same thing as a person meeting another individual for the first time. You make a first impression, connect and share ideologies and values, and expand on who you are and what you believe in.
There isn’t any one correct voice to have for your brand. Just as all humans are unique, each brand must be able to portray that it is different than its competition, using its voice.
Creating your Voice in 5 Steps
Step 1: Start by thinking about your product or service. What problems do these solve, and who are likely to buy them?
Step 2: Jot down a quick list of your values, morals, beliefs, and your most prominent personality traits.
Step 3: Ask yourself; “If my brand were a person, how would it act if it walked in a room filled with people it didn’t know?”
Step 4: Once you have your brand’s basic characteristics down, it’s time to start thinking about your target audience. Think of your ideal customer. What would their personality be?
Step 5: Make sure everything about your brand’s personality is written down, and there is a set plan in place to maintain a similar voice throughout your company.
Who are you speaking to?
Understanding who your target demographics are from a business perspective is imperative to your brand voice success. If you want your brand to achieve the perfect voice, you must first consider your audience.
A Few Rules for Creating your Brand Voice
Your brand voice can be anything you want! But there are a few quick guidelines when creating one. We recommend you follow these rules:
- Make sure it’s unique.
- You’re more than welcome to be inspired by your competition and other businesses that you like, but it would hurt you in the long run if you simply tried to sound exactly like those businesses.
- Try to make sure that your brand voice aligns with your personal desires and values. This way, it’s sure to be unique.
- Be optimistic 🙂
- This may seem redundant to say, but we’re going to say it anyways. When considering your voice, it will help to strive towards positive messages that your consumers can relate to. You want to spread the love, not hate.
- Remember to tailor.
- You need remember to tailor your brand personality to the audience that you’re speaking to. While it is in fact important to have a brand voice represent the personality and beliefs of the person/people running it, you must make sure that it is mostly based on who you’re targeting.
- For example! If you’re trying to connect to a younger audience, then try to present your brand as laid back, humorous, fun-loving, and all that jazz. If your product revolves around safety and saving lives, then perhaps it’s best to exemplify a stern, authoritative, parental brand personality. You see how the change in personality would make sense for the two different brands and target audiences?
- Write it down.
- What we mean by this is that after a solid brand voice is decided upon, make sure that you log every detail of it in your system. Write down who your target audience will be, and what your goals and values are.
- It also helps to write down the personality traits your business has, such as ‘cute’, ‘funny’, and ‘serious’ to name a few. This will help you to remember it if you ever forget, but more importantly — for larger firms and firms that are growing — it can help businesses that may have more than one person handling social media and make sure that they’re posting with same company voice.
A good company voice is arguably a business’ greatest asset. Once you and your company feel comfortable using it, you can use it as a tool to grab the attention of consumers who have similar character traits. Also, it’s important to note that brand voices can in fact change, just like people do. As a business matures, its values may change, and it’s important that the voice follows that change. Don’t be afraid to take risks with it. If necessary, the voice will change without much hassle. Be mindful of what you portray through your business as an owner or social media account manager. Align yourselves so that you know what you want to say and how you want to say it.
If you have any comments or queries about brand voice, don’t hesitate to tweet us, or message us through Facebook! We’re always available to talk and would love to answer any questions you may have.
Until next time!