Your Brand Voice: How to Define It and Use It Effectively
Without a clear brand voice, your marketing messages will fall flat and won’t stand out amid the sea of other, similar messages vying for your customer’s attention. To have an effective brand voice, you need to communicate in a consistent tone and manner, like you were talking with a friend over dinner or to a client across the desk from your office.
In this post, you will learn:
why brand voice is important to your overall brand building
how to define you brand voice
the benefits & impact of using a unique brand voice
tips & reminders for using it effectively
Ready? Let’s go!
How to Define the Voice of your Brand
To create an effective brand voice, you first need to define the target customer for your product or service. That’s who you’ll be talking to via your marketing. Is it a man or a woman, young or older, urban or suburban, frugal or free-spending? Does she live nearby, in the United States, or is she a citizen of the world? Is he comfortable using technology or is he tech-challenged?
There’s no “wrong” voice. You can be serious or light-hearted, formal or informal, sassy or irreverent. The right answer is the one that best represents and speaks to your target customer.
Watch this video to learn more about brand communication and how to define your brand personality effectively.
Benefits + Impact for Brand Building
What are the BENEFITS + IMPACT of having a clear and well-defined brand voice? Well, there are so many, but just a few of these include…
• It makes you unique. It sets you apart from everybody else.
• It makes your marketing more memorable to your target audience. Having a distinctive and consistent brand voice makes your messages resonate with your target customers. They feel like you’re talking to them (because you are.)
• You have cohesiveness throughout all of your communications. By speaking, writing, and designing in one voice, your brand’s personality becomes recognizable to your customers, whether you’re writing an email or posting on your social media pages.
• It makes your marketing more cost-effective. Because you are aiming your marketing at those customers who are most likely to purchase products and services from you, your marketing budget generates better results.
Tips and Reminders for an Effective Brand Voice
How do you find and achieve an effective brand voice? Consider these tips and reminders:
1. Write to a person, not a crowd. While you may think of your customers as a group, they buy as individuals. Effective marketing evokes emotion and that’s much easier if the person reading or seeing your marketing feels you’re talking to them personally.
2. Think of your brand voice as that of a friend or family member. Would your customers be able to recognize your company by your voice, even if they didn’t see your company name?
3. Consider not only what your brand voice is, but what it is NOT. Make a list of the characteristics that you don’t want to be associated with your brand, such as snobbish, rushed, and/or rude. Make sure not to include these in your brand voice.
The Bottom Line: Differentiate through your Brand Voice
Finding and using your brand voice effectively doesn’t have to be a long, laborious process. The key is choosing a voice that showcases your company’s distinct personality and sets you apart from your competition and then using that voice consistently in all of your company’s communications.
To learn more about how to build a memorable brand voice and use it effectively, we invite you to join our online masterclass “Business Branding: Build a Memorable Brand for Social Impact” by clicking HERE.
