How to Build a Brand Voice
Who is your brand? While customers interact with your company’s products or services, their experience goes beyond what your business sells. Your brand encompasses the emotions, values, and perceptions that customers associate with your business. A brand voice that connects with your target audience can attract new customers and assure long-term loyalty. Learn how to build a brand voice, including guidelines and examples.
What Is a Brand Voice?
Brand voice is the distinct personality a business cultivates to communicate with its target customer. Mastering a consistent style and tone across all platforms gives customers and prospects a consistent experience of your business, fostering familiarity and trust.
An effective brand voice includes the following:
- Brand personality. For example, is your brand friendly and approachable or bold and authoritative?
- Target audience. Who are you talking to? What are their pain points, desires, and motivations?
- Messaging. The words you use, the level of formality, and any humor you might incorporate need to match up with your brand personality and target audience.
A cohesive brand identity differentiates you from competitors and creates a lasting impact on your audience.
Brand Voice vs Tone
While your brand’s voice should be consistent across all communications, the tone may change based on the message. For example, the brand voice of a healthcare organization may be compassionate and authoritative. However, if it was announcing the opening of a new facility, the tone might be celebratory.
On the other hand, if it offered diet tips to help diabetes patients manage their condition and improve the effectiveness of their medication, then its tone might be serious and professional.
How to Build a Brand Voice
How do you develop a solid and cohesive brand voice? Are you hitting the right chords with your audience? Here are ten actionable tips and brand voice guidelines to help.
1. Start With Your Mission and Values
Reflect on your brand’s mission statement and core values. What does your brand stand for?
2. Audit Current Messaging for What Works and Doesn’t
Audit your current messaging and identify specific areas for improvement. Is the tone consistent? Does the voice align with your organization’s mission and values?
3. Work With Your Team to Personify Your Brand
Imagine your brand as a person. With your team, narrow down adjectives that do and do not fit your brand identity. Develop a list of adjectives to describe its character.
4. Compare and Contrast Your Brand With the Competition
Look at your competitors’ brand voices, highlighting what you like and don’t like. Identify the gaps and opportunities to help you differentiate your voice to stand out in the market.
5. Get Crystal Clear on Your Target Audience
Who you are speaking to is as important as understanding your brand’s personality. Create one or more detailed buyer personas to help your marketing team craft on-brand messaging, whether you are using in-house or outsourced writers.
6. Ensure Cultural Sensitivity
Knowing your audience will help you ensure your voice is inclusive and respectful. Even so, take a step back to consider how your voice might be perceived in different cultural contexts.
7. Test and Refine
Before finalizing your brand voice, test and refine it by drafting sample content and getting feedback. You can share the test content with your staff, long-term clients, and audience members to determine if the voice resonates.
You can also try variations of your brand voice in different email, social media, or marketing campaigns and monitor the results.
8. Consider the Customer Journey
While your brand voice and personality need to be consistent across all communications, you may want to adjust your tone for different stages of the customer journey.
For example, if your company’s products or services are technical or complex, you shouldn’t burden consumers with details too early in the customer journey. Your tone in blogs, web pages, and social media posts targeting new prospects may be more benefits-focused and engaging, building up to the technical information further along the funnel.
9. Formalize Brand Voice Guidelines
Once you have a good grasp of your brand personality, add the specifics of your brand voice to your comprehensive content style guide. Be sure to include language examples and any sentence structure preferences you’ve identified.
10. Preserve Brand Voice Consistency
Once you’ve finished developing and testing your brand voice guidelines, train your in-house or outsourced team on how to use them. This will ensure consistent communication across all channels.
If this seems like a lot to do on top of your daily workflow, you can hire a branding agency and leverage their expertise.
What Is an Example of a Brand Voice?
Successful brand voices surround us every day. Yet, you may never have considered why they are successful and how they align with each company’s personality and goals. Here are some brand voice examples you will instantly recognize.
1. Nike
Nike’s inspirational, bold, and empowering voice is encapsulated in its celebrated slogan, “Just Do It.”
The brand’s voice is motivational and direct, encouraging people to push their limits. This resonates with their target audience of athletes and sports fans.
2. Apple
Apple’s voice is simple, innovative, and premium, as coined by its slogan, “Think Different.” Apple’s brand voice is as clean and cutting-edge as its products and marketing approach.
3. Wendy’s
Wendy’s sassy, humorous, and conversational brand voice has galvanized public attention over the years, helping distinguish it from the dominant fast-food giants and carve out a loyal customer base. Its playful, sometimes provocative voice on social media and other platforms makes it unmistakable.
4. Dove
Through its Real Beauty campaign, Dove elevated its brand from a typical supermarket option to an empowering, inclusive, and compassionate brand. It reached beyond the quality or content of its product line to connect with its target audience on an emotional, identity level.
5. Patagonia
Patagonia’s authentic, environmentally conscious, and adventurous brand voice penetrates everything they do. They deeply understand the passion and values of their target audience which empowers them to take bold stances that might otherwise seem counterintuitive for sales.
Expert Writers for Your Brand Voice
A well-crafted brand voice gives your business a recognizable personality. By reinforcing your company’s values, appealing to your target audience, and distinguishing you from competitors, a strong brand voice creates a lasting impression.
However, developing and maintaining a consistent brand voice can be challenging. Here are some suggestions:
- Experiment with different voice variations to determine the most effective approach
- Launch a multi-channel campaign that stays true to your brand
- Ensure your content consistently reflects your brand personality
ContentWriters is here to help. While we’re not a branding agency, our team of experienced, US-based writers excels at adapting to diverse brand voices, content goals, and formats.
Ready to bring your brand voice to life? Connect with our experts today.
Joan Weisman’s strong research skills, SEO knowledge, adaptability of style and voice, and passion for staying current make her an asset for freelance web content, SEO, and copywriting.
