How to develop your brand voice
March 9, 2021
Have you developed your brand voice?
Does your brand have that distinct personality that makes it stand out from the rest?
With all the chatter in the digital realm, does your brand have that recognizable personality that makes it easily remembered by your audience?
This is the importance of brand voice.
It is what makes your audience clearly recognize your brand from how it is presented, not just visually, but also in language and personality.
It helps your audience not just to remember your brand, but also to relate to your brand.
It is a crucial aspect in producing all types of communication materials for your brand across all channels, and eventually will make consumers develop loyalty to your brand. As a bonus, it can even help attract attention to your brand, among people who have not yet been exposed to your product.
In Sprout Social’s Index 2020, consumers were asked what made brands stand out from the rest, and 40% of consumers said it was because of memorable content, 33% said it was a brand’s distinct personality, and 32% said it was because of compelling storytelling.
If you will sum up what all three have in common, that will be brand voice.
Brand voice is defined as the unique personality that your brand carries in all of its communications. Good brand voice makes your brand stand out. It is also usually an advantage for your brand to have a strong personality.
How do you create and develop your brand voice?
- It all starts with your brand’s core values
If you begin with basing your brand voice on your company’s vision, mission and core values, this will more or less be a good starting point. For example, for a company that has compassion and dedication as its core values, the content may be straightforward and these values may apply throughout the content piece.
Study your brand’s core values in order to come up with the key attributes of your brand voice.
- Examine your current voice
Review your current communications. Take note of what is consistent and inconsistent. Take note of audience engagement. What do they interact with the most? From this audit, you may be able to take notes on the voice that you use. You may use this as a future reference when you gather up your team to brainstorm to determine your brand voice.
- Determine your audience and buyer personas
Initiate research and identify your
audience and buyer persona.
Observe their attitudes, their
language, their vocabulary. Observe
the common traits, language of your
audience. Do they prefer humor? Do
they like playful words? Do they want
serious content?
Research on what type of content they like to consume. Do they prefer to read entertainment-type posts or do they prefer reading business content?
Study this information carefully, to
come up with your distinct brand
voice that the audience can relate
with.
- Consider your brand tone
Determine how your brand expresses its content. If brand voice is what you say, tone is how it is said. Study how you should express your content to your different consumers. For handling customer care issues, is it better to be excitable or calm? For new consumers, should your tone be humorous or serious? Casual or formal? Take note of various situations and classify what tone your brand should use accordingly.
- Analyze what your brand is not
This is a reverse strategy of coming up with your brand voice. List down what you don’t want your brand to be. This can be very helpful to determine your brand voice.
For example, you can list it this way:
Our brand is not rigid
Our brand is not serious
Our brand is not old-fashioned
Our brand is not formal
So from this list, it will be easy for you to develop your brand voice to be: Our brand is casual, light, modern and informal.
- Create a brand voice guidebook/manual
Once you have created your brand voice, make a manual or guidebook that will serve as the basis on which your brand may create marketing materials from. This can ensure that your content creators can produce materials that reflect your brand voice.
- Review your brand voice
Don’t forget to review the content pieces you have created after a certain amount of time, say after a few months or even every year. From this review, you may be able to gauge what language may still be relevant to the current times, because it evolves, so you know what still works. A consistent check on your brand voice is very important.
Now that you have a concept about how to develop your brand voice, why not huddle up with your team and try to define your own?
Just make sure that it is consistent and unique, that it fits your brand, and that it is relevant to your audience. Plus, don’t forget that it will continue to evolve over time.
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