What Is Your Brand Voice?
Your brand is a combination of everything that causes your audience and customers to have an emotional and psychological relationship with you, and which gives them specific feelings. Essentially, your brand is your business’s personality.
And creating your brand voice is an important part of crafting your overall brand.
Your brand voice is how your brand presents itself to others. It’s how others feel when they read your content, buy your products, or engage with you. Knowing how you want people to feel about your brand is how you start, but choosing the right brand voice is always determined by the audience. It doesn’t matter if you like pink or flowery fonts; if your audience doesn’t, it won’t resonate with them at all.
There are several questions you can ask yourself in order to discover your brand voice.
FREE Checklist: Branding For Small Businesses
Who Are You Trying To Appeal To?
The first step to discovering what your ‘voice’ is going to be is to think about the demographic that you’re trying to appeal to. When you think about your target audience, are you thinking about middle-aged men or young women? Are you trying to appeal to parents or are you targeting single people and dog owners?
Is your brand casual, serious, or playful? Is your brand serious, casual or something else? What type of language does your brand use? Is it simple language, fun language, or more professional and highly educated with long words? Plus, what is your brand’s purpose? Is it to engage or educate, and about what and why?
This is a very important stage, and it will also force you to consider a much broader range of questions for your business and marketing in general.
How Would You Dress Your Business?
You probably are thinking about the fonts, colors, and images that will make up your branding guide. But instead of thinking like that for a minute, what if you see your brand as a person. How would it dress? Dress your business personality how you think they should dress when standing in front of a potential customer. Does your business wear a buttoned-up business suit? Is your business lighter and more fun and likes to wear a pink tutu? How can you represent your business best so that it gives your ideal audience the feelings you want them to have?
What Does Your Audience Care About?
One of the things that are most important as you craft your brand voice is whether it will resonate with your audience. Knowing what your audience cares about, who they hang out with, who they follow, and who they trust will help you discover your brand even more, because when you get into the head of your customers, you can find out what they want.
What Do You Want People To Think Of Your Brand?
Do you want to appear classy, expensive and upmarket? If so, you should ensure that the branding matches your prices so that you don’t run the risk of looking tacky and cheap while trying to look posh and expensive. Do you want your brand to seem friendly, quirky and approachable? Take this into consideration when you’re designing your logo, website and marketing collateral.
What Does Your Business Want To Achieve?
Decide how you’re going to advertise to your audience. Your tone of voice in advertising is important. Do you want people to feel like they need your product or service? Do you want people to feel empowered through your business or inspired and motivated?
Think about the brand voice examples that you like and decide whether you want to copy or imitate any of these. For example, what do you think of the Nike brand voice or Apple brand voice? Are there any brands that you hate and would like to avoid being anything like? Make a list of the brand you like and the reasons why you like them. Without copying exactly the same, think about what your brand could do to achieve those.
Try It Out
When you think you’ve developed branding that works, it’s important to test it out. Initially, you can put together a focus group of a few of your closest friends or family members. But eventually, it should consist of your initial clients and customers.
You should ask the group what they think about your brand (or potential idea for a brand) and be open to ideas and criticisms. Ask them what their initial thoughts are when you explain the brand, as this could help you to develop the right voice. When you get feedback, you can tweak your decisions to ensure they more closely match your audience’s needs.
Free Checklist: Creating Your Brand Voice
Your brand is communicated through every single action your business takes and it needs a consistent brand voice. It’s communicated on your website, in your content, in marketing materials, in social media posts and with any interaction you have with a prospect or customer.
Download my free Branding Strategy Checklist that provides actional tips on how to build brand voice guidelines, reach your target prospects, provide a positively memorable experience related to what you have to offer and improve customer retention.
