88% of marketers feel that a distinctive brand voice helps create better connections with customers, according to a recent survey. A customer who feels connected to the brand is often loyal to that brand. This can lead to increased repeat sales and word-of-mouth recommendations. This means you will need to spend less time and effort acquiring new customers and convincing them to convert.
What is Brand Voice?
Brand voice is how a business speaks to its audience and to the world. It is the unique personality behind the business and the character that the brand reflects. If you were to speak in the brand voice, you would know whether it would give a sarcastic, humble, supportive, or indignant response.
In other words, brand voice sits at the core of the relationship customers have with the business. It fosters connection and community, and it can even build trust in the brand’s products.
Why Does Brand Voice Matter?
“Brands that talk to everyone don’t talk to anyone,” says Morgan Brown, Vice President of Marketing at Shopify. “Whether differentiating means what the brand stands for, how the product is made, or how they interact with their audience, consumers are looking for distinctive experiences and brands they can connect with.”
Developing a brand voice helps distinguish your business from the competition, even if you operate in similar product categories or sell the same items. It can impact how your customers perceive your business, build trust, create connection, or allow people to easily identify your voice amidst the noise.
How to Discover Your Brand Voice: Key Exercises
1. Identify Your Target Audience
How you speak as a brand depends largely on the people you are speaking to. Before you start refining your business’s voice, you first need to identify your target audience. For example, you wouldn’t speak the same way to people in their fifties and sixties as you would interact with Gen Z, or you risk losing the trust and engagement of customers most likely to buy from you.
2. Find Existing Brands or People You Love
If brand voice can be a mix of existing brands, celebrities, fictional characters, or public figures, what or who would it be?
3. Get the Creative Juices Flowing with Writing Exercises
You have the ingredients to create the perfect brand voice mix. Through some fun writing exercises, we’ll blend two identities together and add any extra ingredients for the right voice for your business.
If you’re satisfied with the new understanding you’ve gained of your brand voice, move on to the next step. If you still need some exploration, try writing an “About Us” page in your brand voice. This page should be where your brand’s personality can shine the most, and it should help you clarify how you want your voice to sound.
Creating a Style Guide for Your Brand Voice
Now that you have a more solid understanding of what your brand voice looks like, it’s time to build a style guide to reflect that. A style guide not only reminds you of your character, but it also serves as a roadmap for new employees, freelancers, and business partners when they need to write like your brand or gain a deeper understanding of it. Here’s how to create one.
1.
Finding a place to build your style guide
The biggest requirement here is that you can share your style guide quickly and easily with others. Google Docs and Notion are great places to start.
2. Share your mission statement and values
What are the goals and ambitions or work you want to achieve as a business? Clarify your brand’s mission statement, values, and vision at the top of your style guide. This serves as a baseline for anyone seeking to understand your business’s personality.
3. Think about how you want your customers to feel
This is your opportunity to share how you want customers to feel whenever they interact with your brand. Do you want to be the smart friend who shares advice? A university professor? The fun best friend who always wants to have a good time? You should already have this information from the writing exercise we did earlier. Write down that information and include the response you want from customers.
4. Create a table of how it sounds and how it doesn’t
Sometimes, the best way to express how you want to sound is to share how you don’t want to sound. Creating a table for how your brand persona sounds makes it clearer for your team. In the document you are using, create two sections, one that includes how your brand voice sounds, and the other that includes how it doesn’t sound. Fill in the sections with bullet points that clarify how the brand voice is and what it is not. For example:
✅ As a brand, our voice seeks to be:
– Warm, encouraging, and supportive. We want customers to feel that we understand and support them.
– Friendly, but not overbearing. We are the friend you ask for support, but we are not overdoing it.
? As a brand, our voice is not:
– Condescending. We are here to offer you advice on how our products support your lifestyle, but we will not talk down to you.
– Sarcastic or cynical. We are balanced, kind, and friendly, but we will not make jokes or sarcastic statements.
Maintaining brand voice consistency across platforms
As you develop your brand’s content across different social media platforms, email, text messaging, and your website, it may be challenging to maintain consistency. Different types of customers will visit different platforms, so how will your voice adapt while staying true to its core personality?
This is where tone comes into play. Tone gives you the flexibility you need to meet customers where they are on different platforms.
For example, Girlfriend Collective shifts its tone slightly from platform to platform to match the mood. In its welcome message, the brand uses the slogan “Waste Not. Wear it.”
On Instagram, the environmental messages remain the same, but the tone is more playful and motivational: “Recycled packaging has never looked this good.”
Examples of brand voice
The brand voice can make a huge part of your brand’s personality. It can be humble and strong. It can be fun and lighthearted, or serious and logical. We’ve compiled a variety of voices so you can discover where your brand fits best.
Sarcastic voice:
Your favorite sarcastic friend, embodied in brands that love to have fun.
Who Gives a Crap
Who would have thought toilet paper could be entertaining? Who Gives a Crap uses a cheeky and playful tone to make buying toilet paper more enjoyable. The brand grabs your attention with funny lines like “Sure, we love puppies, sunny days, and beach picnics, but our true love is toilet paper.” It then uses this attention to educate its customers about sustainability and the lack of access to toilets for two billion people around the world.
Marine
Layer
If Marine Layer were a person, it would have a response for everything. The brand’s irony is embodied in all marketing communications and its website, making it feel like someone is communicating with you while you browse.
Inspirational Voice:
Words that inspire customers to become better versions of themselves.
Patagonia
Patagonia’s dedication is evident in the language across all its marketing properties. Additionally, the brand’s voice is consistent and strong, urging customers to go out and join initiatives to save the planet while wearing Patagonia products.
Almsthre
The name Almsthre is short for “almost there.” It represents the push and perseverance that fuels the brand’s voice. Almsthre always exudes encouragement, and its voice aligns with its product mission: empowering customers to go out, do more, and embark on great adventures.
Serious Voice:
Brands that use sincere language to support and guide consumers.
Private Stock Labs
You may sell products that need to work to protect your customers. To build the increasing level of trust people need to buy your products, your brand will likely need to take on a more serious persona. Private Stock Labs is one of those companies that sells four-layer and KN95 germ-protective masks. Its language is serious and reassuring, referencing the certifications and science behind its products.
Molekule
Molekule, a company selling air filters, also has a more serious voice. Sophisticated and confident, backed by science, certifications, and research, Molekule positions itself as a trustworthy, high-quality, and impactful brand.
Polished Voice:
These brands take extra care in how they talk about their products.
Raen
The artisanal sunglasses from Raen are made with the utmost care, as reflected in the language the brand uses on its website. The attention that the brand puts into crafting its products and its copy goes a long way in ensuring shoppers feel confident when making a purchase.
Open Farm
Open Farm offers high-quality food for dogs and cats. The company is deeply committed to sourcing the ingredients for its products, and the brand voice reflects that commitment. This creates a highly cohesive brand experience, where the company’s voice aligns with its goals and values.
Empathetic Voice:
Sometimes, the best brand voice is your own. These entrepreneurs are the face and voice of their business.
Oxbow Designs
The vision of the business facility guides the brand. It allows people to feel a greater connection to your brand by understanding why you care. Oxbow Designs, a jewelry store run by Maggie Rogers Kyle and her dog Harper, does a great job of that. On Instagram, Maggie shares photos of products and pictures of Harper, bridging the gap between her and her customers.
Fewer Finer
Madison Snyder of Fewer Finer is active on Instagram Stories daily, sharing videos of new vintage jewelry pieces, recommending products, and showcasing snapshots from her day. The company’s voice is hers, allowing shoppers to feel a deeper connection to the brand, especially if they are collaborating on major purchases, like engagement rings or wedding bands.
Your brand voice defines your brand’s personality
As you develop your brand voice, remember it is a crucial part of your business’s online personality. It is the foundation for how you talk to customers and how you make them feel, and it can influence why they trust you and your business. Are you ready to build your business? Start your free trial of Shopify – no credit card required.
Source: https://www.shopify.com/blog/brand-voice
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