The Importance of Brand Voice

Has your brand found its voice?

In today’s digital age, having a well-defined brand voice has become more crucial than ever before.

Social media has significantly changed the way that consumers interact with brands. People now expect to be able to connect and engage in two-way conversations with brands on socials, rather than having a purely transactional relationship.

By creating a well-defined and authentic voice, brands can establish a connection with their audience and foster a sense of community to increase brand loyalty and business growth. Plus, it helps them to stand out in crowded markets!

In this article, we’ll find out more about the significance of brand voice and provide insights into how to create an impactful one for your business.

What do we mean by brand voice?

Your business’s voice is how it sounds when it communicates. This includes the words that it uses, the flow of these words, and the personality that it conveys.

Don’t confuse brand voice with tone of voice, your voice should stay the same, but its tone may change depending on context.

Your business should use its voice consistently across all communications, including social media, website content, advertising, packaging, email newsletters, and blogs. Ensuring that a consistent voice is used across all communications can help to create a stronger and more memorable brand identity and forge more meaningful connections with customers.

The most suitable voice for your business depends on a lot of different factors, you don’t need to be weird or wacky to stand out – your brand voice could be authoritative, fun, professional, edgy, bold, intelligent, or even approachable!

Why is your brand’s voice so important?

When branding a business, people often worry about which colours or imagery they should use or what their logo should look like, but few get hung up about brand voice.

Voice is an aspect of branding that often gets overlooked, but we’re urging you not to make this mistake! Your voice will play a key part in helping your business to stand out and make a lasting impression on its audience.

Picture yourself at a bustling party, surrounded by a cacophony of voices. Amidst the noise, certain individuals will stand out: the captivating storyteller, the exuberant girl, or the expert who commands attention. Your business’s voice should strive to create a similar impact, capturing the attention of your audience and distinguishing your brand from the competing voices in the marketplace.

Similar to how each individual has a unique personality, your business should possess a distinct brand voice that reflects its values and is easily recognisable. Maintaining this voice will humanise your business and helps you to engage with your audience.

What are the benefits of defining your brand’s voice?

Putting in the time to define your brand’s voice could have more of an impact on your business’s success and growth than you think. Here are four key benefits.

Create a more consistent and memorable brand identity 

Using a defined brand voice across all communications helps to ensure that your branding is consistent and reinforces your brand identity, making it easily recognisable and memorable.

Stand out from the crowd 

A unique and consistent brand voice helps your business to demand attention and stand out from its competitors in a crowded marketplace.

Forge emotional connections with customers 

An authentic and relatable voice can create a more memorable experience, help foster connections with your audience, make your brand more approachable, and build up trust with potential customers.

Encourage brand loyalty 

A strong brand voice can help to build brand loyalty. Customers who feel a connection with your brand are more likely to become loyal advocates. They may even recommend your brand to others or become repeat customers!

How to establish the right voice for your business

Lost your voice or not sure how to find it? We’ve put together a few simple steps to help you determine the perfect brand voice for your business.

Revisit your brand values and mission and vision statements 

Your brand values and mission and vision statements should be at the core of business decisions. To ensure that your voice is consistent with your values, mission, and vision, consider the characteristics, personality traits, or language that best align with or complement them. Incorporating these elements into your brand voice will help ensure authenticity and reinforce your brand identity.

Research your target audience 

The most effective brand voices are those that resonate with the brand’s target audience. Make sure you have a comprehensive understanding of the demographics of your target audience and then create fictitious buyer personas. Consider how these personas communicate and the type of content, language, and messaging that you think would best resonate with them.

Audit your current content and messaging 

If your business doesn’t yet have a defined voice but has already put content and messaging out into the world, then you could learn a lot about the styles of communication that engage your audience by auditing your existing content. Pay close attention to which pieces of content or social media messaging have performed well and which haven’t. They could provide insight into the style of voice that best resonates with or engages your audience. 

Brainstorm your brand’s characteristics 

Armed with knowledge from the previous steps, brainstorm some words that describe characteristics or personality traits that you feel reflect your brand values and mission, and would also resonate with your audience. It may sound a little backwards, but an effective way of revealing what your brand voice should be is to first list what you don’t want it to be.

Define your brand voice 

It’s time to fine-tune and polish your brand voice. Start by selecting 3 to 5 key characteristics that capture the essence of your brand’s voice and explain each. It’s crucial to ensure authenticity when creating your voice, as straying too far from your identity and values could harm your brand! You should also avoid conforming to fit in and instead, be fearless in standing out and making bold choices.

Create brand voice guidelines 

To make sure that all this hard work doesn’t go to waste, it is important to create a brand voice guidelines document. This document will enable consistent use of the new voice across all business departments and communications. The guidelines should contain an explanation of each characteristic and guidance on how to express them in writing.

Content Writing at Create8

Defining your voice can take a significant amount of time and effort. If you feel uncertain about tackling the task alone, why not partner with  a branding agency  to save you time and receive expert advice and guidance.

Here at Create8, defining brand voice is essential to the branding process. If you want to know more about how our team can assist you in creating a compelling voice that will help your business grow, get in touch with us today. 

How to incorporate your brand voice

Once you’ve defined your brand voice, it’s time to get to work implementing it across your business communications.

This will likely involve editing the written content in all communications, including marketing materials, advertisements, and product packaging. You will also need to educate your team on how to convey the voice in future collateral.

Here’s some practical advice for successfully incorporating your voice into your current operations , as well as ways to maintain its effectiveness in the future.

Be consistent across all platforms

Consistently incorporating your brand voice across all communications can be just as challenging as creating it was in the first place!

Whether you’re rebranding or establishing a voice for the first time, it’s crucial to ensure that it is consistently applied across all departments for it to be successful.

Your brand voice should be instantly recognisable, no matter what touchpoint your customers are interacting with.

If you fail to apply your voice consistently, your audience will only experience a diluted version of your brand’s personality and your brand identity will lack clarity and authenticity.

Train employees in your brand voice and make the guidelines accessible to all

To help achieve this consistency, your brand voice guidelines should be documented and stored somewhere that is easily accessible to employees from all departments. When introducing a new voice, it’s crucial to provide training to all employees. Any employee that is involved in acting as a voice for the business, whether that is in writing or in person, should receive training about how to effectively apply the guidelines to their role.

Adapting your tone of voice accordingly

Earlier in this article, we touched on the difference between tone of voice and brand voice. You could think of voice as your brand’s personality. While it’s important to keep personality consistent (as this is part of its identity), the tone may change for several reasons, including:

• Who you’re speaking to.
• The circumstances or subject matter.
• The channel you’re communicating through.

The simplest example of this is if you were dealing with a customer complaint. Your brand voice does not change, but you may need to adjust your tone of voice to make it appropriate to the situation.

You should also consider how best to represent your brand on social media as the user base for each platform will have different demographics. Content and tone will need to be adapted to resonate with the audience on each channel.

Regularly review your brand voice

Defining your brand voice is a great first step, but this isn’t where the work ends. Don’t forget to regularly review and update your voice if necessary.

As your business grows and evolves, its voice may need to change with it to keep your audience engaged, especially if you expand into a new market, produce a new product or service, or begin attracting a different audience.

Even if your business and audience stay the same, it’s sometimes necessary for brands to adapt their voice to avoid sounding outdated. Because everyone wants to stay relevant!

Create8 can give your brand a voice

Here at Create8, our team of branding specialists can help your brand to find its voice.

Whether you’d like to refresh your brand voice or create a whole new brand identity for your business, our team of experts can help. We’ll work with you to create unique branding that stays true to your brand’s mission, vision and values. 

We can help set your business apart from competitors. Contact us today to learn more about our services.