Right Brand Voice isn’t just what you say, it’s how you say it. It’s how you show your brand personality and make an emotional connection with your audience. One of the biggest parts of building a brand is choosing the right voice and personality for your business. The brand voice and personality are what attract and engage customers, differentiate your company from competitors and build trust and loyalty.
Brand voice is important and is treated as a rule book for businesses on how to talk to their audience. Since it’s deep and permanent it’s the foundation of your brand and not changed often. This article by FOR® summarises everything you need to know about choosing the right brand voice for your business.
The Importance of Selecting the Right Brand Voice
Identify Your Target Audience
Firstly, what’s your demographic? Your buyer persona will have a certain reaction to certain tones of voice so it’s best to identify them and understand their preferences. Your brand voice and personality should match the preferences, values and aspirations of your target audience. By choosing a voice and personality that speaks to your customers you can attract and connect more with them and increase conversion.
For example, a Baby Boomer C-suite executive won’t get Gen Z slang or TikTok references. You need to know what this audience likes and adjust how you speak to match their expectations.
Pick Your Brand Personality
What kind of brand personality do you want to be? Are you a Skittles brand that uses slang and crazy ideas to get people talking? Or are you an Apple brand that is understated, authoritative and powerful?
You may want a more formal tone that positions you as an expert. This is more common in industries like health care and finance where trust is key or maybe you want a humorous tone of voice. Jokes can be risky from a branding perspective but as long as you do them right you might just build a diehard following.
Create a Style Guide
This is where the magic happens. After you’ve decided on your brand tone you need to put it into a style guide. This document is shared with the marketing team and outlines how your brand speaks to the world. Every audience has a preferred way of being communicated with. Some will respond to a friendly and casual tone and others will require a more formal approach. Knowing and adopting the right communication style will amplify your brand voice and better connect with your target audience.
This includes written communication like website copy CTA, word choice (including words to avoid) and grammar. Your style guide should also include non-verbal communication like logo, colour palette and imagery.
Write Content That Matches Your Tone
Now that you have your style guide, it’s time to write content that matches your brand. That could be blog posts, website content, social media posts, videos, infographics or podcasts. Ensure your writing and execution team knows all the key things you want to include in your brand voice. As a brand owner or manager share the brand voice objectives with your team so they can write the right message.
Everything your team creates should go through the style guide. We recommend having a quality control process where an editor reviews all content to ensure it follows your tone of voice guidelines. You don’t want someone to share a casual social post if your brand is normally pretty formal!
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Test and Collect Feedback
Now you’ve chosen your brand voice and personality for your business, it’s time to implement it in your marketing materials. Testing and gathering feedback from customers and employees will help you know if your brand voice lands with your target audience and makes a positive impact.
Take the time to update your marketing materials website content, social media posts, ads, and any customer-facing comms to reflect your chosen brand voice. Be consistent in tone, language and messaging across all channels.
Pay attention to what your customers are saying about your brand. Monitor reviews, comments on social media, and any direct feedback you receive. Look for patterns or common themes in the feedback to identify areas where your brand voice and personality may need adjustment.
Conclusion
Choosing your brand voice and personality is key to building a strong brand and customer engagement. The brand voice and personality are the backbone of the business and how it talks to its audience. By choosing the right brand voice and personality you can create a consistent and compelling message that resonates with your target market and differentiates you from the competition.
The brand voice is more than words; it’s the personality and soul of the brand and must be fed, tweaked and cared for at every stage of its life. So, if you want to Boost your online presence by choosing the right brand voice. You can work with a specialist like FOR®’s Branding and Marketing Agency.