3 Ways To Find Your Brand Voice
3 Ways To Find Your Brand Voice
A consistent, recognizable brand voice is one of the most important components of a successful marketing strategy. When your company has a unified tone and personality, it’s easier to connect with your customers on an emotional level. It also helps you stand out from the crowd in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
Not sure where to start?
Let’s talk about 3 ways to help you create and maintain a strong brand voice for your business.
Know Your Audience
Define Your Tone of Voice
Be Consistent
Know Your Audience
The most important thing for any brand is to know its audience.
Who are they?
What do they like?
What choices do they make?
What are their values?
What does this person do for work?
Where do they live?
How much money do they make?
What can you offer them according to these details?
By knowing who your audience, it’ll be easier to connect authentically with them. Answering these questions will help you create a solid brand voice that resonates with them. If you’re not sure, ask them!
It takes time to get to know someone. Discovering more about your audience doesn’t happen by googling it one night for a few hours. It can take months or years to really get to know them – just like it does when you’re getting to know someone in person. You have many conversations over an extended period of time, and with each new conversation, you get to know them better.
Define Your Tone of Voice
Defining the tone of voice for your company is key. You want to make sure that you’re aligning with what’s already working in your business and create a natural flow between everything that you publish on social media or put up on your website.
An archetype can help define the tone of voice for your brand. One of my favorite tools for discovering your brand personality is to look at all the different archetypes and choose one or two that fit your brand best.
In general, there are 12 brand archetypes. Because they have grown in popularity over the past few years, and many have begun adding this idea to their marketing strategy, some people call them different names. Kaye Putnam, a psychology-driven brand specialist has created fantastic resources around this idea. The archetypes are Caregiver, Creator, Entertainer, Explorer, Guy/Girl Next Door, Hero, Innocent, Lover, Magician, Maverick, Royalty, Sage.
Once you identify which archetype your brand falls into, the next step is to discover the personality traits of that particular type. You can do this by looking at some of the most popular brands in each category and what resonates with your brand. You may be only one archetype or a combination of two or three. No two brands are the same. If you have no idea what your brand voice is, Kaye has created a quiz just for you!
Harley Davidson will have a different message and tone of voice than Disney. The stories they tell will be different and who they choose to use as their voice talent will be very different.
Here are a few video examples and their related archetypes. Listen to the voice talent they chose to represent their brand:
Harley Davidson – the Maverick or Rebel
Maverick or Rebel Archetype
Disney – The Magician
Disney – the Magician
Johnson’s Baby – the Caregiver
Johnson’s Baby – the Caregiver
Be Consistent
Once you’ve defined the tone of voice that resonates with your audience, use it everywhere! From the phone answering system to the videos on your website to the social media posts. Just like your brand logo and colors, the brand voice also needs to be consistent.
People like consistency. It’s comforting and it lets you know what to expect. People need that reassurance, especially when they’re dealing with something new. So if the tone of voice is the same on all your platforms – Facebook page, website content, then you will gain their trust and confidence as they engage with your brand.
