How To Develop A Brand Voice In 7 Easy Steps

In the crowded marketplace of today, establishing a distinct brand voice is not just a luxury but a necessity for businesses aiming to carve out a unique identity.

Brand voice is a central aspect of marketing for companies, especially for those in the B2B space. In branding work, people often think about how a brand looks visually, from fonts to colors to design styles. What is sometimes overlooked is brand voice.

Let’s go further into the details on what brand voice is, how you can develop one of your own and why it is important for small businesses in particular to have a clear tone of voice in their marketing.

What is Brand Voice?

Brand voice is the personality and emotion infused into a company’s communications. It should be consistent, recognisable, and distinct from its competitors.

The tone of your brand voice should be appropriate for your ideal buyer persona. The language you use in your campaigns should be relatable and engaging.

Brand voice will differ from company to company because each has a different target demographic and story they are trying to tell.

For example, an accounting firm might have a professional tone, while a social media platform could be casual.

Why Brand Voice is Important?

A strong brand voice is important because it lets you tell your story in your own words, in the most authentic way possible. Not only is this a powerful way to attract customers and convert them into loyal followers, it’s also an opportunity to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Your brand voice is the tone and personality of your company in written form. It’s the heart of what makes your brand stand out. You can have the best product in the world, but if you don’t have a strong brand voice that communicates why you are different, it will be hard to stand out from the crowd.

A strong brand voice helps you attract and retain customers by showing that your company cares about its customers while also showcasing what makes your business unique.

Here are three reasons why having a strong brand voice is important:

1. Your Brand Voice Helps You Stand Out From the Crowd

Brand voice helps you stand out from the crowd. In the Sprout Social Index™️, the consumers surveyed had reasons why some brands stood out more than others. Forty percent said memorable content, 33% said distinct personality and 32% said compelling storytelling. In all three of these aspects, brand voice plays a significant role. You can’t have a distinct personality without a distinct brand voice.

2. Your Brand Voice Helps Build Trust With Your Audience

Whether it’s with family and friends or colleagues at work, you build trust with someone by consistently acting like yourself over time and by showing that you care about what they think. The same goes for your audience.

They want to know that you are who you say you are and that you care about what they think of your company. If your brand voice changes every five minutes, it’s hard to build that kind of trust.

3. Your Brand Voice Can Help You Attract New Customers

A strong brand voice can help attract new customers because it shows them who you are and what they can expect from your business. For example, if you’re an online fashion retailer that uses a teen-like slang in all its communications, chances are parents won’t be too interested in shopping on your site. But teens may find that kind of voice appealing and might even share it with their friends.

7 Steps to Developing your brand voice

Let’s get one thing straight: the process of developing a brand voice is not something you can complete in a day, week, or even month. It takes time, patience and constant evaluation to develop a unique brand voice that truly represents your company.

The good news? The more time you spend thinking about your brand voice, the stronger it will become. So now that the importance of brand voice has been established, how the heck do you even develop a distinctive one? Use the below seven steps to get started on figuring out what your brand voice is.

1. Start with your company’s mission or value statement.

Your brand’s mission or value statement can help you determine some key characteristics of your brand voice.

For example, if your mission is to provide a high-quality service for a reasonable price, you may want to emphasize professionalism and affordability in your voice.

If it’s to inspire creativity in the classroom, you’ll want to focus on fostering an imaginative and playful tone, while still maintaining authority.

2. Find your target audience

To effectively identify your target audience, it’s essential to create a Brand Persona. This is essentially a detailed profile of an ideal customer, crafted from research and insights, which includes critical information such as age, location, and profession.

Beyond these basics, Finding your target audience is a crucial step in developing your brand voice for several reasons:

a. Alignment with Audience Preferences

Understanding your target audience allows you to tailor your brand voice to match their preferences, expectations, and communication styles.

This alignment ensures that your messaging resonates more effectively with the audience, increasing engagement and loyalty.

b. Enhanced Content Relevance

By identifying your target audience, you can create content that is more relevant and valuable to them.

This relevance fosters a deeper connection between your brand and your audience, as they feel understood and catered to.

c. Strategic Messaging

Knowing your audience enables you to craft strategic messages that appeal directly to their needs, challenges, and desires. This strategic approach to communication can significantly improve the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

3. Analyse competitors

Analyzing competitors is a critical step in understanding the landscape of your industry and refining your own brand voice. To conduct a thorough analysis, consider using a variety of tools and resources:

Social Media Analysis:

Platforms like Sprout Social, Hootsuite, or BuzzSumo allow you to monitor competitors’ social media engagement, content strategy, and audience interaction.

These insights can reveal the tone and style that resonate with your shared audience.

Ad Campaign Analysis:

Tools like Moat or Adbeat allow you to explore competitors’ ad creatives and campaigns. Analyzing these can provide clues about the brand voice and messaging strategies that your competitors believe are most effective.

Direct Communications:

Subscribe to your competitors’ newsletters and follow their blogs. This direct line of communication is often where brands express their voice most clearly.

By leveraging these tools, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of how competitors use language, tone, and style to connect with audiences. This analysis, coupled with customer response insights, can guide the development of a brand voice that distinguishes you in the marketplace and resonates deeply with your target audience.

4. Think about what makes you unique

Stand out from the crowd by finding what makes your business different than all others in its industry. Maybe it’s a special feature that no one else offers, or maybe it’s your personal commitment to customer service.

This unique quality is part of what defines your brand voice and is something that should be carried through all of your marketing materials — whether that’s on social media, in email campaigns or in content marketing pieces.

To uncover what makes your business truly unique and define a brand voice that reflects this uniqueness, consider these guiding questions:

1. What inspired the creation of your business?
2. What do your customers say about you?
3. How does your product or service improve lives?
4. What are your core values?
5. How do you approach customer service?
6. What is your company culture like?
7. What innovations or technologies do you use?
8. How do you communicate with your audience?

By answering these questions, you can begin to distill what makes your business truly unique. This uniqueness should then be woven into all aspects of your marketing materials, from social media posts to email campaigns and content marketing pieces, ensuring that your brand voice consistently reflects what sets you apart in your industry.

5. Listen in on social media

Brands usually have a number of social media channels that allow customers to chat with them directly. Take some time to monitor conversations happening between your company and current customers or followers on Twitter or Facebook.

You’ll get a good idea of how people are responding and interacting with your brand and see what kind of tone and voice they use, which will help you maintain consistency in the future.

The more you do this, the more familiar you’ll become with the language your customers use and the lingo they’re most comfortable with.

6. Think about your tone

Once you know who you’re talking to and what makes you unique, it’s time to decide how you’re going to talk to them. Your tone is the personality of your brand voice; it determines how people will feel when they read what you write.

Will they feel like they’re talking with their best friend, or with a stuffy professor? You can also use tone to convey information about your brand; if you want to seem trustworthy and professional, use language that reflects this, like “based on scientific evidence” or “a leader in the field.”

Use adjectives to determine your tone. Think about the adjectives that describe your audience (e.g., young, adventurous) and the ones that describe your company (innovative, honest). T

hen mix-and-match them until you have a list of adjectives that match the feel you want for your brand voice. If you need some help getting started, take a look at our list of tone words below.

7. Set guidelines

Establishing a unified brand voice across your organization is crucial for maintaining consistency and clarity in all communications. To achieve this, setting clear guidelines is essential.

These guidelines should outline the tone, style, language, and even the structure of communications to ensure that every piece of content, from social media posts to customer service interactions, aligns with your brand identity.

Creating a comprehensive set of brand guidelines not only helps maintain consistency but also empowers your team members by providing a clear framework within which they can creatively express the brand voice.

This is especially important in larger organizations, where multiple departments or teams may be involved in content creation and customer interactions.

For an in-depth exploration of how to create effective brand guidelines, including real-world examples from successful brands, you can read our Branding Guide Examples.

Brand Voice Examples

1. Dove: Empowering and Authentic

Dove takes a unique approach by focusing on real beauty and self-esteem. Their “Real Beauty” campaign, for instance, features women of all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds, diverging from the traditional beauty industry standards.

This approach not only promotes their products but also aligns with their mission to boost confidence among women. Dove’s brand voice is nurturing and inclusive, resonating with a wide audience by emphasizing authenticity and emotional connection.

2. Patagonia

Patagonia‘s brand voice is deeply intertwined with its commitment to environmental activism and sustainability, setting it apart in the outdoor apparel industry.

Their marketing strategies and communications consistently emphasize a respect for nature, advocating for responsible consumption and environmental stewardship. This is evident in their unique approach to campaigns, such as the “Don’t Buy This Jacket” ad, which encouraged consumers to reconsider their need for new products, highlighting the environmental cost of production​​.

Their tone of voice is conversational, respectful, and caring, striking a balance between being serious and matter-of-fact about environmental issues while also being approachable and educational.

Patagonia positions itself as an explorer, sage, and caregiver through its brand archetypes, emphasizing exploration, wisdom, and nurturing in relation to the natural world and its conservation​​.

3. Apple Vision Pro

Apple Vision Pro’s brand voice is characterized by its focus on innovation, high-quality user experience, and seamless integration of technology into everyday life. This is evident in the way Apple describes the Vision Pro as a device that transforms how people work, connect, and enjoy entertainment, blending digital content with the physical world for powerful, personal computing experiences

Conclusion

You’re already well on your way to creating a strong brand voice by reading this article and understanding what it is and what it isn’t. Remember not to lose sight of who your target audience is and choose words they will respond to while avoiding terms that will distract them.

Creating a unique brand voice is possible, and when done right, it can have a profound impact on your business success. We are here to help you get started on creating your own successful brand voice, so contact us at Neu Entity to work together with you creating your business brand voice.