Finding your voice is crucial when it comes to marketing your brand. In fact, your brand voice is more than just the words you use. Personality, tone and values all come into the equation. And it’s all of this, combined, that shows your audience who you are as a business, what you offer, and what they can expect from you.
But, when it comes to finding your brand voice, where do you even start?
Who are you?
Identify yourself
Finding out what your organisation’s presence and identity is all about is the first step to determining your brand voice. What are you all about? What do you stand for? How are you currently presenting yourself/ your business, and is it actually how you want to be perceived? For instance, are you a corporate business presenting yourself in an astute way?
There are several key things you can do to establish your own voice, and ensure you stand out from the crowd. Let’s break it down…
First, you need to ask yourself these questions:
- What are my core values?
- What is my mission?
- Who is my target audience?
So, really consider what you’re all about, what your business stands for, and where you want to go, as this will help you figure out what it is you want to say.
If you think of your business, for example, as a fun tech start-up (and that’s what you believe your audience wants from you), but the messaging you’re putting out is dry and boring, you won’t get the response you want. This is a common problem in technology and B2B in general. Many companies in these fields assume that’s what their customers expect, but customers are humans at the end of the day. So, understanding your target audience really is key.
Be authentic
There’s no point putting out content (or any kind of messaging) if it doesn’t fully represent what your business is all about. Are you saying you’re one thing but, in fact, you don’t have any interest or dedication to it? For instance, lots of businesses claim to be green, but when you dig deeper, they cause a whole wealth of issues to the environment.
So, think carefully before you start putting out content. Are you being authentic? Like in all relationships, authenticity is crucial when it comes to gaining the trust of your potential customers.
It’s not just businesses finding their brand voice
That’s right – musicians, actors, writers…we all, to some extent, have our own brand voice. It isn’t exclusive to businesses. And we can actually learn a lot about the right way and the wrong way to create a brand voice from individuals. Who better to reference than two of the most famous Harrys in the world: Harry Styles and Prince Harry. Stay with us here…
Harry Styles
Starting out on such an enormous show like the X-Factor, where many people would say you are, effectively, “manufactured” is a huge thing for such a young person to bestow – let alone becoming part of one of the most successful boy bands of all time, with global fame.
But that wasn’t Harry Styles’ voice. He was young, he was successful, but being part of a group of other young boys made it hard for him to be truly authentic at that point in his career. Then he took the plunge and went solo. He broke out of the mould that was made for him and is now a global superstar solo artist with his very own style and voice.
Prince Harry
Whatever your personal stance on Harry is, one thing’s for sure – he’s claimed his own voice and isn’t afraid to use it. However, one area in which he went wrong with his personal branding and voice is that he talked too much in one go in his book, Spare, and recent interviews.
Yes, he wanted to tell the world about feeling stifled by the royal family, the sadness and anger he’s lived with since the death of his mother, issues of racism within the royal family, and so many other topics. But, like with businesses , when it comes to brand voice, it’s important not to mix your messaging.
What’s your GAP?
As in the case of Prince Harry, mixing messaging is all too common in brand content. You see, people get excited about all the different things they have to say to different audiences. Totally understandable. But, in doing so, they end up diluting their message.
KAYBE co-founder Kris Britton explains, “The first thing a business needs to do before determining their brand voice is to really consider what it is they want to achieve. The way we help our clients do that at KAYBE is by establishing what their GAP is”. GAP stands for Grow, Attract, Protect. Let’s look at these in more detail…
Grow
Do you want a better understanding of when to approach your existing customer base so you can boost revenue?
Attract
Do you want to bring new customers into your business, attracting new revenue through your products or services?
Protect
Do you want to make sure your current customers stay loyal to your brand, giving them a reason to stay?
Often, business leaders will say they want all three. The problem with this, though, is that your messaging will suffer if you’re trying to speak to everyone all at once, and you won’t get tangible results. It’s only once you’ve identified your GAP that you can then start to figure out how to achieve it.
Get off the fence
Kris says, “Once we establish what our customer is trying to achieve, then we go about planning what the content that will help them achieve that will look like. Content is merely the mechanism for us to be able to get to that goal.
From there, effectively, you want to be good Marmite. You want people to be very binary in how they think about you and your services. There’s no room for uncertainty.”
So, how do you get people to do that? Kris explains, “Often, people think just doing something means it’s a good idea, but just doing something doesn’t always mean it’ll be as beneficial as you think it will.
For instance, we worked with a data company who, before coming to us, were creating very dry content. Whenever we presented it to anyone, they said told us they didn’t understand what the company did or what their product offered. We helped them on their journey, being a bit more prescriptive about how they should position themselves in the market, and how they should discuss what their product could offer. Now, it’s a lot clearer and interest in their product from prospective customers has massively increased – mainly because people understand what it is they offer.”
TL;DR? Here’s a quick reminder
So, if you’re in need of sorting out your brand voice, here’s a quick summary of what you need to do:
- Consider your core values, mission and target audience and stay true to these
- Never lose sight of your objective, even if your route there changes
- Don’t present everything all at once; it muddies the waters and leads to choice paralysis
- Ensure your messaging is clear; be specific and straight to the point
And if you’re considering working with a marketing agency to help you get incredible results and a brand voice your target audience resonates with, here’s 5 reasons you should.
