Three Ways to Define Your Brand Voice

Three Ways to Define Your Brand Voice

Defining a voice for your brand can be difficult -- very difficult. At the same time, there’s almost no better way to set your business apart from your competition than by speaking to your audience in a voice that’s uniquely yours. If one of your fans can read a few lines of an article on the web, and immediately say, ”Hey that sounds just like my favorite company!” then you’re winning.

Many companies spend years trying to define their brand voice successfully. Others will hire expensive branding coaches who can cost upwards of four figures per hour. You don’t need all of that though – there are several ways you can define your brand voice yourself.

Figure out how your audience likes to be spoken to

This is huge, and it’s best not to make assumptions. Your audience is probably a varied demographic of people, with certain similarities that tie them all together. Your job is to figure out what those similarities are, and then use them to speak to your audience in a way that resonates with them.

One way to go about this is to look at what other companies your audience likes, and observe how these brands are already speaking to your audience. The goal isn’t to copy another company’s brand voice (never do this), but to gauge how they react to being spoken to in certain ways. It should then be fairly straightforward to figure out how to tweak your own brand voice to something that will resonate with your audience.

Just ask your audience!

It sounds silly, but it really works. Just ask your audience how you should define your brand voice. Of course, if you send them an email saying “How do you think I should define my brand voice?” they’ll probably just end up scratching their heads and asking you, “what’s a brand voice?”

Instead, ask more straightforward questions to eventually lead you to the answers you need. If you have an email list, there’s no better way to get feedback from your audience. Consider sending them an email with a few conversation-style questions, or a link to a survey. Make sure to preface it by saying that you’re trying to make your brand more applicable and relevant to them as a fan in order to make them more motivated to give you the honest, critical feedback you need. Some good questions to consider asking are:

What was your favorite piece of content from us in the last six months?

What do you want to see more of from us over the next six months?

Is there anything we’ve done recently that really resonated with you personally?

What do you think we could improve upon?

Once you define a brand voice – own it!

There’s nothing worse than a company which identifies a brand voice and then struggles to use it confidently. It becomes quickly apparent when a company isn’t confident in its own brand voice and tries to force it. This often has the exact opposite effect to that desired. They’ve identified the brand voice because they want to be authoritative, but unless they are truly committed to and confident in their own brand voice, it comes off as an unattractive facade.

The trick is to make sure your self-confidence as a company is high, and to choose a brand voice you truly believe in. If you don’t believe in your own brand voice, nobody else will either.

For many businesses their brand voice will naturally evolve as they grow. For those that don’t, remember to constantly evolve your brand voice to ensure it still resonates with your audience.

Dana Lindahl is a writer who specializes in content marketing for startups. His writing helps companies not only reach their customers but also drive sales.

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