A Guide to Brand Voice Basics
Think of an writer or musician that you like. What makes their work recognizable and appealing to you? Is it their use of signature sounds and words that resonate with you? Maybe it’s descriptive language or lyrics that tells a compelling story. Perhaps they use simplicity to a evoke powerful emotion. Whatever it is that draws you in and keeps you coming back, it’s part of their “voice” and what distinguishes their work.
What is brand voice?
Brand voice is the personality attributes you take in all aspects of verbal and written communication. This includes language and word choice, tone, and style. Your brand’s voice determines the execution of internal communication (staff emails, memos, meetings, interviews) and external communication (marketing, customer service, social media, packaging, blogs, ads). Brand voice is a little more elusive than visual design, but it’s just as important to creating a brand that works like a system.
Why is brand voice important?
At its core, a brand is a communication pathway. It is simply a vehicle to connect with your audience in a way that inspires them to engage with your offering. Establishing good communication means what you say resonates with the people you’re trying to reach. Good communication comes from clarity, compassion, and a balance of consistency with adaptability.
Clarity of brand voice means people feel they understand what you’re saying and have an idea of what to expect when they interact with you. People gravitate towards brands that feel aligned with their needs and values, so the more clear you are, the easier it is to connect. Over time, people will continue to engage when they’re confident they’ll get what they’re looking for.
Compassion means showing you see the audience as people, which establishes comfort and trust and humanizes your brand. Compassion can show up in marketing and branding directly if its a key part of what you do (for example, in a therapy practice, compassion would likely be a defining characteristic of the brand). It’s also embedded in how you interact with your collaborators and staff, and how you treat your audience. An uncomfortable or unpleasant customer service experience sticks with people, even if the product or service was high quality.
Maintaining consistency while being able to adapt can be tricky. Consistency is huge in all things branding, and voice should be consistent with the brand as a whole. Establishing a baseline of predictability translates to a perception of your brand as reliable, professional, and approachable, regardless of communication style. At the same time, communication is always context dependent, so it’s important to know how to adapt to different situations. This is where tone comes in.
A proposal document will have a different tone than a social media post.
An internal email will have a different tone than troubleshooting with a frustrated customer.
By starting with a foundation of consistency, you’ll have a better idea of how to adapt your tone based on the situation while actively maintaining the brand voice. Just like a musician will have the same overall style show up whether a song is happy or sad, your brand voice will be consistent overall, even with context-dependent changes in tone.
What goes into finding your brand voice?
The right voice is one authentically reflects your brand and the people you’re trying to connect with. “Authentic” is kind of a wishy-washy word when its used in branding and marketing. The term is everywhere, but what does it actually mean to be authentic as a brand?
Authenticity is a way of being that you can sustain because it flows naturally. For a voice to flow, it has to reflect who you are in the context of the work that you do. Trying to keep up a brand persona that isn’t true to you will be a struggle. Just going with what you think you “should” do or what seems ideal, unless it’s natural to you, will take lots of effort to maintain. Consistency will slip and you’ll eventually burn out. Being yourself is sustainable (being someone else is not).
Consider what your authentic communication style is. Identify ways of speaking and writing that come naturally to you. Are you super chatty or a person of few words? Do you love to make people laugh? Are you literal and straight-forward? Do you use a lot of metaphors? In past customer-facing or educator roles, what was your particular flavor of communication? When you are collaborating with your team or problem-solving for a client/customer, how do you adapt depending on the type of person and the context?
Another key part of finding your brand voice is aligning it with your audience. How you communicate should be relatable and appealing to whoever you’re trying to reach. Don’t get stuck in the idea that your brand will click with everyone. That’s not a realistic expectation and you’ll end up all over the place. Hone your focus enough that you can be specific about your target audience, but not so much that you homogenize them.
This requires a combination of research, personal experience, and brainstorming. Who is your target audience and what are they searching for? What is the general demographic makeup? Identify what they care about, what their needs are, and what is likely to appeal to them. Are there particular topics and challenges that they are seeking to understand? Think about what other brands appeal to them and why. Look into what other folks in your industry and niche are doing and what aspects of their communication strategy are effective for who they are probably targeting. How are those characteristics similar and different from your brand personality and goals?
Putting the pieces together
Once you have a sense of your authentic communication style and audience alignment, it’s time to use those components to zero in on your brand voice. The full picture comes into view when you take these two components and identify connections. The places where they overlap are the sweet spots that point to characteristics of the right brand voice.
It’s not enough to simply communicate like you would to your best friend, or to cater to what you think your audience wants to hear. There needs to be a balance of both. For example:
You express yourself through humor, and use sarcasm with your friends. Your target audience are people who find humor engaging, but your brand meets needs related to their professional lives, where sarcasm won’t often be appropriate. Humor within the scope of professionalism is the area of overlap. You can lean into making people laugh, while showing them that you understand their goals. Light sarcasm can come into play at times when a more casual, playful tone is appropriate.
Your goal is to use social media to increase sales of a new product. Your target audience are interested in brands that feel honest and down to earth. While a “sales-y” approach might address your needs, it can come off as pushy and disingenuous to your audience, who is tired of being pitched to. Meeting them in the middle could look like sharing your process for creating the product, giving them insight into your experience as a way to connect with them while also highlighting your offering.
It takes some nuanced thinking to achieve a balanced, relatable voice. It isn’t always obvious from the get go, and there will likely be some trial and error involved. Don’t be discouraged! Building your voice is a process of discovery. Getting clear on all this is important to do early in the branding process, but a lot of the discovery happens as you go. Don’t shy away from making adjustments and tweaking your approach when it makes sense.