Your Brand’s Voice Defines Your Business
Your brand is much more than a logo, tagline or unique creative design element. Brand voice is essential for marketers to create and manage the unique personality of their brand.
Brands, just like people, have a voice – the tone, manner and style of communication is what helps distinguish one person from another.
Brand voice is the purposeful, consistent expression of a brand through words that engage and motivate your brand’s various audiences. The personality of your brand is determined, in large measure, by the words you use, the sentences you write and how you deliver those messages.
With the incredible communications clutter of the marketplace, there are three essential hurdles all brands, large or small, must overcome with their audiences to gain that competitive advantage.
Your brand must be heard.
Your brand must be recognized.
Your brand must be remembered.
Leap Strategic Marketing is providing you with a quick and simple test to help you understand your brand voice. After you take this test, you may begin to see how that voice can help you differentiate your brand from the competition.
Consider the two artists below. Both Andrea Bocelli and Katy Perry are outstanding, successful, accomplished, appeal to different audiences and definitely have managed to create very unique brands. As you read these comparisons, consider how you would describe the differences between these two and write them down. Just like your consumers, perception is reality. There are no wrong or right answers.
Now the second part of the test is to compare your brand and each of your competitors. What do they say? How do they say it? What do you believe that consumer think of your brand?
If you believe that you are significantly different in most categories, then you have a basis for differentiation and your brand voice is strong. If you are very close to a competitor in a number of comparisons, then you might have some work to do to find some positioning and a tone and manner that will help differentiate your brand. What was working a few years ago, may not be relevant today.
Developing a brand voice is a fluid, dynamic process that helps to keep it healthy, relevant and vibrant. It needs to be assessed and evaluated as your business changes, as consumers change and with technological advances in your industry. Here are the six critical factors your company should consider as part of the process when developing your Brand Voice:
- Define | Choose three words that capture the personality of the voice desired
- Differentiate | Review the communications of your competitors
- Listen | Before you write, make sure you listen. Make sure you are speaking in language your customers
- Inspire | Your Brand Voice should be inspiring and aspirational to your target audiences
- Engage | Every brand needs to engage an audience. Allow the Brand Voice to relax and just be real
- Evolve | Your Brand Voice should be fluid — changes over time communicating in fresh new ways
Leap Strategic Marketing uses some sophisticated techniques to not only evaluate your brand voice but uses these methods to determine how you change or evolve yours to be truly different, connect with your customers and engage prospects.
If you would like some help evaluating your Brand Voice, contact us at 262-436-4080. We would be happy to walk you and your team through the entire evaluation process and put a plan together to make your brand voice strong.
