When it comes to marketing and promoting your company, much of the focus is on the physical look of the brand. However, visual aesthetics are not the only way that you can get across the distinctiveness of your brand.
This is particularly important when it comes to content marketing, where words, rather than visual images, are the tool at your disposal.
For content marketers looking to make a splash with their target demographic, distilling the essence of a brand or company and infusing it into the written content you are producing is often one of the trickiest aspects to get right.
Despite being tricky, however, it is undoubtedly one of the most important.
This is particularly true in the world of online content marketing, where the written word is still one of the most powerful tools at your disposal. Written words are used in a wide variety of marketing content forms and across various social media channels.
In the digital world, however, the need to get your brand voice across in a clear, distinctive manner is often in tension with the demands put on user attention. And in a world where short, punchy bursts of content are the preferred format, it can often be difficult to get this across in an effective way.
With all this in mind, in the online space, finding your ‘brand voice’ is increasingly important to both standing out from the crowd and making an impact on potential customers in the short amount of time you have to captivate their attention.
But what is ‘brand voice’ and how can you find it?
What is your ‘brand voice’?
In the content marketing world, ‘brand voice’ is often used to refer to the distinctive personality that a company or business takes on in both its communications with its target demographic and any marketing content it puts out.
This brand voice will express itself in the various forms of communications that a company will have with its customers – such as advertisements, blog posts or even the packaging of the product – as well as in how language is used. This might include, for example, the use of specific words, phrases or punctuation.
What this brand voice actually looks and sounds like, however, will be shaped by a number of factors.
Firstly, it will likely be a reflection of the type of product or business you provide. For example, a business selling surfboards will obviously have a vastly different brand voice from a business selling business suits.
Secondly, the brand voice that a particular business has will be shaped by the target demographic it is looking to sell to. This is similarly intuitive. It makes sense that the surfboard business will have a different customer base from the suit-selling business. For this reason, the communications that the surfboard business has with its customers will differ in tone, style and language from those adopted by the suit-selling business.
How can brand voice help me?
The ‘voice’ and tone you adopt in any communications or other written content you publish will inevitably reflect the personality of the business itself. These will play an important role in shaping how your business is identified and what associations individuals have with it.
In this way, the voice and tone of your brand will help to guide would-be customers towards what your brand has to offer, particularly any unique selling points it might have.
Over time, this will allow you to both develop relationships with new customers and strengthen existing ones through familiarity.
Finding your voice
While for many companies, finding their authentic brand voice is a relatively straightforward affair and arises naturally from the nature of the business and their target demographic, for others, it can often be a more difficult process. This is particularly true where the market they are operating in is crowded.
Despite these difficulties, finding and developing a brand voice is not an impossible task, and there are a number of approaches you can take to try to distil it:
- Start with a mission or value statement: Drafting up and setting out a mission or value statement is a great way of finding your brand voice. It will give you the opportunity to reflect on what your company or business is all about, as well as the principles you operate by.
- Do your research: As mentioned above, there is a close connection between your target audience and the brand voice you adopt. For this reason, it is important to undertake in-depth research to fully understand your target demographic so that you will have a better sense of how best to communicate with them. Some factors to consider might include age, nationality, gender, or any other important personal characteristics.
- Consider what works and what doesn’t: Before drafting up your own marketing content, try to find some examples of pieces that have worked in the past. Reflect on why you think they resonated with the audience in this example or, alternatively, why they failed to strike a chord. Use this information to find your brand voice.
- Make a list of guiding principles: Once you have figured out who your target audience is, and have gathered a list of previous examples to work from, it is important to get these principles down on paper. Use this information to draft up a set of guiding principles and editorial guidelines that can be used when producing any future content. This will allow you to consistently produce content in line with your brand voice, regardless of who is writing it. Use this to bring consistency and alignment to all of your brand communications and marketing content.
Making your voice heard
If you have made it to the end of this article and still have some questions about how to find your brand voice and how to get it across in your marketing content, feel free to reach out to one of the Purecontent team today. Purecontent is a specialist at creating authentic content that captivates and drives sales. Get in touch today and book a one-on-one consultation with one of our content experts.
