Building Your Brand’s Voice With Content Marketing and Copywriting

If you wiped your brand’s name and logo from all your products and marketing tools, could your audience still identify your brand? Could your content be recognized by your audience as consistent, even if they viewed it from different channels?  If you didn’t answer yes, you’re probably disregarding a powerful tool in your bag of business methods, something that fuels us copywriting experts in Reno–your voice.

Your brand has a voice, a manner of communicating with the world. The brand voice is used to attract your following, engage your audience, and convert customers into a community of lifelong devotees. Every brand is responsible for developing a consistent voice. Without it, there is no foundation for a brand’s personality, purpose or point of view.

First of all, your brand voice is not the jingle on the radio serenading people to your storefront. It’s not an audible logo or any other sonic elements of your brand. Voice is the consistent expression of a brand’s values and vision through tone, style and engaging copy that motivate an audience. It determines, to a large extent, the entire personality of a brand.

Your brand voice is crucial to maintaining a consistent image for your brand, no matter how fast it grows. Strengthen your brand and refine your brand voice with these 4 tips.

Define Your Tone. 

Defining your brand voice begins with tone. A well-defined brand tone and style allows employees and your audience to understand the brand more deeply–a crucial strategy to secure brand loyalty. Establishing your brand voice also keeps agencies and freelancers on the same page as your company scales and you outsource creative work.

How does your brand express itself? To define your tone, boil your brand’s voice down to three words. For example, say you’re a bike seat and accessory company and you want all female cyclists to know about a new design for endurance road cycling:

We have created a new bike seat design for touring and endurance that significantly reduces discomfort for the competitive woman road cyclist.

Say you’ve defined your tone as: Bold, Dynamic, Smart. The information above transforms with your defined tone:

Ice your legs, not your lady parts. Introducing the new EnduroFly seat.  

Listen and Engage. 

Writing good content does nothing for you if you have no idea how your audience communicates. Take the time to immerse yourself in your audience. Research what they value, what bothers them, where they hang out online. Also, and equally as important, understand how they talk about these things to ensure the tone and style of your content resonates.

I sure could use a bike seat that’s designed to support me, an avid female road cyclist between the ages of 24-35.

It’s doubtful people are jumping online and sharing their frustrations like robots with reCAPTCHA capabilities. You’re more likely to hear things like:  

• Biking isn’t my thing.

• The chafe is real.

• I’m just not built for biking.

Listen to the people that buy your products, your audience. Understand how they speak about your brand, their problems, their passions, everything. Do your digging, understand how they are speaking about things and how you can develop your brand to be of more value to your audience.

Differentiate.  

Differentiating your brand is less about novelty and more about sincerity. Before you can effectively differentiate your brand voice, you need to study what your competitors are saying and how they’re saying it. Your brand voice is a tool to cut through the noise and showcase your brand’s authenticity.

If your brand talks about your products, services, and value like your competitors talk about their products, services, and values, then you’re no different. Your audience will assume you offer the same as the generic brands.

Motivate and Inspire. 

Your brand is a platform. Take the lead in your industry, speak directly to your audience like they’re actual people–because *spoiler alert* that’s what they are. Beating around the bush and brushing nuanced agendas across your brand won’t get you anywhere. If you want to stand out, use your platform to stand up for something. If you sell bike seats designed specifically for women, you likely have a passion for cycling and believe more women should be cycling without having to deal with uncomfortable man seats. You likely have an interest in feminism. Stand up and speak on your brand’s platform.  

Need help defining your brand voice? Grab a beer with Bareknuckle, let’s chat about your vision and voice.