How to Create a Brand Voice that Resonates with Your Audience
What Is Brand Voice and Why Is It Important?
Think of your brand’s voice as the personality of your business. It’s applied to every form of your e-commerce brand’s communication and allows your target audience to identify, relate to, and remember your brand.
How do your brand’s communications differ from the endless stream of digital content out there? When communicating with your audience, your brand’s voice will help you stand out in the crowd. Developing a brand voice that resonates with your audience will allow your business to outshine the competition. And, it will create stronger brand loyalty.
How to Create a Brand Voice
Start by developing your e-commerce brand’s identity. The first step in creating your brand voice is defining your brand identity. This is how your business portrays its image to the public and how your customers connect with your brand. Brand identity is crucial in creating your brand voice because 45% of your brand’s image comes from what you say, and how you say it. Creating a brand identity that is genuine and unique is an easy way to give you a leg up on your competition.
In fact, 86% of consumers say that authenticity is a key factor when deciding what brands they like and support. A strong brand identity allows your brand to use all components of your company, including the services you offer, visual content like logos and images and different forms of communication – including social media content, newsletters and advertising – to showcase who you are as a business.
What to Consider When Creating Your Brand Identity
Mission
What is your purpose? Better than anyone, you know what your business is all about. Creating a clear mission statement that outlines your vision and objectives will provide full transparency between you and your desired audience. Interestingly, a whopping 70% of consumers purchase from brands who share the same principles as they do, so defining your purpose clearly will allow your brand to attract the desired audience.
Personality
How do you want the public to see your e-commerce brand? Be sure to develop your brand’s personality as a way to showcase your mission, vision, and goals.
Competition
Who is your competition and what makes you different? Conducting research on your competitors allows you to create a brand voice that’s innovative and stands out. It will also help you identify and tailor what has worked well historically – not to mention learn from any past mistakes – saving you both time and money!
SWOT Analysis
What are your strengths and weaknesses and how can you use them to your advantage? A SWOT Analysis explores and evaluates factors, both internal and external, that could affect your e-commerce business. Identifying the elements, both good and not-so-good, of your brand will help identify your strengths and any areas of opportunity to consider when building your brand’s identity.
Having outlined a clear purpose and direction for your brand through your vision, mission and values, you can now pinpoint the appropriate voice to get you there.
Determine the Key Elements Required for Developing your Brand Voice
Audience
Identify and research your target audience. It should come as no surprise that the best way to reach your intended audience is by getting to know them. Who are you trying to attract to your brand? What do they like? How do they communicate? In one study, 80% of consumers said that they don’t think brands actually understand them as a person.
By outlining the demographics of the group you want to market your brand to, you can shape your voice in a way that draws your audience in and holds their interest. Customers who have an emotional connection with a brand have over a 3x higher lifetime value. The goal is to determine the best way to relate to, and form a bond with, your audience which will keep them coming back for more.
Purpose
If you still have a need to get rid of stock, or boost sales, then limit Why are you communicating with your audience? Just like outlining your purpose in the form of a mission statement for your brand’s identity, defining the purpose of your content is essential to developing your brand voice. Will your main purpose be to educate, entertain or sell? Perhaps your communications will have different purposes. By determining your focus, you can then create a brand voice appropriate for the content you will create.
Character
This is about who you are. Think of your brand as having human qualities. Brand character refers to how your audience describes your brand. What characteristics do you want to exhibit to the public? (Think: Is your brand quirky or serious? Is it outgoing and over-the-top or is it more reserved and simplistic?) Brand character allows your personality to shine through in your communications while staying true to your brand’s values.
Language
Language choice is fundamental in creating consistency in your brand’s voice. You can ensure uniformity across all communication by carefully selecting your words. It’s important to not only consider the industry you are in, but also to consider who you are speaking to. Regional dialects, industry jargon and spelling must be adapted to the group you are communicating with. Choose specific semantics and formatting rules and stick to them!
Tone
Building a brand voice that is consistent and recognizable is important, but being mindful of your tone is essential when communicating with your audience. It’s necessary to modify the tone of your communications, depending on the messaging you are trying to convey.
Consider the following announcements:
- A new product launch. This messaging will usually exhibit a tone of excitement!
- A delay in production. This messaging will most likely require a more serious tone.
Both announcements will use consistent language and a writing style true to the brand’s voice, but the tone will change when needed to convey the appropriate emotions.
Create a Brand Style Guide
When developing your brand’s voice, consistency helps you build a brand that is recognizable. If your brand’s voice is constantly changing, with no rhyme or reason, it’s harder for your audience to identify, and in turn relate to, you. Consistent presentation of a brand has seen to increase revenue by 33%.
While 95% of businesses have formal brand guidelines, only 25% actually stick to them. Creating a style guide for your brand, and sticking to it, will allow for widespread alignment within your company in terms of content production, regardless of the platform with which you choose to communicate with your audience. It was found that 90% of users expect brands to be consistent across all platforms or channels, and closely following a style guide will help produce the consistent content your audience is looking for.
Review and Be Flexible
Don’t be afraid to make adjustments when necessary. As the e-commerce world continues to grow and adapt to ever-changing user behaviors, your brand voice should, too. By documenting what works and what doesn’t, you can make modifications to ensure that you’re continuing to create content that resonates with your intended audience.
There you have it! Brand voice is all about knowing who you are, where you want to go and how you want your brand to be perceived by those who matter. Apply these simple fundamentals (or reach out to us to help you) and you will create a brand voice all your own, ensuring that your brand is getting the most out of your communication efforts by attracting the right audience to your business.
About the author: Alyssa has spent the majority of her career specializing in the Accounting sector of Affiliate Marketing. With a persistent urge to learn new things, Alyssa returned to McGill University in Montreal, Canada in her 30s to study Public Relations and Communications Management where she discovered a passion for writing – and she hasn’t looked back!
Her interests include adventuring in the great outdoors, cooking up a storm, and not sitting still. She aspires to take a million pictures of her Siberian Husky/Saint Bernard mix, Jax, and is probably getting pretty close.
