During the past few decades, consumers have become more engaged with what they see and learn online than by those more traditional media forms like TV, newspapers, and magazines.

While all communications are important, marketers can now present their “voice” directly to individuals and specific market segments through social media channels and interesting content marketing.

A brand voice that is appropriate and appealing to your target audience plays an essential factor in the success of your brand. Although you understand your products very well and know the benefits they offer, how you “speak” to your potential clients through your advertising, media presence, and online content can significantly impact your success.

A compelling, targeted brand voice consistent throughout all communications can create a connection with like-minded individuals to influence traffic and a growing number of conversions.  

What is Brand Voice?

Your company’s brand voice refers to how you communicate your core values and brand’s personality in all communications.

A notable example of a booming brand voice, Nike presents a consistent inspirational message that encourages existing athletes to do more and non-athletes to get up and get started. Their unambiguous slogan of “Just Do It” is meant to be an explicit invitation to get up and go, buy their products, and feel better for doing “it.”

Other brand voice strategies include using vocabulary and short-form Twitter-type punctuation and emojis in your digital marketing efforts that appeal to young users or elegant, high-style communications to attract an older, affluent audience.

Finding Your Brand Voice

Whether you are a start-up in the first stages of creating your brand or are engaged in revitalizing a brand that seems to be going nowhere, you will need to search and take a closer look at who is your target demographic and the content, style, and tone that are necessary to connect with them.

Your brand voice and tone “humanize” your presence and foster conversation. A truly effective and engaging brand voice can even encourage your recently delighted clients to market for you. This occurrence can even multiply your success geometrically as more delighted and loyal customers pass the word about their positive experience on to others.

A social or other media brand voice can usually be described with a single adjective. Words like “lively”, “professional”, “youthful”, “playful”, or “dignified” are common descriptors.

Older consumers likely will not relate well (or understand) much of the language that attracts Millennials, for example. Similarly, if younger groups are your core target, do not let your competition jump ahead with a more contemporary brand voice.

Tone, however, reflects how you deliver your brand message. Personal, humble, or confident, for example, are examples of brand tone. And, while the Voice should always remain consistent, the tone can differ during multiple engagements.

Who Are Your Target Customers?

To develop your Brand Voice, you should first brainstorm who you believe is your primary target customer group. Prospective buyers may be defined as those of a specific generation, gender, lifestyle group, profession, economic stratum, or educational level.

While most products may appeal to combinations of these categories, such as a young, active, and educated female or older, well-to-do male or female retirees, your brand voice should be structured to project social compatibility with that group.

Having defined the characteristics of your target market group, establish greater focus by creating a list of Persona or representations of typical members of your target group. Like the population in general, these profiles might share many of the same preferences even though their lifestyles may differ in many respects.

Review Your Current Brand Voice

Take a close look at your website and all your recent social media interactions. Assess everything you have said and done regarding your brand. Compare your performance statistics and negative reviews to identify which messages have seemed to work and those that did not.

Review all your social media posts, marketing materials, hashtags, CTAs, visuals, bios, messages, and direct replies to determine if those elements are consistently in line with each other and your brand voice.

Seek input from others by asking trusted insiders, marketing experts and outside expertise to review your messaging to help you develop an unbiased and qualified impression of your communications and marketing plan. Ask each to be as objective as possible, characterizing in a few adjectives how the entirety of your brand messaging seems to come across.

• Is your brand message consistent at all levels?
• What is the piece of content on your social channels that comes closest to delivering your targeted Voice and driving organic traffic?
• What do the most effective messages have in common? Are some messages more successful at delivering conversions or a return on investment?
• Does your website convey the desired Voice? Positive reviews and feedback from the user experience can sharpen your approach by emphasizing more robust content and eliminating distracting and inconsistent messaging in your marketing channels.

Assess the Feedback from Users

After collating the feedback from your and others’ assessments, as well as important data gathered from Google Analytics, social media metrics, conversion rate optimization, click-through rate, and bounce rate, it is time to determine the ultimate goal of what you want your audience to take away from their experience with your brand.

The key, especially if you will be using many different places to convey your defining features, is to develop a discipline that keeps everyone communicating in the same Voice over a reasonable time period.

Develop a Voice for Your Company That Appeals to Your Target Audience

By now, you should have identified your target audience and ideal potential customer. The brand voice you use to attract those buyers in every communication should establish a trusting relationship between your company and those buyers on a regular basis. Whether they visit your website or social media profiles or review your commentary, the message and content strategy must create a great first impression, or the target could be forever lost.

Create Your Style Guide

A brand style guide formalizes the rules and principles of how the team may or may not represent your brand in any digital marketing campaign. The material should define the elements representing your brand, including colors, logos, typeface, and examples of what should and should not be included in your message. This simple guide ensures that all team members’ messages conform to the guide and represent the same brand voice.

Your style guide is a key factor for your marketing team when defining keywords that are appropriate when engaging with prospective and current customers by means of an appropriate digital marketing strategy conducted over an extended period of time.

Build on Your More Focused Brand Voice

Your brand voice sets the attitude your present to the public with your online marketing strategy. By utilizing a carefully defined and firmly established Voice, you can:

• Eliminate confusion about who you are.
• Convey a clear company message and vision.
• Demonstrate the value of your products to your target user and audience.
• Use tones that appeal to a broader range of individuals.
• Open the lines of communication and improve the customer experience.

Sign Up for an Account with Breakthrough

Self-assessment, even among a team of coworkers, is difficult. Many companies have found that using a third-party entity to help them develop their Vision, Voice, and Strategic Plans have been highly effective in turning companies around through established business goals, focus and collaboration.

Breakthrough is a business support company made up of proven professionals working together to develop tools and strategies for growth planning and real-time collaboration.

By helping companies crystalize their Vision, Mission, and value proposition, Breakthrough clients also receive insight into sharpening their brand voice to deliver a clear message in their social strategy to the appropriate customer segment.

With Breakthrough’s professional experience and tools, start-up companies or those seeking greater focus can achieve a higher level of engagement and develop better marketing content for their target audience and prospective customers.

For more information or to set up a consultation and assessment, visit the Breakthrough website to view the array of tools and resourceful blog posts designed to bring greater focus to your enterprise.

To start, you may open up an account with the Breakthrough network, free of charge, to view the strategic assets and information close up.