How to outshine as a Brand with Unique Brand Voice?

Brand Voice: In this competitive digital age, owning a business that sustains the growing consumer demands and staggering technological changes is a challenge in itself. Therefore, companies, irrespective of their niche and demographic constraints, are now embracing sustainability in their business. 

Around 62% of the corporate executives admit to focusing on creating sustainable strategies to build an enduring business- One that can withstand the test of time and technology.

What makes a business imperishable?

A recurring loyal customer base, of course. However, we live in times where customers are bombarded with a surfeit of choices. The only way you can build a successful business is to become a consumer’s choice, build an image such that your targeted consumer resonates with your brand. 

A survey revealed around 86% of the consumers look for authenticity in brands while purchasing a product. This is where the importance of branding comes into the picture.  

If you own a business in 2021, you need to strike the right chord with your intended customers and create credibility among them to stride ahead of the cut-throat competition. In this article, we talk about one of the most crucial facets of branding- your brand voice and share insights on how you can use a unique brand voice that will help your business shine bright and high.  

But before we introduce you to brand voice, let us understand what branding is and why your business needs to work on it. 

What is Branding?

Branding is more than just creating a logo or choosing a name. In marketing terms, branding is how your customers identify products of your company. This way it helps you distinguish your business and create a true representation of your company ideals, product specifications, and your business process. 

For example, whenever you see a half-eaten apple logo on a laptop or tablet or a mobile phone, you immediately know it is an Apple product. Over the years, the company has established a strong global presence and is an ideal example of why branding matters just like its quality. 

To reiterate the importance of credible branding further, we have listed out a few statistics that reveal consumer behavior towards the same. 

• 13% of the consumers agree that they can pay around 50% more if your services make a positive first impression. And, your brand has precisely 7 seconds to make an everlasting first impression on your customers. 
• People love personalized shopping experiences. Around 73% of customers prefer brands that have a personalized touch. 
• 94% of the people are more likely to be loyal to a brand if they provide complete transparency. 
• Business can reduce their training cost by around 50% if they have already had a remarkable brand image, as it already creates traction to attract recurring customers. 

Simply put, branding is your portfolio, your identity among your customers. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, describes a brand as “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

Building a brand cannot happen overnight. It takes meticulously planned strategies that revolve around your company’s ethics and your consumer’s interests. Creating an eccentric brand voice is one of the ways to deeply connect with your customers and boost sales for your business. 

Let us dig a little deeper into branding and understand everything about creating a distinctive yet relatable brand voice. 

What is a brand voice?

Brand voice is how your company communicates with its customer through various channels, be it online or offline. With social media marketing gaining massive popularity, having a brand voice that stands a class apart from the digital chatter of your competitors is a necessity. 

Brand voice is the sailing boat that takes you through the resounding digital noise and gets you near the shore full of sales possibilities. Just like the logo and color of your brand matter, the words you use to communicate your core values and business products have a significant role. 

Most often, brand voice and brand tone are used interchangeably. But are they similar? The answer is no! 

Brand voice is how your brand speaks to your customers and as already mentioned, revolves a lot around what your brand has to offer and how you function your core values, and much more. 

On the other hand, the brand tone is how you want your brand to be perceived.

For example, “McDonald’s” comes across as a jovial brand while “Prada” gives us a luxurious feeling. 

In short, brand voice includes brand tone and the choice of words in creating a company website, newsletters, E-mails, product brochures, social media posts, billboards, and much more. 

Importance of having a unique brand voice

Your years of hard work, research, and money in creating the pitch-perfect product may fail to garner acceptance, and you may eventually start losing out on your business if you fail to develop a connection with your customers. A study revealed that around 64% of consumers say that they trust a brand if they share similar values and perspectives about social issues. 

Your brand voice should not only revolve around you; it should also address your customer’s pain points. It helps in creating a long-term relationship with customers. 

A simple change in Deloitte’s branding strategy helped the company overcome a low phase in terms of consumer acceptance. They shifted their focus on telling their consumers, the ways their brand stands distinct from its competitors. The Deloitte Go campaign was a significant rebranding move from the company that turned out to be a huge success.

The brand voice also lets your customers know what they are investing in. A tech-savvy person would happily invest in a luxury product like Apple. A mother looking for baby creams made with carefully selected ingredients would connect more with a brand that nurtures confidence in them through their branding activities. 

Even when e-commerce sites are mushrooming in the digital space, Amazon is still one of the most preferred e-shopping sites. It is because it promises and delivers an ultimate customer experience. 

So, what are the stepping stones to creating a prolific brand voice? How can you carve out your own brand identity among these cluttering fierce competitive times? We have discussed some prominent points here that you can follow. 

10 Steps To Define Your Brand Voice

Getting your brand voice heard loud and clear to the right audience is quite challenging. You get it wrong, and all your efforts may go in vain. So what is the secret sauce for creating the perfect brand voice? We have listed 10 steps you can follow for the same. 

Find the answer to “Why Us”?

The first and foremost step to create your brand voice is to define what makes your brand unique from others. Understand the core skills that distinguish you from your competitors. 

In short, to create a perfect brand voice and a branding strategy, you have to explore your strengths that will add value to your customers like none other. Jot down your distinctive points and build a brand voice that extrapolates the same. 

Know your target audience

Once you know how your products or services add value to the customers, you have to be clear about who your customers would be. Will your products be suitable for kids, teenagers, adults, or senior citizens?

Knowing your target audience you can create a brand voice that echoes the language of the customers and hence connect more with them. This will surely attract more sales and boost your company’s growth. 

Understand your customer’s likes

It all boils down to creating an emotional connection with your customers. Therefore, you need to get your research mode on and go deep into exploring the social media trends that show how your target audience likes your products and what they are looking for in them. 

You can use the data to run advertisements, social media posts while reviving your products or services to fine-tune to their needs. 

Understand your company’s goals

Your brand voice needs to be your true reflection, what you stand as a brand, your business goals, mission, and vision. It should circumscribe your business ethics which gives you a true vision of how you want to be perceived by your targeted audience. 

How you interact with your audience greatly depends on the intentions behind your business beyond garnering profits. 

Review the existing branding strategy

If you are revamping your branding strategy, you need to first go deep roots and analyze your existing branding strategy. Understand what went right and what did not go down well. 

Set up an expert panel and draw a research-backed analytical report detailing the mistakes and ways to mend them. The records can give you a solid start for you to define your brand voice the right way. 

Be original

Undoubtedly, what customers look out for in a brand is authenticity. You need to come out with refreshing ideas that make your brand outshine your competitors while keeping the aforementioned points. 

You can take inspiration from successful brand campaigns but never copy them. Use your creativity and come with a prolific and eccentric brand voice that sums up your brand values perfectly through each of your posts, or any medium you interact with your customers. 

Tell your success stories to foster a powerful connection

Testimonials work wonders. Foster an in-depth connection with your target audience and lure in more customers and sales through the same. You can use your success stories in creating logos or taglines and social media posts or your online portfolio. 

It could be a story of achieving a remarkable milestone or overcoming the worst phase, storytelling opens doors for actionable deeds from your audience. It adds genuineness and reliability to your brand voice. 

Create brand voice chart

Your brand voice could be passionate, friendly, casual, formal, empathetic, or any other tone that you associate more with. Creating a brand voice chart helps you to clearly define the dos and don’ts for your copywriters and brand strategists while creating branding campaigns. 

This way, you can be assured that your brand voice is used consistently throughout your communication and marketing funnels effectively. 

Document every single guideline to maintain voice consistency

Once you map out your branding strategy and your brand voice, get some talented copywriters on board. Make sure to give them perfectly documented guidelines that are crystal clear with no room for ambiguity. 

It ensures they use their creative freedom to come up with eccentric ideas for your branding and marketing strategy in a way that echoes your brand voice. When you have documented guidelines, it helps your team of writers and marketers to maintain a voice uniformity to your branding plans. 

Review the final copy, and share it with your team

Once everything is documented and a final draft is ready, you can share it with your team. It can include the brand voice review, the proposal, and the guidelines to impose the brand voice. Your team or your manager will go through each minute detail to point out any inconsistency in the brand voice with respect to the customers and company’s interest. 

Once approved, you can start your journey towards creating your unique brand voice and outshine your competitors. 

In a nutshell…

Building a business and sustaining it requires diligently planned branding techniques. Your brand voice should resonate with your audience and should amplify your business goals. Creating a character to your brand voice makes you distinctive and your customers can easily distinguish your products and services as unique and one among their finest choices.