How to turn your brand voice into a powerful marketing asset
So, you want to create a brand voice that turns your marketing from ‘blah’ to ‘ta-dah’ – a noble quest. The thing is, any Tom, Dick or Harry can write a brand voice doc, but that doesn’t mean they can write one that’s actually impactful or valuable.
Let’s say this loud and clear – a brand voice is not a few adjectives on a page. It’s so much more.
So, how do you make sure your brand voice packs a punch in your marketing? Let’s get into it.
Start with your values
Straight off the bat, if your brand’s values are things like ‘honesty’ and ‘integrity’, crumple them up, set them on fire and get them straight in the bin. Those are not useful brand values, and they won’t help you create an authentic voice.
Dive deeper to figure out what really makes the brand tick. Then take each value and write clear guidance on how it should come across in your writing. If you’re passionate, does that mean you use powerful emotive language in all your writing? Or does it mean you’re action-driven, and you use language that reflects that?
Get your values right and the rest will follow – so stick the kettle on, grab some snacks, and spend some serious time on this step.
Don’t be afraid of the nitty gritty
The details might not be as fun (unless you’re a set of language nerds like us), but trust us, they matter. Get granular with your brand voice. Which words do you love? Which do you need your writers to not touch with a ten-foot fountain pen?
How do you talk about your own brand and your people? Do you think Apple Geniuses became a thing by accident? Of course they bloomin’ didn’t – that term was deliberately chosen by excellent brand voice copywriters who knew exactly how they wanted customers to feel when they visited an Apple store.
And since we’ve mentioned them, how do you refer to your customers, anyway? Clients? Service users? Something made-up like Swifties? You get the idea.
These are the points that really start to turn your brand voice document from something you can occasionally dust off and flick through to one of the most-used tools on your proverbial belt.
Show AND tell
You can write reams about sentence structure, punctuation and vocab, but nothing beats some solid, gold-star examples of how you want your copy to sound. Honestly, the more examples the better. What makes a great headline? Or social post? How would you write the same message for your different audiences?
And don’t just stop at the good – show the bad and the ugly, too. Give examples of how not to write for your brand. What should your writers absolutely steer clear of? How do you absolutely not want to sound? Pack plenty of the ‘don’ts' in and make it clear what about these examples makes them a big ol’ NO.
Consistency, consistency, consistency
The ENTIRE point of creating a brand voice is so that your brand sounds consistent no matter where your brand appears and who wrote the copy. That’s not to say you can’t adjust your tone for different places, just like you’d use different versions of your logo. But those differences should be deliberate, not the result of a whole hot mess.
You’ll know that your brand voice work is doing the job when you can pass your guidelines along to any copywriter and get on-brand copy every time. That’s when your brand voice becomes a really powerful marketing asset.
If you’re not getting those results? Time to revisit those guidelines and tighten up the areas that aren’t working. That’s the beauty of great brand voice guidelines – they’re living documents that can be updated and adjusted to make sure your copy’s absolutely nailing it.
Ultimately, you can tick a box by creating a ‘sort of’ brand voice that’s about as useful as a chocolate fireguard and causes more problems than it solves. Or, you can create a really impactful, detailed guide based on your brand values to absolutely transform your marketing – it’s up to you.
If something’s not clicking, it’s time to call in the experts. Get in touch for a chat about how we work our brand voice magic.
