What Makes a Brand Voice and How it Affects Your Customers

Developing an authentic and engaging voice for your brand is crucial in effectively communicating your company’s value and messaging. You can learn how to do this with ease.

Every business, large and small, has a brand with its unique voice. Your brand’s voice refers to how you communicate with your customers at various moments throughout their relationship with you. Brand voice includes the language used in customer-facing communications and the emotions and personalities conveyed. For a brand’s voice to have a positive impact on customer experience and the company’s bottom line, it must be:

• Intentional and consistent
• True to the needs and expectations of the audience
• True to the company’s mission

In this article, we’ll discuss what goes into developing your brand’s voice so you can effectively communicate your company’s values and engage your target audience. First up, the components that make a brand’s voice:

Intentionality and Consistency  

It’s vital to develop your brand’s voice with intentionality. This means developing a clear strategy for customer-facing content. To maintain consistency in your brand’s messaging, you must create all content purposefully and with a solid plan. As multi- and omnichannel marketing is now the norm, it’s essential that the messaging on each of your channels follows one uniform system.

Meeting Customer Expectations

If your brand messaging doesn’t align with the audience’s expectations of your voice, there’s a good chance they won’t engage with your brand. To keep consumers engaged, tailor your voice to your target audience. If your target audience feels your messaging is off or tone-deaf, you’ll become phony and inauthentic.

Communicating Company Values

Your voice should authentically communicate your company’s values, as well as its overall mission.

By “values,” we mean:

• The value you provide your audience via the products or services you offer
• The values your company holds that enable your team to focus on its mission

Note: your brand should stand for something more important than itself. I’d like you to please read more about how to develop these values.

Your target customers won’t see what you’re bringing if your voice doesn’t communicate who you are as a brand. By clearly indicating your values, you’ll maintain your target audience’s interest—and keep them returning for more.

4 Key Steps to Developing Your Brand’s Voice

To develop a solid voice for your brand, you’ll need to go through the following process:

Focus on Your Company’s Mission

First, clearly define your company’s mission statement and consider the following:

• Why do you offer the products or services you do
• Why your organization operates as it does (e.g., focus on sustainability, workers’ rights, etc.)
• Why the above is important

This step is essential for developing a brand that stands out and rises above your competition. Before creating a voice, you need to know what you stand for, right?

Determine Your Audience’s Needs and Expectations

Next, you’ll need to figure out what your customers expect from your brand—both in terms of the value you provide and how you communicate this value.

Here’s what you need to think about:

• The language and style your audience uses
• Your audience’s interests and overall lifestyle
• The voice and style of existing brands within your niche

To gather all this information, could you go straight to the source: your target customers?

First, you’ll want to be where your target audience is. This may mean checking out various social media channels, industry blogs, niche forums, and any offline equivalents (such as trade shows or non-digital publications). Get a good feel for how your target audience speaks and engages with other brands.

While you can gather much information from observing, you also want to actively engage with your target audience. When talking with potential customers, please look over their responses to your prompts.

The goal isn’t just to tell your audience what they want to hear or use a voice style to trick them into engaging with your company. Instead, it’s to develop your voice using your inherent personality and what you know about your customers.

Define and Describe Your Brand’s Voice

Once you determine what your company stands for and what your customers are looking for, you can create your brand’s voice. Brainstorm a list of adjectives that describe your intended voice. Don’t censor yourself too much.

For example:

• Excitable vs. calm
• Serious vs. quirky
• Forceful vs. relaxed

From there, you’ll want to get a bit more granular.

Here are a few examples:

• Calm but not complacent
• Quirky but not obnoxious
• Forceful but not threatening

You aim to identify the “sweet spot” where you can effectively communicate with your audience while remaining authentic.

Create a Plan to Inject Your Brand’s Voice into Your Content

Once you’ve nailed down these “sweet spots,” the final step is to create a documented and systematic plan for injecting this voice into your customer-facing content. To get started, write a couple of sentences explaining how each adjective you came up with describes your brand.

A hypothetical example:

“Our voice instills a sense of calmness while not appearing aloof, careless, or complacent.”

Each statement should be accompanied by a list of ways to embody the adjective in question, as well as a list of don’ts, such as:

• Do use more subdued language and imagery; don’t be flashy or over-the-top
• Do use your customers’ own words often; don’t overuse industry jargon
• Do draw your customers to your brand; don’t make them feel forced to engage

These straightforward guidelines will help you create new content and engage with your audience. A careful strategy can guarantee that your brand’s messaging and overall voice remain consistent at all times—making for a cohesive and seamless experience for your customers whenever they engage with your team or product.