Why is the right brand voice so important?
It gives your business a consistent personality, which makes it easier for people to know what you do and how you do it. In fact, people should be able to recognize your content even if your logo isn’t sitting right next to it. But without the right brand voice, this will never happen.
Having an inconsistent brand voice—or, worse, no distinguishable brand voice at all—is a problem that can strike any business in any industry, but it’s especially common among growing organizations. After all, the more people you add to your team, the higher your odds of different voices sneaking into your content.
So how do you create a brand voice that makes you sound awesome?
1. Read your company’s mission statement
This is where you’ve summed up your goals and values, so it’s the perfect starting point for your brand voice. And just like your mission statement, your brand voice never changes.
For example, here’s Marvel Marketers’ mission:
This statement says a few things about our organization:
- We work hard to be leaders in our industry
- We want to help other people succeed
- We have a team of experts in a variety of different areas
As a result, whether we publish a new blog post, create a new landing page, or send out an email to our contacts, we’re going to go out of our way to provide helpful information, we’re going to present our advice with confidence, and all of the insights we’re going to give are going to focus on a successful cohesive strategy.
2. Come up with 3 adjectives to describe your mission
In Marvel Marketers’ case, we’re helpful, confident, and success-focused. What adjectives can you pull from your own mission statement? Once you boil a description down to 3 adjectives, the right brand voice for your organization becomes very clear.
3. Create dos and don’ts
Dos and don’ts will eliminate any wiggle room in your brand voice. For example, Marvel Marketers’ voice is confident, but it can never go too far and come across as arrogant, snobbish, or condescending. There’s a big difference between being confident in your abilities and puffing out your chest and shouting from the rooftops about how great you are.
While this seems obvious, spelling out dos and don’ts makes everyone consciously aware of them. As a result, anyone who writes content for you will be on the lookout for words or phrases that cross the line. In the end, it will make it easier to onboard new employees and make sure that all of your employees are on the same page.
