Brand Voice: How to Develop a Brand Voice
Written by MasterClass
Last updated: Sep 1, 2022 • 3 min read
Brand voice is an essential part of your company’s marketing strategy. Learn how to develop a brand voice that engages your target audience.
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What Is Brand Voice?
Brand voice is the style of communication your company adopts when developing website content, social media posts, company announcements, and other forms of advertising copy. As the personality of your company, your brand voice should be consistent across all forms of communication. It should also adopt an engaging and appropriate style that fits your industry and starts a conversation with potential customers.
Why Is Brand Voice Important?
Brand voice is an opportunity to distinguish your company from competitors and increase brand recognition. When your brand voice is unique and reflects your company’s values, customers can more easily remember your business and associate your products or services with your company. Brand voice is also a way to attract potential customers and generate customer loyalty.
Brand Voice vs. Tone
While brand voice encompasses the type of language your company uses to reflect its purpose and values, brand tone describes how your company conveys its message in different situations.
Brand voice remains consistent across different platforms, as it focuses on your company’s unique personality. On the other hand, the tone of voice remains on brand but changes with different contexts, switching from formal to informal according to the circumstances.
3 Brand Voice Examples
Your brand voice should embody the goal and personality of your company. Here are three different types of brand voices and their main characteristics:
- 1. Casual and warm: One way to engage your customer base is through a casual and friendly brand voice. Businesses that have a warm brand voice develop posts across social media platforms that emphasize customer engagement and interaction. Establishing a sense of relatability with your customers is a marketing technique businesses use to strengthen their customer loyalty and increase brand trust.
- 2. Practical: For companies that solve customer pain points, a practical brand voice is an effective marketing tool. Combine simple rhetoric with logical solutions to demonstrate how your product or service provides value to the customer. This is also a great marketing strategy for advertising your brand as a business customers can trust.
- 3. Well-informed: If you want to position your brand as an industry expert, consider adopting a professional voice. Focus your content on educational pieces that inform and assist new and existing customers. You can also use social media posts, website articles, and webinars as an opportunity to comment on industry trends.
How to Develop a Brand Voice
A unique brand voice can improve your content marketing strategy and increase brand awareness. Consider the following steps for developing a brand voice that reflects your business:
- Outline your brand identity. Identify your company’s core values and mission statement to develop a strong sense of purpose. Having a clear idea of your business goals establishes a foundation for your brand’s personality. Generate a list of key adjectives that describe your brand identity. Use these words as a guide for the type of distinctive brand voice you want to create.
- Research your target demographic. An effective brand voice resonates with its target audience. As you develop your company’s voice, research your main demographic to identify the type of content that best engages your customers. Some data points to consider include the age, geographic location, and interests of your target market.
- Create a style guide. Collaborate with your content team to develop a style guide, which will be a key tool for aligning your marketing materials with your brand voice. Your guide should reflect the tone and personality of your brand, as well as outline the preferred standards for grammar, point of view, visual aids, and word usage. This will help your marketing team maintain a consistent voice across different channels.
- Update existing content. Review old content to determine whether it fits with your current brand voice. Update any inconsistencies and rephrase content that doesn’t reflect your voice. You can also analyze top-performing content to identify keywords or visuals that resonate with your target audience and capture your brand’s mission.
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