Is Your Brand Voice Burly or Brainy?

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Sometimes marketing can feel like shouting into the wind. Is your voice even being heard?

Companies work hard to build a unified visual brand. They strive to fully understand who their buyer is and to share information with their audience. They communicate the pains and challenges prospects face, and how they can solve them. Solution providers sweat the details when explaining benefits and features. And sales teams exert considerable efforts toward finding a prospect who needs their solution at just the right time.

Tons of factors impact whether or not a marketing message gets through. Assuming you do all of them right, don't risk ruining your chances of making the sale by saying the right thing in the wrong way.

That is the power of brand voice.

Brands are both seen and heard

Brand voice is directly related to brand personality. Think of a company, then imagine its personality. Playful. Serious. Helpful. Innovative. If the outward appearance and the mission of a company is "helpful" but the words used are unresponsive, detached, and indifferent the messaging will come off as hollow and insincere. You will lose your customer.

Likewise, the best way to define your brand voice, is to fully understand your brand personality. Start with your product or service offering. What does it provide to the customer? What feelings are you delivering? How do you want them to feel about your product or service? What is your mission in serving them?

There are three common techniques for defining brand personality

The 3-word technique: Choose three words that describe your brand personality; i.e. Apple = clean, simple, confident.
The archetype/brand persona: Describe your brand personality as an actual person. How old are they, how well educated? Hobbies, gender, etc.
This, not that technique: Define 3-4 descriptive phrases that interpret what your brand is and isn't; i.e. Confident but not cocky. Smart but not stodgy. Informal but not sloppy.

Now imagine someone who is a personification of that personality and how they speak. What words do they use? Don't confuse this with industry jargon, acronyms or buzzwords. While you need to know those terms to reach your audience, it's best to use plain English for prospect messaging, so you don't alienate anyone who doesn't know what they mean.

Do consider the type of personas you are speaking to but never talk down to your audience. Connect with them head-on, like a meeting-of-the-minds.

Voice vs. tone

Once you have some descriptive words for your brand voice, you need to understand tone. Tone comes into play based on when you are talking to your audience. While voice expresses the personality of your brand, tone expresses the emotional inflection appropriate to the specific situation or message type. What is the communication channel? Are you writing for the website to a general visitor? Or is this an email communication to an existing customer? Is this a sales pitch within a slide deck? Or a booth banner at a tradeshow?

Places where your brand voice will be most noticeable and impactful include: calls to action, customer onboarding communications, Instagram messaging, customer service emails, and social media bios.

All of these channels will have a variation of your brand voice known as tone. It might be more sales-focused. More persuasive. More instructive and advisory. A good copywriter knows how to adjust the tone of a message for each specific channel.

Learn from the best

The quintessential example of mastering brand voice is Mail Chimp. They devised a unique and quirky brand and followed through with carefully crafted copy at every customer touchpoint. If you've ever used Mail Chimp you know that using the product just made you smile. If you're unfamiliar, check out their well-defined brand voice style guide here.

Want to see more? Check these out these sample guidelines:

Document, monitor and modify

OK. You've done the hard part. You've defined your brand personality and voice. You've isolated your various communication channels and filtered your tone for each, accordingly. Then, you documented it all and built some guidelines to help you stay on track.

Now it's time to write. And market. And message. And educate. And write some more.

Take the time to monitor how you're doing. Listen to your audience and make sure you're staying in tune with trends and the competition. Then learn and modify and write some more.

Rinse and repeat as they say. By following these tips, you're sure to be a sounding voice above the noisy marketplace. With a well-defined brand voice, you can be distinct call, with a message all your own.

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How to Earn b2b Street Cred with a Unique Thought Leadership Voice

By Barbara Bogue • August 22, 2023

Thought leadership is a huge part of social media for your b2b brand. And seeing that social media is leading the game over traditional advertising or product marketing, the stakes are ever higher to get it right. Have you fully defined and honed your brand voice? Are you capitalizing on your uniqueness in all of your thought leadership channels? Let’s explore how to define and leverage your unique thought leadership voice to build your street cred – affecting everything from recruitment and attrition to lead generation and your and bottom-line. B2b wins with thought leadership The value of thought leadership is undeniable. 40% of b2b marketers say they’re able to link business wins directly back to specific pieces of thought leadership content. In fact, thought leadership is said to be one of the most effective tools any b2b can wield to demonstrate value, especially in a tough economy. The awareness-building capability of thought leadership can impact the building of new partnerships, acquiring new users and prospects, as well as establishing a corporate reputation that attracts and retains valuable employees. Thought leadership benefits fall into one or more of these categories: Building trust and credibility Differentiating your brand from others Engaging with C-suite prospects, leaders and influencers Winning advocates and early adopters; driving growth Establishing a foundation for marketing content Identifying new industry categories Find your own unique voice With the value opportunity clear, the next step is defining and honing your own unique voice. This takes time and some trial and error. Start with this homework: Know your brand: Be clear on your USP and how you differentiate from others in the market. Have a clear mission and vision (your mission is your what/why that defines what your do; your vision is your inspirational rally cry for the future). Know your audience: Y ou must be clear on who you’re talking too. Thought leadership is about knowing the unique challenges of your users, the industry at larger and your place within it. This requires a deep and tuned-in perspective. Know what matters to your tribe. Tell your story: To capitalize on thought leadership for growth, you must have a clear and relatable story. Weave that origin and vision into every opportunity to draw relevant insights relevant that leverage your point-of-view. Your story must be about the greater “why” while also being personal. Stick to a plan: Thought leadership efforts are not willy-nilly. They should tie into a complete content strategy and within your messaging matrix for your brand. While being flexible enough to jump at media opportunities, don’t lose sight of the three points above, no matter what kind of thought leadership outreach it is. Be actively sharing: Always. Your efforts should be borne out of generosity and a willingness to teach (not to make a profit). Share with purpose and genuine desire; the rest will naturally fall into place. As you earn the respect of those you are helping your leadership will become self-evident and continue to grow in impact. Build street-cred with various tactics As you craft thought leadership opportunities into your content strategy, there are various tactics you can use. Most of them are some combination of current or future-looking trends or strategies, and your unique advice. Think of yourself as the mentor to the rest of the market, and carve out ways to share your wisdom. Present: Define present challenges and give advice for how to overcome them. This might be specific tools, strategies, feature sets or other advice. Remember, you’re a few steps ahead of those that follow you. How can you share what you’ve learned and what has worked for you, to make their journey better? Share research and expertise. Conduct research and share it with the industry. As a leader, you have more access to information or other thought leaders. Leverage your position to gain insight and expertise that others can use int their own practice. Forward-thinking: Identify trends you see in the industry, market or parallel markets that may impact your work. Offer these insights as a forward-thinking perspective. What do they mean? How will these trends inform future decisions? How have you navigated them successfully? Challenge conventional thinking. Being provocative is part of the role of thought leaders and mentors. They challenge us to not just follow the pack, but to forge our own way. How can your insight inspire a new path for someone to follow? If you could do something again, how would you change your course? Provide a roadmap pr a vision for the future . This could be short or long-term. This might be idealism at its finest, paving the way for a provocative shift in the way business is being done. Or it might be a subtle prediction of what new trends we might see down the line in the next year or so. Pull out your magic 8-ball and have at it. You’ve got the tools, now lead With these tips and all your tremendous experience, you’ve got what it takes to build a reputation worthy of imitation. Don’t let imposter syndrome slow you down. We’re all at different points along the professional roadway. Wherever you are, others are still making their way behind you. You can lead and inspire them. So, craft your messaging around your unique brand voice and start building that street-cred. Just remember these three cardinal rules: Be focused, be consistent, and be yourself. _______ If you need help injecting some with thought leadership content ideas or finding your brand voice for your b2b, feel free to reach out . Let’s chat about your brand and how we can make it anything but boring!

Eight Fundamental Design Principles (that also Work for Content and Branding)

By Barbara Bogue • June 11, 2023

We'll review 8 key design principles that are the foundational building blocks for just about any design solution, used alone or combined. They also have parallel interpretations that can be applied to branding and/or content creation. Let’s see how.

Let Creativity Lift Your Brand from Boring

By Barbara Bogue • May 8, 2023

If you’re like most B2B CMOS, Directors and VPS you’ve got a lot of demands on your time. Your in-house teams are tasked with lead generation, nurturing, thought leadership, sales enablement, product messaging and channel building…I could go on. It’s a lot! And oftentimes, KPI demands are getting, well, more demanding, while your teams and budgets are getting slashed. Does less time ever translate into less creativity? Oooh. Bad choice. Last thing your audience wants from you is boring. So, don’t sacrifice the creativity.