Cultivating Your Brand Voice

Thank you for coming back to Week 4 of our Instagram Success Series! Today we will be jumping right into a discussion around creating a unique voice for your brand—on and off Instagram. 

As modern marketing evolves, so are the voices of corporations, which are often taking cues from bold industry disrupters. In short, it pays to be boldly yourself now more than ever! Today, I’ve narrowed down a few main points to consider when cultivating a fitting and robust voice for your brand.

Define Your Role(s) with Your Audience 

When developing a voice for your brand, you first want to determine the demographics & psychographics of your audience. AKA: get to know your audience members like they’re new friends! You can assess your demographics using factors like age, gender, family status, and income; while psychographics can include aspects like values, interests, and behaviors. Once you understand your audience, you can brainstorm strategies that will appeal to your entire audience and each segment. 

Let’s consider some examples:

• Do you want to be the big sibling advising your millennial and gen z audience in a cool, collected style—while also serving as a companion to your chic gen x—and inspiring your boomers?

• Do you want to be the energetic younger sibling to the millennial, sparking curiosity in them—while serving gen z as a spunky companion—and an insightful kid and/or grandkid to gen x and boomers?

• Do you want to be the comforting companion, parent or grandparent to a broad audience, showering them with love and calming their fears?

You get the gist. 

Your customers and associates are humans, while your brand is the loving connector of the two. Fostering a community built on shared values and interests begins with defining these aspects amongst your audience's segments. 

*Note: more than anything else, relationships require quality time together—time spent learning about one another and time spent enjoying one another’s company. I invite you to plan an Audience Party where your team can brainstorm insights into your demographic segments, their behaviors, and goals.

Create Consistency Across Your Marketing Touch-Points

You would be less amused by a friend who is clinging to you one day and distant the next, and you might also have similar exceptions of brands you trust with your dollar. The best way to create consistency across all of your marketing touch-points is by developing a style guide. 

You can format your style guide differently depending on your brand's priorities. In your style guide, you can consider popular keywords or phrases your demographics may find appealing in relation to your brand. You can also determine the parameters of your brand voice by deciding what your brand is and is not (example: confident but not cocky). You may also assess your tone on a sliding scale between the following four dimensions of tone of voice: funny/serious, formal/casual, respectful/irreverent, enthusiastic/matter-of-fact. Regarding formatting, you may utilize a standard guideline like AP style or you can create a unique guideline of your own! 

Spark Real Conversations - Within & Amongst Consumers

I see brands making a common mistake by asking for conversations instead of cultivating conversations. 

Here’s an example, just for play! You have one travel agency sharing inspiring moments, sprinkling in the CTA of conversation: where are you traveling next? 

Another travel agency is sharing inspiring moments of their service being utilized to its fullest, announcing something like new improvements, the launch of new offerings, entertaining moments, initiatives they care about, or an exciting giveaway campaign.  

The customer of company 1 could possibly engage but won't be much closer to using the service or carrying on a conversation outside of social media about the service. The customer of company 2 is more educated and ready to engage with the information and/or engage in a conversation about the travel company amongst themselves or a friend. 

When it comes to cultivating a poignant brand voice, this last piece of advice I’m passing along to you from Taylor Swift’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert...try to be “concise and catchy”. 

If your brand could use some ancillary help with cultivating your brand voice or your entire brand expression, our team of creatives can help your brand consistently shine! Schedule a consultation or service inquiry today!