What Advice Would You Give for Creating An Authentic Brand Voice?
Advertising Interviews
What Advice Would You Give for Creating An Authentic Brand Voice?
Crafting a brand voice that truly connects with consumers is an art, and to guide you through this creative process, we've gathered insights from seven marketing and branding experts. From embracing transparency and honesty to building trust with consistency, these seasoned strategists offer their best advice for creating an authentic brand voice. Dive into the wisdom shared by our Digital Brand Strategist and Brand Voice Strategist, among others, to ensure your brand resonates with its audience.
- Embrace Transparency and Honesty
- Adapt While Maintaining Authenticity
- Align Brand Voice with Customer Experience
- Understand Your Brand's Unique Identity
- Focus on a Specific Audience
- Personify Your Brand Identity
- Build Trust with Consistency
Embrace Transparency and Honesty
Welcome, really clear openness. Share your errors as well as your successes and the wisdom acquired over the path. This honesty helps your audience connect with you on a deeper level, thereby transforming them from customers into committed supporters.
Adapt While Maintaining Authenticity
There's a quote often attributed to Casanova: "To accomplish anything, I must bring all my physical and moral faculties into play, make the acquaintance of the great and the powerful, exercise strict self-control, and play the chameleon."
This concept is true when building an authentic brand voice that not only resonates with customers but also earns their trust more quickly, ultimately making it easier to achieve your goals. You must play the chameleon.
Your brand voice is embedded in every piece of content you release into the market. When you're trying to break into a market and capture the attention of prospects or customers, they first need to see you as their equal.
People trust those who look like them, sound like them, and hold their same beliefs. When you become a chameleon, you blend into your environment to gain the trust of your market.
It's crucial to note that being like a chameleon doesn't mean "faking it till you make it." It's in a chameleon's nature to blend into its surroundings—this is authentic for the chameleon. Similarly, authenticity should come naturally to you as well.
The simplest way to ensure authenticity is to be genuinely curious. Engage with your market, ask questions, and observe what makes them who they are. When you approach your market with genuine curiosity, authenticity will naturally follow.
Align Brand Voice with Customer Experience
Make your brand voice consistent with the experience a customer will have when they purchase from you. Buyers spend time learning about and experiencing your brand online, and when they call a salesperson or make a purchase, the brand experience should feel streamlined. For example, if you're selling an incredibly high-reliability product, your brand voice online should include bold statements about reliability to show it's something you take seriously. To the contrary, if your support team isn't available 24/7, don't base your brand around 'we're always here for you'—even though it sounds nice and meets a customer pain point, if the experience doesn't match the message, you'll immediately break trust in your brand.
Understand Your Brand's Unique Identity
To create an authentic brand voice that resonates with consumers, you first have to understand what sets your brand apart—its unique purpose, value, and story. Starting with this strong foundation allows you to develop a voice that is distinct and ownable, and is in alignment with your brand's overall goals. For example, my client Provence Beauty is modernizing French skincare staples, and their brand voice reflects this by incorporating contemporary French phrases and slang. A deep understanding of your brand's unique identity will empower you to create a voice that's genuine and resonates deeply with your audience.
Focus on a Specific Audience
Achieving an authentic brand voice that resonates with consumers is crucial for your business's success. How can you create it? Start by identifying your primary audience. Rather than trying to reach everyone, be known for focusing on a smaller group you know well and can influence. Research this persona thoroughly, concentrating on their needs, concerns, and goals. Your authentic brand voice will captivate this group because you'll say their 'name,' speak their 'pain,' with 'solutions' to proclaim.
Personify Your Brand Identity
Pick a person who embodies your brand identity. It can be your founder, a celebrity, or even a character. You want someone who's highly visible so you have plenty of references to draw inspiration from.
For example, one of my clients is a technology vendor, but their culture is more aligned with a blue-collar type of brand—think carpenters or plumbers. To help define their brand voice, I identified Sam Elliott. He's known for his deep, rugged voice, which is often used in commercials for things like pick-up trucks and beer.
With him as our sort of North Star, we were able to work through a brand voice exercise and create an identity that was authentic to the company.
Build Trust with Consistency
A voice that resonates with customers is a voice that they can trust.
Two things are especially important to building a trustworthy voice: matching expectations and maintaining consistency.
Matching expectations doesn't mean doing what everyone else does — it means just talking to the customer in a way they relate to. If you're coaching stay-at-home parents, for example, your tone might be a little warmer than if you were coaching CEOs through an M&A deal.
Meet them where they are and add your own secret sauce.
Consistency is the true linchpin of a voice that resonates. Across channels, across media, across audiences — the tonal qualities you emphasize might shift to match your context, but the essential identity, POV, and personality behind your voice have to remain consistent.
This consistency lets customers know they can trust you to be who you say you are.