Mastering Brand Voice: Tips to Make It Shine in Your Marketing Campaigns

Imagine strolling down a bustling shopping street. You encounter two salespeople. One jumps into a loud, generic sales pitch. The other greets you with a warm demeanor, tries to strike up a conversation and makes you feel acknowledged. Who are you more likely to stop and listen to? The second salesperson, right? 

Traditional marketing with bland campaigns that focus solely on promotion is like the first salesperson. In contrast, a marketing strategy that prioritizes brand voice is like the second salesperson. 

Don’t you want to be that second salesperson?

After all, in a sea of sameness, the key to standing out is a strong brand voice. It’s what makes your brand memorable and trustworthy. But what exactly is a brand voice? How do you define yours, and how can you make it shine in your marketing campaigns? We’ll answer all these questions in this blog.

What is Brand Voice?

To define that, let’s look at an example. 

This is a beauty brand ad.

This is also a beauty brand ad. 

If you encounter both these ads on your daily commute, which of them will make you stop and take a second look? Which of them will leave an impact on you after you have seen them? The second one we believe? That’s because the second ad from The Ordinary has a strong voice.

Over the past few years, The Ordinary has stood out with its honest, transparent, minimalist, and ingredient-focused messaging across various media. In this ad, in particular, everything from the copy to the design accurately reflects this brand voice. Hence it makes an impact on users and won the brand some media coverage. 

In simple words, brand voice or brand tone of voice is the signature tone you use in your messaging – the language you use to communicate with your audience, the attitude you display. It’s the way you convey your brand narrative. 

So, your brand’s tone of voice can be that secret ingredient that forges stronger customer relationships and builds trust. 

This might sound a lot like brand personality but these are slightly different aspects of branding. Your brand personality is a sum total of diverse elements like voice, values, identity, messaging, and story. And brand voice is a subset of this, a solid trait that humanizes and distinguishes your brand. 

Now, let’s address the second question. 

How Do You Define Your Brand Voice: 2 Essential Steps

1. Know your brand 

A deep and nuanced understanding of your brand is the first requisite for defining your brand’s voice. It’s about understanding what your brand stands for – the ideals that define you and set you apart in a crowded space. 

This understanding is crucial in order to define an authentic brand voice that reflects your brand, builds trust, establishes the norm for brand communication, and provides you with a strategy for brand differentiation as well. 

When you understand your brand well, you know how you perceive your brand, and how you want your audience to perceive your brand as well. Consequently, mishaps like the example below can be averted. 

The meme here was posted by the US Department of Health and Human Services. It was meant to take on a light-hearted tone to grab attention to a crucial message. However, the approach backfired since the organization is perceived to have a more serious voice, a more professional one. A lot of comments received on the post reflect this. 

KIMP Tips: 

To delve deeper and know your brand better: 

• Clearly lay down your mission and vision for your business.
• Define the “why” behind launching your business. 

2. Know your audience 

Once you have defined who you are, the next detail to pay attention to is who you are talking to. That’s when you know how to fine-tune your tone of voice to sound more appealing to and resonate with your audience. 

Data shows that about 56% of customers are loyal to brands that know what their preferences are. Therefore, understanding your customers and talking to them in a language that empathizes with them helps build better customer connections. 

A great example is Mailchimp. In a market flooded with marketing tools and automation software for the big names, they stand out as a business that caters to the unique needs of small to medium-sized businesses. Given their target audience, they have an approachable personality instead of an authoritative and formidable one. To achieve this their tone of voice has been characterized by an outspoken language and dry humor that prioritizes the message. 

Additionally, defining a voice that is relevant to your customers is also important to avoid missteps in your marketing and backlash for your campaigns. After all, you do not want to be perceived as a brand that’s inauthentic or distasteful. 

To exemplify this, we would like you to recall Gucci’s brief stint with meme marketing, a step that was welcomed with a lot of criticism from users. 

Over the years they have maintained a sophisticated brand personality and a professional tone of voice that reflects their legacy. The array of memes that swayed away from their tone of voice merely to try and woo the younger audience backfired. Therefore, thorough research of the demographics and psychographics of your target audience helps avert these mishaps. 

With your tone of voice defined, the next question is how do you let it shine through your campaigns? Let’s find out. 

6 Tips to Ensure Your Brand Voice Stands Out

1. Start by documenting your brand voice in your brand guidelines 

Your brand guidelines act as the ultimate reference manual to help you cohesively represent your brand across diverse marketing channels and in diverse marketing campaigns. From your content creators to designers all your stakeholders refer to your brand guidelines when it comes to crafting campaigns and designs that reflect your brand. Therefore, your tone of voice should hold a special place in your brand guidelines. 

KIMP Tip: To ensure a clear understanding and hence clear representation of your voice in campaigns, provide a detailed overview. Include examples and scenarios that explain how your brand should sound. Additionally, provide some do’s and don’ts or even a set of words to avoid when representing your brand. 

2. Leverage brand storytelling 

How did you fall in love with your favorite fictional character? Based on their personality and based on the story arc built around them, correct? Similarly, for people to see the human side of your brand, to notice your brand personality, and to get familiar with your brand voice, you need strong storytelling. 

Storytelling is what makes your brand more relatable. For instance, consider Duolingo. They have built their brand’s story around their mascot Duo. Duo’s playful and humorous (let’s not forget the subtle aggression that people have grown to love about him) voice has helped establish the brand’s voice. 

Sharing behind-the-scenes content, a curated display of relevant customer stories, and cohesive campaigns that talk about your brand’s origin stories and growth are all effective ways to leverage storytelling to establish your brand voice. 

3. Use your tangible brand elements to lay the foundation 

Your tangible brand elements can be of great help for customers to get familiar with your brand voice. This is achievable when all your brand elements cohesively communicate the core message, represent your values, shape your identity, and carry the intended tone. 

A few brand elements to consider for this will be: 

• Logo 
• Tagline 
• Mascot
• Brand colors 
• Brand fonts 

For instance, consider the popular beauty brand owned by Selena Gomez, Rare Beauty. The brand is known for their subtle, expressive, and empowering tone of voice. 

Every single element of their brand reflects their brand voice. For instance, the signature matte peach color aptly captures the theme of mental health and well-being that the brand consistently adopts. Their expressive monogram and signature script font are accurate elements representing the brand’s expressive and feminine personality. 

Similarly, curate every single tangible brand element of yours to consistently align with your brand voice. For example, do not use a heritage intricately detailed emblem logo that looks traditional if your tone of voice is meant to be humorous or modern to connect with a young audience. 

4. Optimize your marketing designs 

In addition to your core brand elements, there are other components that help establish strong visual communication. These are your marketing designs. 

Everything from the colors to fonts and imagery in your ads- both static and video ads- introduces your brand’s voice. For example, take the Skittles brand. They are known for their witty and bold tone of voice. Therefore, everything from their social media post to their outdoor ads is designed to be colorful, vibrant, and playful. Boring and ordinary designs would not have helped establish their signature brand voice. 

Similarly, optimize your marketing collateral so that with every design your customer encounters they become a little more familiar with your brand voice. 

5. Prioritize consistency 

Having brand identity elements and marketing designs that introduce your brand voice is not enough. What really matters is to use consistent presentation. Every interaction should feel connected – like it is leading to the end result. This coherence helps establish familiarity, reliability, and credibility. And this coherence also helps enhance the recognition of your brand voice. 

For example, over the years Old Spice has emerged as a brand with a distinct brand voice. It carries a witty tone with hints of satire and sarcasm sometimes slightly absurd as well. This signature voice has been etched on the minds of consumers only because the brand has consistently been using their marketing visuals to capture this tone. 

The playful billboard campaign featured here as well as the video ad that comes after are both effective in familiarizing even new customers with Old Spice’s brand voice. 

I couldn’t let this slide, @OldSpice. I took out my own billboard.#SweatDefense #SponsoredObviously pic.twitter.com/AqTM3FfhFq

— Montez Sweat (@_sweat9) October 15, 2019

Taking cues from this example, prioritize consistency in your marketing strategies. Consistent visual representation and consistent verbal expression in your copy are both pivotal in relaying your brand voice effectively. 

A dedicated design team working on all your design projects can help achieve this consistency in your design. The other way to do it is to create and manage a set of templates that can be useful when sharing content in digital spaces. For both these benefits, get KIMP! 

6. Focus on how you respond 

Your brand voice is not just about how you say something but also about how you respond to your customers. If your brand voice is meant to be friendly and you do not respond to any of your customer queries or comments on social media or if your brand voice is meant to be sophisticated and you respond to your customers with eccentric memes, the balance is lost. 

Let’s talk about Netflix’s conversational and friendly brand voice to exemplify this. If you think their emoji-studded always spot-on profile page descriptions and posts are examples of their brand voice, you must see their response to users. 

In this case, we do not know whether to appreciate the bio or their response to a user talking about this bio. 

Netflix has managed to establish a strong two-way communication with its audience and the tone in their responses has always been consistent with the tone in their core branding and marketing designs. This has helped the brand emerge as a stellar example of a strong and unique brand voice. 

Get KIMP & Create Designs That Establish & Preserve Your Brand Voice

In conclusion, building a strong brand voice takes perseverant measures and this also includes designing cohesive visuals. Your visuals should be constant reminders of your brand voice, of your brand’s overall personality as well. That’s when your brand stands out in a competitive space and establishes itself as a trustworthy name in the industry. 

Now how can you gain access to a design team that helps translate your brand personality and help preserve your brand voice in captivating visuals? By choosing an unlimited design service, like KIMP! 

Register now for a free 7-day trial!