How to Create A “Unique” Brand Voice That Stands Out.

Your brand constantly battles to win over customers, build equity, and encourage brand recall. So, ideally, you want to communicate in a way your customers find immediately appealing. But while many brands only focus on design systems, fonts, and colors to showcase their differentiation, they often overlook the central, critical glue of it all: the brand voice.

You will learn in this article: 

• What a brand voice is 
• Why brand voice matters
• How to create a brand voice 
• Tips for establishing your brand voice guidelines
• Some of the best brand voice examples
• How to access your free brand voice template

After finishing this article, you will understand how your brand identity ultimately translates to the brand voice to create your brand’s personality. Collectively, this brand understanding identifies what you stand for, what to communicate about your position in the market, and how to speak this message to your target audience. 

What Is Brand Voice?

Brand voice is your brand’s personality. Bringing this brand voice definition to life, here’s an example.

A beachwear brand uses surfer slang terms in its marketing materials to create a relaxed personality that matches its customer persona. A subtle yet powerful way to connect with your audience and shape your brand positioning. 

We can convey brand voice through anything from text and images to emails and packaging design. 

Some companies take “brand voice” literally. For example, Allstate uses actor Dennis Haysbert’s iconic deep, soothing voice to make you feel like “you’re in good hands.” Amazon puts little smiley faces on their packaging to let you know they’re a happy, friendly delivery company. At this point, companies can confuse brand voice with brand tone.

Brand Voice vs. Brand Tone

With branding, it’s essential to understand the difference between a brand’s voice and a brand’s tone. Brand voice refers to your brand’s overall personality, and character conveyed through your communications and marketing materials. It is what you want your brand to be known for and how your target audience perceives you.

Brand tone refers to the specific emotions, moods, and attitudes conveyed in your messages, and it can change based on the context and situation. 

Simply put, a brand voice is what we say, whereas a brand tone is how we say it. For example, a brand can have a voice of sustainability but communicate it with deep concern or anger. 

Differing tones attract differing audiences, even if the brand voice remains consistent. 

You convey your brand voice anywhere your company communicates, so actively think about how you want your brand’s personality to come across before launching a marketing campaign.

Is Brand Voice Really That Important?

Your brand voice is the defining factor in how your brand comes across to your target market. It shapes everything you do, whether or not you do this intentionally. And if you’re not intentional about it, believe us, you still have a voice; it just might not be what you want.

In a marketplace crowded with brands, standing out is essential to succeed. Developing a brand voice is a great way to showcase your brand’s unique personality and stand out with brand differentiation. A consistent, well-defined brand voice helps your business become more identifiable. Research shows that brands with consistent presentations can increase revenue by 33%. 

Not only does a well-defined, well-executed brand voice help you stand out, but it can also help you attract customers. 

Think about it; if you were Someone who wasn’t incredibly tech-savvy and wanted to buy a new computer, what would you choose?

1. “10th-gen Intel Core i9 with GeForce RTX 3070 Super graphics card,”
2. “fast and powerful, the perfect way to watch media.” 

While both companies might offer an identical product, the first comes across as complex. It might attract more tech-savvy consumers, but unless a translator is standing to change the language, it would likely drive away the average person. The second company positioned itself as straightforward, appealing to more people—a brand voice with which Apple has seen massive success!

Creating a consistent brand voice helps consumers identify with your business. Like in real life, once Someone gets a sense of your brand’s personality (and likes it), they’ll be more likely to develop a relationship and become a long-term customer. 

The Benefits of a Brand Voice That Resonates

Having a brand voice is good, but having a powerful one that resonates beyond brand presence wins in today’s competitive landscape. A similar product exists on every corner and every device, making it not only about grabbing attention but keeping it.

Creating a brand voice that resonates creates conscious-level conversations and sub-conscious-level purchase intent. Making your brand voice distinct is a force multiplier that lengthens the reach of every marketing effort and strengthens your impact on consumers who are ready to buy. 

How do you accomplish this? The brand voice must be part of your overall brand strategy. 

Brand Voice As A Part of Your Brand Strategy

As with every part of your brand strategy, you must consider, test, and report on your brand voice’s impact in the marketplace. 

Who is in charge of your brand voice? Is it your copywriter, brand manager, or communications director? Having a team member take ownership of the brand voice is the first step to ensuring it remains a conversation through your evolving brand strategy. 

Creating and nurturing your brand personality may happen once every calendar year, but you must continuously monitor and discuss your brand voice.

How to Create a Brand Voice 

Establishing a brand voice requires finding the intersection between you and the customer. Find agreement between your brand’s unique selling proposition and natural brand identity, and then make it flow with your customer’s hopes, wants, and desires. 

Identifying your brand’s archetype, personality, and values will help establish the voice but does not guarantee it’s a voice that wants to be heard by your target audience.  

So before you create your brand voice be sure you understand who you are and everything you can know about your target customer. 

Tips to Develop Your Brand Voice 

Whether or not you know it, your brand has a voice, so why not work to develop it into something beneficial for your business? 

Here are a few tips to help you develop your brand voice and create a unique personality to identify with customers and stand out. 

Be Consistent and Write Everything Down

Building a brand voice takes time and requires communication across various channels. Since there’s so much that contributes to your brand’s personality, a consistent voice is critical.

If you develop one voice for your social channels and another for your website copy, your customers will get confused. Incongruent brand consistency will prevent you from building a cohesive brand personality.

Ensure your brand voice is consistent regardless of your communication—social media posts, email blasts, or blogs.

For many brands, this is easier said than done. How many people contribute to your company communications across all your channels? There’s a good chance it’s more than one. That means everyone who works on your marketing campaigns needs to be on the same page regarding your brand voice. Documentation is vital at this stage of development and implementation.

Document your company’s personality traits like preferred vocabulary, phrases, values, and tone. Include plenty of examples to minimize confusion. A marketing manager or agency can review the reference guide to get a feel for the brand voice and whether it has a consistent tone. 

Audit Your Current Voice

Even if you are not actively developing a clear brand voice, your business operations and consumer expectations are deciding one for you. Instead of starting from scratch, perform a brand audit where you look at your previous and current communications to see how your brand’s personality is already coming across to customers. From this, you will understand many of your existing brand voice characteristics.

Note how your audience interacts with each of your communications. If you get tons of interaction on certain communications, identify what traits each has in common to see which voice identifies most with your customers. Then, use that information to develop your cohesive and unique brand voice.

Who Is Your Target Audience?

Knowing your audience is rule number one in marketing. Think about the potential customer you’re trying to attract or whom you want to keep. What kind of language or images would they identify with most? 

Consider key audience demographics:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Interests
• Needs
• Pain Points

Once you understand your ideal audience, develop a unique brand voice that resonates with them.

For example, if you have an authentic Texas BBQ brand, you might try throwing in a “y’all” occasionally. Usually, slang isn’t ideal for corporate marketing, but in this case, your brand’s voice will be in tune with its region of origin. 

Review and Make Changes

Once you document your brand voice guidelines, don’t just stick it on the shelf to collect dust. Brand voice isn’t static. Document and review your brand voice document regularly to identify any changes based on social trends or marketplace trends. 

For example, using emojis wouldn’t be a part of any brand voice back in the 90s. Today, every brand that wants to show off its fun side uses emojis—sometimes several in one line! 

It might help to have visual reminders about the importance of your brand voice. You may need to put a poster in your office where you put a dart in your specific place within a brand voice chart. It might seem over the top, but ideas like this help prevent your brand voice from becoming “out of sight, out of mind.”

Regularly review the brand guidelines for your “voice” and make changes accordingly.

Brand Voice Examples We Love

Brand voice examples come in all shapes and sizes. Continuing with our theme of being fresh, here are three examples.

Native

Native is a personal care company specializing in all-natural deodorants, soaps, and shampoos. The brand’s voice speaks of its commitment to sustainability and well-being, and its marketing emphasizes the significance of caring for your body and the environment. Native’s brand language is earthy, natural, and uplifting, reflecting the company’s position as an industry leader in eco-friendly personal care products.

The Honest Company

The Honest Company is a lifestyle brand that sells non-toxic and environmentally friendly household and personal care goods. Its commitment to transparency and honesty defines its brand voice, and its marketing frequently focuses on informing consumers about the dangerous ingredients in many traditional products. The Honest Company’s brand language is direct, educated, and empowering, reflecting the company’s position as a market leader in safer, healthier household and personal care products.

The Gourmet Chef

The Gourmet Chef is a small kitchenware brand that offers a variety of high-quality, chef-inspired goods for home cooks. Taking home cooking to a higher degree of elegance and inventiveness gives their brand voice an elevated appeal. Their marketing involves professional chefs showing how to use their items in the kitchen. The Gourmet Chef’s brand language is aspirational, motivating, and knowledgeable, reflecting the company’s position as a premium kitchen product distributor for discerning home cooks.

Show Off Your Brand Voice

Developing a consistent brand voice can help your brand stand out in the market and appeal to customers. Think about your ideal customer and create a brand personality that would appeal to their preferences. Of course, once you find the perfect brand voice, remember to review and change to keep up with the times.

Social media

Being proactive with social media is the trick to maintaining a consistent brand voice. Include the team member in charge of brand voice in your content calendar to ensure you are not broadcasting a different voice with each social media post. 

Communicate to your content creators the need for your audience to hear a consistent message that speaks to the brand’s identity. 

Content Marketing

Most content plans include a tone of voice provided to the long-form content creators, but rarely do you see brand voice. Be sure you communicate your voice throughout your content strategy. Otherwise, you might end up with a sustainable food brand with content recommending using unsustainable ingredients as a part of its recipes. 

Packaging Design

In addition to messaging, your brand voice speaks through the fonts, colors, and images of your product packaging. Yes, the shade of brown can be on-mission for expressing your purpose and values or detract potential customers from attaching to your brand voice. 

Advertising

While conversion rates are at the forefront of most advertising metrics, communicating your brand voice is also essential. Scare tactics might drive leads, but they may disagree with your overall brand theme, causing you to lose customers through brand voice confusion. 

Measuring The Effectiveness of Your Brand Voice

Telling Someone they “need” to do something without showing them “how” isn’t the best way to ensure they meet the objective. It doesn’t work for children, and it will not work for brands. 

To measure the effectiveness of your brand voice, work with an agency or build an internal team to test brand voice reception in casual and purchasing environments. 

Surveys and questionnaires: CPG brands can use surveys and questionnaires to solicit consumer input on their brand voice, messaging, and marketing efforts.

Focus groups: A focus group is a small group of consumers who discuss their thoughts and opinions on a brand’s voice, messaging, and marketing initiatives.

A/B testing: CPG companies can use A/B testing, which presents several versions of your brand voice to groups of consumers, comparing the results for brand-to-consumer alignment.

Social listening: By monitoring social media, CPG firms may learn how consumers react to their brand voice, message, and marketing initiatives and use this data to improve.

Customer reviews: CPG brands can also study customer reviews to learn how customers perceive their brand voice and messaging.

Sales data: CPG brands may establish whether their brand voice and message influence consumer purchase behavior by reviewing sales data.

Market research studies: Consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies can conduct market research studies to gain insights into consumer behavior, tastes, and purchasing habits.

Analytics: Consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies can use analytics tools to analyze consumer engagement with their brand voice. First-party data helps determine the impact of these efforts on purchasing behavior.

Having A SmashBrand Voice 

Here’s a look into our brand voice. We believe in data over design and communication through our client case studies. On our works page, you find statistics about shelf impact rather than presenting our packaging designs as a work of art. 

Our package design testing is a unique selling proposition that resonates with our voice to CPG brands wanting revenue validation from their packaging investment. If you want to ensure you have a great brand voice, we’re here to help. Contact us today to discuss your project.