Brand voice, a two word term that signifies one of the core pillars of your brand. It’s a communication style through which a brand speaks to its audience and potential customers. People confuse brand voice with something that brands want to convey. No, that’s brand messaging, another two word term that builds on what the brands want to express through various mediums, materials and content. Both these terms are interlinked and correlated to each other. In today’s competitive market, your brand is no longer what you sell, it's how you make people feel about it, and you announce, deliver and communicate about your brand. By doing a couple of things together, of course you can grab the attention a few times but will the audience listen to you again, will they interact with you and will they engage with you depending on your brand voice and messaging. This is why deploying both becomes a strategic move and an inevitable necessity.
Now, pay attention: brand voice and messaging are extremely correlated, and devise a relationship between internal strategy and external branding outcomes driven through tangible measures. It shapes and gives definition to a brand’s business vision in everyday interactions: websites, emails, social media posts, product descriptions, ads, investor decks, and even the customer service tone. You know, you need to build trust and consistency and develop an emotional value about your brand. Thus the brand voice and brand messaging enable a business in exactly the same way.
Let’s move ahead and break this down one by one.
What is a brand voice?
Brand voice is a style of expression that attracts and encourages the target audience to communicate with the branding operations, promotional content, marketing material, and so on. Now, when this happens, brand voice gets instilled in the mindset of the audience. This leads to brand voice becoming a part of the customers’ routine. Brand voice is the consistent personality and tone your brand uses to communicate across all touchpoints. Brand voice can do wonders for your brand characteristics and create a whole brand personality.
Why brand voice matters
According to a 2020 report by Lucidpress, consistent branding across channels increases revenue by up to 23%. Consistency in voice builds trust and familiarity. When the audience hears the same tone, values, and language across emails, ads, and social content, they begin to associate that tone with your reliability. Another interesting statistic reveals that 68% of businesses state that brand consistency contributes directly to their revenue increase. Another significance lies in the utility and application of brand voice, which acts as a filter. The right use of brand voice eliminates what’s unnecessary and brings the one thing that always delivers, and that is clarity. With clarity, all the teams, along with content creators, customer support, and sales teams, start to speak in one aligned tone and thus become empowered.
What is brand messaging?
Brand messaging is the statement you want to deliver to your target audience. It can be expressed, interpreted, shared, and announced using different content formats, channels, and sources. In layman's terms, brand voice is the communication style, so undoubtedly brand messaging becomes the exact thing that you want your audience to listen to. This results in positive and impactful brand perception. Brand messaging includes the key ideas, promises, and positioning statements that your brand repeatedly communicates. These are the pillars that lay the foundation for the brand’s content, campaigns, and conversations.
Again, people tend to confuse it with taglines, one-liners, or eye-catching phrases. No, it is not at all like that. You may feel that you have invested so much in this and yet there is little to no outcome. This is why hiring a brand consultant can save you money in the long run and assist you in creating an effective branding voice and messaging. The brand message should reflect on the brand’s core value proposition and, likewise, should be customized for different audiences such as customers, partners, investors, and team members. As a founder, when you are crafting a brand message, make sure it answers the following questions: What do you believe? The problem we solve: Why should people choose your product? The value your product delivers and the promising outcomes.
The voice and messaging implementation
Enough of the paper plans and theoretical concepts. Without execution, you can reach nowhere. When developing a brand voice and messaging, you need to assess and formulate actionable measures that provide shape to your branding elements. We already spoke about the quintessential need for clarity. Furthermore, let’s look at some of the key steps that you can take.
Codify the voice: Draft it officially. Include the dos and don’ts. The founder can also pursue the idea of creating guidelines as to when, where, and how the brand voice should be used.
Creating a message map: Work on your core messaging and create a pathway that the customers will follow when they hear the brand message. This will also bring in support to digital marketing and sales teams.
Train your people. The document you have created, you can share it with your workforce. It includes everyone from HR departments to customer support. It is essential because these are the people who will slowly adopt and become the brand voice in everyday life.
Audit content: Timely revisit and review the content that is present and visible to your audience. It can be the ads, blogs, website page content, social media posts, and even small captions that you think nobody will care about. Align everything.
Words before we wrap
Brand voice and messaging are powerful aspects on which you can rely for your brand’s growth and success. According to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, 81% of consumers believe that whether they trust a brand or not plays a crucial role in their buying decisions. This underlines the importance of having a brand voice and message that is clear, concise, and consistent across all platforms and brand channels.
Brand voice and messaging evolve as your business grows. The audience will shift, and eventually the category will mature. With consistent voice and messaging, you can announce your story and create a better brand perception, positioning, brand recognition, and recall value. It automatically starts performing better. It earns attention, trust, and advocacy.
