Marketing in the modern age presents unique opportunities and challenges to go with them. On one hand, digital tools at a modern business’s disposal open up countless avenues for marketing and branding.
On the other hand, there’s more competition for customers’ attention than ever before. How can you make the most out of your business’s marketing endeavors, no matter your business’s size?
Step one to any sound marketing plan is defining your business’s unique brand voice.
What Is Brand Voice?
Voice is the tone, mood, or identity behind any piece of writing. Brand voice serves as a guide to who a company is and how they speak to its customers and clients through both marketing processes and direct communication.
Your company’s voice can help to set you apart in the market by demonstrating audience trust with a direct, consistent, and authoritative style.
A warmer, more casual brand voice may prove more effective for a smaller hometown business, while a tech company may use a voice with precise, clean language to be effective in its industry.
Any business, large or small, incorporates countless ideas, concepts, and tones into its foundation. To build a strong brand voice, however, you need to whittle down your business’s essence to a few key feelings, symbols, or adjectives.
A strong brand voice is simple, so try to keep the number of ideas to communicate down to what you can count on one hand.
Think of Nike’s powerful, almost biblical simplicity: “Just do it.” Tiffany, BMW, and other luxury brands use brand voice to appeal to a sense of elegance and sophistication.
On the other end of the spectrum, food brands such as Burger King and Skittles embrace the absurd to get the public’s attention. Think of one or two words that you want people to forever associate with your business, and you’ll have the beginning of your brand’s voice.
How Do You Keep a Brand Voice Cohesive?
Defining brand voice is only the first step in the process.
Every communication from your brand across platforms must stay cohesive, sounding as if they’re from the same person.
Hiring a CPaaS provider is an important investment in cohesive brand voice if your business’s marketing plan utilizes multiple digital platforms. Why? CPaaS coordinates your business’s communication and allows you to manage it from one cloud-based portal.
CPaaS can also weave in scalable technology such as video calling features or AI Chat Bot programs with your business’s existing platforms and systems. That means that separate teams can more easily coordinate copywriting across platforms, technologies, and regions to maintain cohesion in brand voice.
Which Marketing Strategies Benefit From a Cohesive and Strong Brand Voice?
Maintaining a cohesive brand voice is crucial to establishing brand identity and connecting with customers. A scattered voice may be worse than an underdeveloped one, as it can harm customer trust in your brand.
Here are three effective marketing strategies that live or die based on the strength, simplicity, and cohesion of your brand’s voice.
SMS Campaigns
SMS campaigns use text messaging apps and services to place advertisements directly in your customers’ pockets. The reason these campaigns are so effective comes down to timing.
According to CNN, the average person checks their phone for notifications 85 times a day or four times every hour. If your business neglects SMS campaigns, you’re losing out on thousands of chances for brand engagement.
Don’t make the common mistake of changing your brand voice to suit a text message format. Though text messages in general tend to be informal, your brand should stay consistent in tone when sending text messages to customers.
It would be strange if a buttoned-up acquaintance, boss, or colleague began sending you informal text messages full of slang and emojis, and it’s equally concerning when a business with a more formal, official, or straightforward brand voice does the same.
Holiday Sales
Holiday sales campaigns are a great way to reinforce your brand’s voice. When designing and writing for a cohesive holiday sale announcement, consider how the one or two words your brand voice is built on intersect with the particular holiday.
Luxury brands play into the grandeur of an expensive gift, while irreverent brands offer fun takes on each holiday.
Brand Announcements
Announcements for new products, locations, or services are all great opportunities to reinforce brand voice no matter what you’re announcing. Even topics such as changes in leadership or customer response forms can showcase a brand voice.
Don’t neglect a single line of customer-facing copy as a chance to add to the chorus of your unique brand.
Designing, executing, and maintaining a successful brand voice is one of the most important tasks involved in marketing your business. Don’t rush this crucial process, and you’ll arrive at a simple and effective voice that’s easy to maintain.