A brand voice is a unique personality that shines through in all of a company’s communications, and famous examples are everywhere. There’s the voice of Dove, which encourages self-care and empowerment or the straight-to-the-point confidence of Nike. Harley-Davidson’s voice is strong and direct, while brands like Fridababy, Duolingo and Old Spice use humour to build rapport. As more AI-generated content floods the Internet, it’s more important than ever for brands to cultivate the main thing a bot can’t replace: personality. Your brand voice is your opportunity to demonstrate yours.
A simple way to look at it: if your brand was a person, what kind of person would they be? How would they communicate?
Your brand voice permeates every channel of communication, from advertising campaigns to social media responses to internal communications like company announcements. A consistent brand voice helps boost your credibility and, in turn, your revenue, while an inconsistent brand voice leads you to appear inconsistent (not a good look for any brand).
A strong brand voice starts with the right brand voice guidelines. But having the perfect voice isn’t enough. You need to adapt your approach to different channels and platforms while maintaining brand voice consistency.
There’s room for many types of brand voices in the market. Anchor can help you formulate consistent brand voice guidelines and show you how to adapt them when you need to.
Why Brand Voice Should Be Adapted For Different Channels
90% of customers expect to have a similar brand experience with your brand across different platforms. Consistency is obviously important for brand voice, but there’s another important part of communication: tone. Tone can change depending on the person that you’re speaking to, the situation and the medium.
Blog posts, social media posts, white papers, and various other forms of communication have different purposes, audiences, and parameters to work with. Twitter/X has a limited range of characters to use, while LinkedIn content is expected to be formal and professional. Some platforms are intended to entertain, some to persuade, and some to connect. Different platforms often require different ways of optimising your content for visibility and conversion. All types of brand voices can succeed on these platforms as long as they maintain flexibility.
Modifying your tone across different platforms (while maintaining the integrity and consistency of your brand voice) ensures that your content is fresh, engaging, and relevant wherever you appear.
How to Adapt Brand Voice for the Different Channels
While your brand voice should certainly be well-defined, it shouldn’t be static. It should be dynamic and adaptable. Here is how to tailor your brand voice and tone for different channels while remaining consistent with your brand voice guidelines.
Website
Your website is the first place a lot of potential buyers will turn to in order to find out more about your products and services. For that reason, you may want to modify your tone of voice to be a little more formal and professional than other platforms like your social media account. Without losing your brand voice, focus on clearly communicating what you have to offer.
Email marketing
Email marketing can be a lot more direct and personalised than the content on your website, and you can change your tone to suit the stage of the buyer's journey. For example, you can focus on being informative and providing answers in the ‘awareness’ stage and then taking a friendly and appreciative approach when aiming to retain the customer.
Social media
Tailoring your tone of voice on social media means adapting it to different platforms. For example, you might take a more formal tone when communicating with professionals on LinkedIn, whereas you might be short and to the point (with a greater focus on visual communication) on Instagram.
Search Engine Optimisation/Blogging
Modifying your brand voice for blogs and other SEO content means adjusting your tone for the length, the format and the purpose of your articles. You can provide value by giving your readers the answers they seek while engaging them with the use of formats like case studies, lists and how-to guides.
Videos and podcasts
Around 87% of marketers agree that video has a positive impact on sales, while podcasting is a billion-dollar industry. Videos and podcasts (and video podcasts) are great for everything from sponsorship opportunities to building deeper connections with your customers. With these mediums, you have to think about how your brand voice carries across in spoken word format: the tone, pace and cadence. Videos and podcasts also present opportunities to boost your credibility by interviewing experts in your field.
Why It Is Crucial To Still Maintain Consistency in Brand Voice
While you should modify your brand voice to suit different mediums, it’s important to maintain brand voice consistency. Brand voice guidelines give your brand a consistent look and feel. You can return to them at any time, so you don’t have to rewrite the rulebook for every new campaign. By doing so, you reinforce the qualities that make your brand stand out and that your loyal customers can mention when recommending you via word of mouth.
Consistent brand voice guidelines help both new and repeat customers connect with you more easily across different touchpoints. They fulfil your customers' expectations and help you maintain trust and reliability, as well as the existing emotional connections you’ve built. They keep your brand story coherent and make it a story people want to hear.
Finding the Balance between Adaptation and Consistency
Striking a balance between adjusting your tone and maintaining your brand voice across platforms requires a considered approach. Make sure your whole team is clear about the core elements of your brand voice, like personality, values and communication style. You can then adjust your tone’s formality, use of language, level of humour, and other elements for the situation and the platform. For example, you might take a very serious tone when addressing a common problem and a light-hearted, enthusiastic one when announcing a win for the company.
Striking a balance involves having a clear brand identity coupled with an understanding of the audience’s expectations and the dynamics of each platform. If it seems like a tough balance to strike, the Anchor team is happy to assist you with your brand voice.
Powerful Marketing with Your Brand Voice with Anchor
When a brand speaks to you in a way that resonates and inspires trust and loyalty, there’s an effective brand strategy at work behind the scenes. Anchor’s brand strategy services humanise your brand, drawing on your strengths while staying true to your authentic story to help you stand out from your competitors. Anchor can help you achieve a higher brand positioning (where you sit in customers’ minds), make sure your brand voice and brand values align, and help you deliver on your promises.
Anchor’s content marketing services give you more than sweet-sounding words. Our content marketing plan will include metrics and KPIs and focus on attracting, informing, engaging and retaining customers. We use the methods most suited for the task, including social media, paid advertising, video, blogging and more.
For consistent brand voice guidelines that remain effective across multiple channels, contact the Anchor team.
