A strong brand is important regardless of your industry. Without it, your business will fail to maintain consistency and struggle to compete with more established companies, meaning you’ll quickly fall by the wayside.
One of the best ways to establish a strong brand is through your company voice. The problem many smaller businesses encounter is not knowing what type of voice they want to present. Rather than decide on one tone, they chop and change depending on the day and the customer. While this can help appeal to a broader audience, it also means they fail to stay in line with their key values. So, how can you establish a recognizable company voice? Here are eight ideas to consider.
Know Your Company Values
Without knowing your company values, you will never be able to establish a clear and consistent voice. Before anything else, ask yourself what you stand for. Do you want to provide something different from the norm? Are you focused on eliminating the tricky tedium of complicated processes?
Once you know what you stand for, you can establish your voice more easily. If you want to offer something different from the minimalist and distant approach of many businesses (and you can blame Apple for that), think about how you will approach your communications. Rather than short, almost abstract information, opt for warm and welcoming language that makes people understand that this is something different.
Establish What You Are Not
Often, you can establish what you are without knowing what you are not. There is more to this than a simple mind-mapping session, though, especially as your team may have a range of different ideas about what you are not.
To overcome this and get everyone on the same page, This, Not That exercises are exceptionally useful. Tell yourselves that you are using something positive and then back it up by reminding ourselves that you are not a negative aspect of this, such as We are friendly, but not sycophantic. Other ideas could be Caring, but not disingenuous. With this, you can focus on being something rather than trying not to be something else, which comes across as more authentic.
Evaluate Your Content
If you have decided to re-establish your company voice, there could be thousands of words worth of content lurking on your website waiting to trip you up. This means you will need to evaluate your content to consider how it aligns with your new voice.
Adjusting your content to match your voice will save any embarrassment, especially if someone comes poking around trying to highlight any hypocrisy. Besides this, it can also increase your ranking, as you will be able to refresh old content that is out of date, misinformed, or simply irrelevant when compared to your current image.
Be An Authority
If you have confidence in your knowledge, people will listen. Becoming an authority in your industry allows you to establish your voice quickly and often without anyone having the guts to doubt or challenge you.
Using online courses is one of the most efficient and dependable ways to become an authority, and considering the benefits of Podia vs Kajabi will help you choose a hosting resource to develop a course that clients will get plenty of value from. Sharting this course and marketing it as a must-have for customers and clients will further increase its reputation and make your company voice more commanding.
Let Your Website Do the Talking
Sometimes, you don’t have the opportunity to speak loudly. Instead, you must rely on how the company image is to do the talking for you. Still, you can use this image to establish a strong brand voice, especially in moments where you don’t need to say anything at all.
You can start this by understanding how to improve your homepage and grab attention. For many people, your website is the first point of contact, so you must make a good impression. Immediately, visitors will get an idea of who you are and what you’re all about, and you may not even need to say anything at all.
Research What Your Market Wants
Businesses can often struggle to establish a successful voice because they do not know what their audience wants. Instead, they make assumptions that fall wide of the mark, and this can put your company in abject peril almost immediately.
It’s always beneficial to research what your market wants and needs. You may discover some elements are missing, whereas there is an abundance of other elements which you can ignore. This not only helps you cultivate the right voice, but it also makes you more efficient in delivering the right service.
Create a Chart
You want your voice to be authentic, but this is not always possible, especially when introducing new employees to the business. Use a voice chart that will help them get to grips with how to approach different interactions and communications.
This chart can provide the Dos and Don’ts of your company voice and it will avoid any mistakes or sending out correspondence that sounds unlike you, which could confuse consumers.
Make It Consistent
With this chart, you will find it easy to maintain consistency. As time goes on, your brand’s voice will become second nature to everyone at your company. It’s important to match this brand voice across all of your channels. You don’t want a friendly Instagram account but a sarcastic, almost rude Twitter presence.
The more consistent your voice is across all platforms, the easier it will be to establish your voice online and in the local community. You will slowly but surely build a recognizable image and boost your company’s reputation as a business that knows exactly what it is about, and this is one of the most appealing elements to consumers. They don’t want wishy-washy uncertainty. They want confidence.
Shout It Loud and Proud
Your company voice is one of the most significant elements of your business. Because of this, establish it as quickly as possible and make sure this voice remains. Whether it’s press releases, social media, content marketing, or other communications, a powerful brand voice will make you stand out and make you a business that customers, clients, and competitors recognize instantly.
