It’s been said by industry experts that customers are the ones who truly define brands. MailChimp understands that their customers want an efficient email platform to cut down the stress of running email campaigns. If you hop on their website, you’ll notice that their messaging is honest and direct with a bit of dry humor thrown in for good measure. MailChimp uses a little humor to cut through any stress that comes with using a marketing tool to the brands using their platform.
The brand voice MailChimp uses connects with their audiences. After all, they clocked in at 2.4 million monthly active users in 2021. So, how can your brand find its voice? Join Team True as we share some tips that can help get you started.
A great way to work out your brand voice is to nail down some core characteristics. To start, you’ll want to gather some internal stakeholders to participate in a brainstorming session. Once you have this group together, plan on the discussion being about one question:
- How would you describe your brand if it was a person?
At True, we take this process to the next level by identifying the core personality traits of the brand we’re working with. From there, we identify the brand archetypes of competitors to find a unique point of differentiation that will resonate with their customers.
You’ll be surprised at how much this fresh take on your brand can help. To get things started, you can even have the group discuss which celebrity would be the best representative of your brand. The goal of this brainstorming session is to have three to five characteristics that everyone can agree on.
Now that you have the brand characteristics in place, the next step is to take that information and create a brand voice chart. Every characteristic will have three columns you’ll need to fill out, a brief description, dos, and don’ts. Let’s walk through an example assuming one of your brand’s core characteristics is being authentic.
Description: Our building products help give pros the tools and knowledge to make their projects easier. The expertise that pros have allows our products to reach their full potential.
Do: Be honest and transparent with any messaging to our audiences. Always strive to be trustworthy, while valuing the pros and homeowners that our building products could not thrive without.
Don’t: Use marketing jargon or buzz words in our messaging. Don’t overpromise or oversell any product or the features they have.
As your brand voice starts to become more defined it’s time to see how it translates into your marketing strategy. Take some time to go through and create some sample content based on your new brand voice. Once everything is written, analyze it as if it was a genuine message you would use. How does this sample messaging compare to what your brand was using before? Think about whether there’s any room for improvement in the new messaging.
A way your brand can expand on this exercise, is going through a process we practice at True. We always walk clients through “think, feel, do” to help develop their brand messaging. To break it down a little more:
Think: What should each of your core target audiences visualize when your brand comes to mind?
Feel: When a customer is interacting with your brand, what do you want them to take away from the experience?
Do: What is the next step you want a customer to take once they’ve interacted with your brand? You’ll also want to bring in some of team members who took part in the brainstorm to review all these ideas. Get their feedback and see if the brand voice is what they envisioned.
Are you looking to streamline the process of finding your brand voice? The branding experts at True Digital Communications can support you. Connect with us today to learn more about how we can help your brand find its voice.
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