When you started your business, what did you set out to accomplish? What problem were you trying to solve, who did you want to help, and how did you want your customers to see you and your business? If you’ve asked yourself these questions, then you’ve already started bringing your brand voice to life. The question is, can your customers see and understand your brand when they find you?
What is branding?
Branding is the act of communicating the heart and soul of your business to your customers. Your chance for a first impression with your customers begins with how they identify with your business and its mission. Finding your brand voice can be a little intimidating but, to be honest, you’ve probably already found it. The difficult part is articulating it and then sharing it with the world. Whether you’re starting from scratch or rebranding your business, you must learn to communicate your brand voice clearly to build an audience for yourself and your business.
Finding your brand voice takes some reflection
To find your brand voice, think about who you are and what you want to achieve with your business. Start with writing down a list of your core values – personality traits and rules that are essential to running your business. For example, some of your core values could be integrity, honesty, creativity, or innovation.
Then, write out some notes on each of these essential aspects of your brand:
- Purpose: WHY do you exist?
- Vision: What future do you want to create?
- Mission: How do we create that future?
Answer all of these questions as thoroughly as possible to help you find your voice and brand.
Who are we trying to attract?
Thinking this way is also crucial to branding and development. If you own a bridal shop, you are trying to attract people who are getting married, so reflect that in your brand imagery as best as you can. Write out buyer personas for your clients. (We’ve got the perfect blog post to help you get started! Read here.)
What sets you apart?
Once you have your brand voice fleshed out as well as some examples of your target customer, you’ll want to think about your differential advantage when putting together your brand. Differential advantage communicates what sets you apart from other competitors in your industry, locally or not. Finding your differential advantage means finding the aspects of your business that make you different from your competitors. You’ll have to think beyond just your products or top-notch customer service to drill down even further to what actually makes you unique. Write down some aspects of your business that you think sets you apart, and do some research into your competitor to see if you can spot any overlap in how they’re marketing their business.
Brand Brainstorming or Brandstorming
Gather your team together to ask yourself these tough branding questions. Have your team, the managers, and other key players in a room together and hash out what they think the brand voice should be. Pay attention to how your team communicates and what tone, vocabulary, and voice THEY use. This will give you insight into what your team contributes to the brand.
Try asking these questions to your team in the brainstorming session-
- When interacting with our brand, how do we want the bride to FEEL?
- What adjectives would we use to describe our brand?
- What is our competitor’s brand voice and how are we different?
- Which other brand voices do we LOVE?
- How do we want to talk about ourselves?
- Who do we NOT want to be?
If you give these branding tips a try, let us know in the comments below!
