The document discusses defining a brand's voice through content marketing. It emphasizes that consumers connect emotionally with brands and buy based on how brands make them feel. To be successful, a brand's content must deliver a consistent voice that builds relationships and trust. The brand voice is reflected through all communications, including tone, style and consistency of language. The document provides tips for crafting an authentic brand voice that aligns with the brand and evolves over time.

1. Defining Your
Brand’s Voice

2. Studies throughout the years have shown that consumers buy
products from brands that they connect to on an emotional level.
In order to create valuable, long-term customer relationships, great
brands have to entice customers with emotional connections, and
not just mere information about their product or service.
This can be accomplished through branding – a company’s product
name, slogan, logo. Consumers decide which brands to buy based
on how they make them feel, and for this reason it’s important that
brands constantly seek to create close emotional ties with their
customers. The concept is simple: put a face to your brand, and let
your brand’s real personality come through.
This concept applies to content marketing as well. To be truly
successful as a content marketer and set your company apart, you
need to be able to build relationships and trust with your customers.
That means that your written content has to be engaging, relevant,
and useful – and yet still deliver a consistent voice and message for
your products.
Defining Your Brand’s Voice
2 | Defining Your Brand’s Voice

3. Any time you publish a blog, post on social media, or even
put a page on your website, you are creating your brand’s
voice. The words you choose, the style of writing, and the
consistency of your language…all of these add up to create
the voice that reflects your brand and your brand name.
Simply put, your brand’s tone of voice is not what you say to
your customers, but how you say it. It’s the heart and soul
of your communications, and it’s more than just words and
phrases. Your brand voice is the tone in which you speak to
and connect with your audience; it’s how you express your
messaging. Brand voice touches on nearly all aspects of your
communications, from slogans and advertising to blog posts
and website content.
On the next page we offer a case study from MailChimp on
how to effectively use brand voice, as well as several tips on
how you can keep your organization’s brand voice engaging,
relevant, and meaningful for your users.
3 | Defining Your Brand’s Voice
What is Brand Voice?

4. A great branding service and
reference tool for how to effectively
use brand voice in content writing
is MailChimp. MailChimp provides
an interactive chart that takes
you through the different types of
content that they publish. As you go
through the content types, you get
a sense of how a user might feel in
each scenario, and how you should
speak to that user.
MailChimp excels at running their
tone and voice through everything in
nearly every scenario, from default
text to knowledge base answers to
terms and conditions. For example,
when a user asks if they can create
their emails in Word and paste them
into MailChimp, MailChimp responds
by giving them a straightforward,
yet informative response. In this
case, MailChimp’s response was:
‘In general, it’s not a good idea to
use Microsoft Word to create email
campaigns. Below we’ll show you
what kind of messy code ends up in
campaigns when someone copies
and pastes content from Word.’ This
kind of response doesn’t just answer
the user’s question with a simple
yes or no. It goes a step further in
personalizing the response for the
user, which gives the user the feeling
that their needs are being addressed
and acknowledged.
4 | Defining Your Brand’s Voice
Case Study: Mailchimp

5. As a marketer, your brand
voice can be informative,
formal, or fun - but whatever
it is, it has to be authentic.
Honesty and transparency
are critical in brand
storytelling, and they must
be rooted in the reality of
your brand, products, and
industry.
Your audience will be able to
tell if your voice is not genuine;
empty messaging will only
hurt your brand name. Your
customers should recognize
your brand’s voice right away,
and it should be used honestly
and consistently across all of
your marketing and advertising
communications - including
social media, websites, and
traditional marketing and
advertising channels.
When you invest the time
to find the tone that best
represents who your company
is, you are being authentic
and true to yourself. If you
then communicate to your
customers consistently in that
tone of voice, you’ll positively
influence how your company
is perceived, and audiences
will understand your brand and
keep coming back.
Keep It Authentic
5 | Defining Your Brand’s Voice

6. Social media has fundamentally changed the way businesses
and their customers interact. Corporations can no longer be the
faceless, distant operations that they once were. Companies
need to be engaging entities that must adapt and respond to
their consumers in real time.
When developing your brand’s voice, your social media messaging
is critical. If you picture your brand as a persona, you can try to
imagine what your brand sounds like to your consumers. Creating
specific attributes that fit the general vibe of your brand helps you
personalize your brand, and you can benefit from the conversations
that follow. For example, let’s say you create a humorous voice
and tone that your customers engage with and enjoy. Those
satisfied customers then talk positively about your brand, which
essentially generates new content. That content then reaches other
prospective customers, delivering your brand’s message for you.
This scenario underlines the powerful capabilities that social media
has in creating your brand’s voice and messaging.
Use the Power of Social Media
6 | Defining Your Brand’s Voice

7. 7 | Defining Your Brand’s Voice
Deliver a Consistent Message
Perhaps the most important thing organizations can do to define
their brand’s voice is to deliver a consistent, steady message to
users. Giving your audience a consistent experience builds loyalty
and trust. By being consistent, users will better understand your
brand and have a good experience whenever they are exposed to it.
When a brand’s voice is consistently expressed, audiences will
come to see your organization as one they can rely on and connect
with. And once you’ve established a consistent brand voice, people
who follow you on social networks, visit your website, and interact
with your customer service department will have the same great
experience every time.
To help achieve consistency with your brand voice, you can (for
example), build a style guide describing your brand and its voice, and
distribute it to your team internally. You could also hold an internal
event to introduce your brand voice to your team, answer any
questions people have, and create a plan to implement it across your
platforms and channels.

8. While following any of the tips will help take your
organization’s brand to the next level, an important
thing to always keep in mind is that you shouldn’t try
to finish the perfect brand voice from the start.
The world today moves at a fast pace, and what was new
today is quickly outdated. Your brand voice should be
fluid, and should be open to change with the dynamic
landscape of how we interact with one another, and
with the technologies that continue to shape our
future. While the nature of your voice should remain
consistent, you’ll still have to keep pace with your
audience, work across a variety of communication
avenues (both internal and external to your company),
and communicate in fresh and exciting new ways.
In the end, a lasting and successful brand voice is one
that stays relevant because it has the ability to adapt to
changing needs and tastes.
Continue to Evolve
8 | Defining Your Brand’s Voice All images are subject to copyright.
THINK DIFFERENT