71: What is a brand voice guide & why small businesses need one {Part 1}
In this episode of ill communication, we’re talking about something that improves the impact of your copy, and the effectiveness of messaging.
It’s something that helps you stand out and shine in the marketplace… especially in a world where we’re seeing more and more copy generated through AI or bots.
When you have this dialed in for your business, you’ll attract soulmate clients to you, and repel the kinds of clients who would probably be a pain to work with.
Understanding this topic is what separates the great copywriters from the mediocre ones.
I’m talking about your brand voice.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
How understanding your brand voice can help you attract your soul mate clients
The trust you can build with your audience by being consistent with your brand voice
Why sharing your unique voice and personality is a marketing imperative
How to discover your own unique brand voice
Make sure you get prepared for the upcoming Brand Voice series!
Pay attention to the personality and the voice of the brands and businesses you love or interact with. Pay attention to the words and word choices you make when you’re speaking or presenting. Watch how you chat with your friends and family… is that different from how you show up and present yourself online?
Observe your speech patterns and sayings… and next week, I’ll show you how to uncover and define your brand voice.
If you don’t want to wait to DIY your brand voice discovery with me over the next few episodes, reach out to me to find out how I can help you refine, define, and document your brand voice.
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[00:00:03] Welcome to ill communication, copywriting tips and sales strategies for small business. I'm your host, Kim Keel. I'm a copy coach, sales strategist, and direct response copywriter. It's my mission to help women leaders and change makers amplify their voices through copy. It's why I'm dishing out all the juicy tips, writing prompts, and sales formulas to help you generate more leads, book more calls, and get more high value clients on repeat. Sounds pretty good. It's time to ditch the overwhelm you might be feeling and find confidence in your copywriting so you can get your message out there and attract more soulmate clients. Let's get started. Hello, hello, welcome to this episode of the Ill Communication podcast. Today we're talking about something that will improve [00:01:00] the impact of your copy and the effectiveness of your messaging. It's something that will help you stand out and shine in the marketplace, especially in a world where we're seeing more and more copy generated through AI or bots. And when you have this dialed in for your business, you'll attract soulmate clients to you and repel the kind of clients who would probably be a pain in the ass to work with. Understanding today's topic is what separates the great copywriters from the mediocre ones. I'm talking about your brand voice. And to demonstrate the power of brand voice, I'm going to reread this opener in a couple of different brand voices. Hello, my lovely soul sister.
[00:01:45] Let's immerse ourselves in the ethereal tapestry that is the key to you, experiencing quantum leaps in your business and manifestations. Today's gentle conversation is an important one because we are living in an era, an age of inauthentic [00:02:00] algorithms and AI generated content. When you fully embody this essence, you'll magnetically call forth the kindred spirits who are predestined to walk in your divine light, to dance in your soulful rhythm, and to commune with you under the moonlight of love. Or how about having it read in this brand voice? Hey. Hey, girl. Boss. So today I'm spilling the tea on something that is totally going to make you in your copy and messaging lit AF like this is a mega deal right now because the bots are everywhere. And if you know how to tap into this righteous gif, you are going to shine. Sister. When you are moving and grooving with this thing, you're going to have all the best clients swiping right on your ass and leaving all the crappy clients on their drama behind. Now, I could have rewritten these passages also as a dude bro at the bar, or more of a formal professorial type, but I know you get the gist. Some people will love the girlboss vibe, [00:03:00] some will love the poetic flow of the Earth mother, and others would prefer the casual vibe of the dude at the bar. This is the power of your brand voice.
[00:03:11] But what really is a brand voice? It's your verbal identity. It's the words you say and how you say them. Your brand voice is a combination of the rhythm, tone, vocabulary, and personality of your copy and messaging, and it represents and speaks for you and your brand when you are not in the room. Now I know when I started my business, I worried about my logo, my brand colors, my fonts. And yes, these are important details to consider because they form your brand, your visual identity, and they help you be consistent across all of your channels, websites, social media, brochures, slide decks. Et cetera. And [00:04:00] it's why so many businesses have brand guidelines that dictate how you use your logo, how much space should go around your logo and how it should be resized. You probably have a document that lists the codes for your hex colors in your brand palette. You know which fonts to use in your social media and on your website, and you may even have a mood board or a Pinterest board of different kinds of images or stock photos you would share, and the kind you wouldn't share in your visual branding. Your brand guidelines. And sure, you have a consistent visual presence and identity and brand voice guides are equally important for creating consistency in your copy and messaging. Because when you have that kind of consistency, you build trust with your audience.
[00:04:51] When the copy and words you write match your personality, it feels authentic to your readers and followers, and it creates a genuine and [00:05:00] seamless customer journey. Can you imagine how strange the experience would be for you if you followed someone online whose copy read very warm and friendly and conversational? And yet when you met the person or joined their program, they turned out to be very stiff, cold, and formal. Your copy and messaging should align with the authentic personality you have. It should sound pretty much like you. Now, I know a lot of women struggle with this because we worry about whether or not we sound professional. A lot of women business owners worry that if we share our personality or our little casual, we won't be taken seriously. But I assure you, you will. Not only is sharing your unique voice and personality a good thing to do, it's becoming a marketing imperative, a must have. Here's why. There are 1.19 million small businesses in Canada, 5.5 million [00:06:00] small businesses in the UK. And get this stat 33 million small businesses in the US. Competition is fierce and your unique brand voice makes you stand out in the sea of competitors. Think about the kinds of brands and businesses you buy from. Do you only buy from people or brands who sound, quote unquote professional? I'm pretty sure you don't. Many of the biggest brands online have very distinct, unique brand voices.
[00:06:33] Think of Apple, especially those ads in the early 2000, where Apple positioned itself as the cool jeans and t shirt wearing Mac brand compared to the dorky blazer and khaki wearing PC brand. Old Spice has a hilarious, very dude bro brand voice. Skittles and Cheetos have very irreverent, rebellious brand voices, and Dave has a very positive, [00:07:00] uplifting, affirmational voice. None of these successful brand voices are formal or professional or stuffy, and you don't need to be either. In fact, the secret to standing out a little more in your industry is to infuse more of your personality, your interests, and your voice into your messaging and copy. And if that feels scary or you don't know how to do it, you are totally not alone. Especially if you're a Gen Xer like me. You are educated and trained on formal business conventions, and that formal business speak is a hard habit to break. And also, as women, many of us have been raised to be seen and not heard to be a good girl. Many of us have been told we are too loud or too much, and we live in a patriarchal society that's been telling women that we don't know what we're doing. And our business mentors have often been men who have traditionally had a very masculine or official [00:08:00] businessy approach to marketing. And as a result, we don't feel safe to be our true, authentic selves in business, or we don't even know how to begin to show our authentic selves in our marketing and our copywriting.
[00:08:14] And that's where creating your Brand Voice guide will help you hone in on your unique voice and personality. You'll be able to document the things you say and the things you would never say. When you have that foundational brand voice guide document, you have a playbook or a songbook for how you show up and sound in your emails, on your website and in social media. And if you're outsourcing any copy to a VA or to another copywriter, you can give them your voice guidelines and they'll be able to mimic you more easily. Now, as a professional copywriter, a lot of clients come to me after they've struggled to find a copywriter who sounds like them. They've spent a lot of time going back and forth with [00:09:00] their team or VA or contractor, because the copy isn't a match for their voice. They lose time in the editing process, and for many business owners, they become a bottleneck in their business because they can't outsource as much of the copy as they need to. But it's so difficult to find a copywriter who can naturally pick up on your voice and write like you. Fortunately, it's been something I've always had a natural knack for, and I think it's because I'm a singer and I've taken voice lessons, so I'm very attuned to the nuances of the human voice.
[00:09:34] As a musician, I hear rhythms and patterns and repetitive phrases, and I can hear that in your business voice. I'm also trained and certified as a voice copywriter by the Brand Voice Visionary program. So I come to this work with a lot of experience and expertise at helping unearth a brand's voice and then breaking down the elements of that voice so you understand it for [00:10:00] yourself. Now. The Pitch Perfect brand voice guides I create for clients are massive, detailed documents. They detail everything from your brand, mission, brand, story, values, bios to your personality and word choice, sentence length, sentence structure whether you like the Oxford comma or how you like to punctuate your bullets. Now a voice guide creates consistency across all the different channels where you write or speak, no matter who is doing the writing. So over the next couple of episodes, I'm going to lead you through a mini brand voice guide series where I'll help you discover your voice and personality, and then I'll help you document it so you have your very own brand voice, playbook, or songbook to help you share your unique voice and personality with the world. Of course, if you don't want to wait to DIY your brand voice discovery with me over the next few episodes, [00:11:00] this is something I can help you with privately or in my group program, so reach out to me if you want to hear more about getting my support to refine, define, and document your brand voice.
[00:11:11] It's maybe my favorite thing to nerd out about. So, my friend, before next week's episode, I want you to start paying attention to the personality and voice of the brands and businesses you love or interact with. I want you also to pay attention to the words and word choices you make when you're speaking or presenting. How do you chat with your family and friends, and is that different from how you show up and present yourself online or write emails to your list? Pay attention to your speech patterns and sayings, and next week I'll show you how to uncover and define your brand voice. Things are going to get fun! I can't wait to see you then! And that's a wrap on today's episode [00:12:00] of Ill Communication. Hey, if you're picking up what I'm putting down, I would love if you would leave a rating and a review to let me know. And don't forget to follow the show so you never miss out on the tips, prompts, and strategies I share in every episode. They're designed to make you an ill communicator too. As always, you can check out all the links and resources from this episode on the web page. Just head over to Kim keel.com/podcast. I'll chat with you again next week.
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