What A Brand Voice Is And How To Create One

What Brand Voice Is,

and

How to Create One

Whenever I’m driving and see a Herb Chambers billboard, I smile.

 Image Source

At this point, I can recognize the short, humorous, memorable ad copy as a Herb ad without even needing to see the brand name.

And, after years of seeing those ads, I feel like I know the Herb brand, and can describe it like an old friend: He’s funny, likes a good pun, and doesn’t take himself too seriously.

Now that’s the power of brand voice: the power to make your brand come to life.

Consumers prefer brands with strong, unique personalities. In Sprout Social’s 2020 Index, for instance, 40% of consumers listed memorable content as a factor that helps brands stand out on social; 33% voted for distinct personality; and 32% said compelling storytelling.

What do memorable content, distinct personality, and compelling storytelling have in common? Brand voice.

Here, let’s explore what brand voice is, and examples of some of the most powerful brand voices today. Plus, how you can create your own.

What is brand voice?

When a friend calls you, consider — beyond the name that appears on caller ID — how do you know it’s her?

More likely than not, you can deduce this information from how she speaks. The common phrases she uses, how she tells a story, her tone and inflection, and even what information she chooses to include (and exclude) in a given sentence all highlight her unique voice and personality.

Alternatively, think about the last time you chatted with a stranger. In mere minutes, I bet you start to get a sense for their personality. Through a brief conversation, you can start to deduce whether they’re outgoing or shy, serious or funny, and more.

Ultimately, a person’s voice is synonymous with their personality, as it relates to how they communicate.

And brand voice isn’t much different.

Brand voice is the personality your brand takes on in all of its communications.

Brand voice is a critical factor for creating consistency across communication channels, regardless of who creates the content. For instance, brands with strong voice will sound the same on social media, email communications, and blog posts — even if three different teams create content for those channels.

Good brand voice makes your brand stand out from the noise, and helps consumers remember and relate to your brand. This, in turn, creates stronger brand loyalty.

Plus, brand voice can help attract new prospects before they even learn about your product or services.

For instance, consider the humor used in MoonPie’s social posts:

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Before I’d even purchased a MoonPie for the first time, I followed them on Twitter. Why? Because I liked the brand’s voice — it made me laugh, and felt relatable.

Of course, a brand voice doesn’t have to be funny to be powerful. Other powerful brand voices can be inspiring, emotional, bold, casual, formal, poetic, or direct.

To see this in-action, let’s take a look at some impressive examples of brand voice, next.

Brand Voice Examples

1. Spotify

Whether you’re watching a TV ad, driving past a billboard, or scrolling Spotify’s social accounts, you’ll see consistently funny, edgy, direct, and concise language used to develop Spotify’s brand voice.

For instance, take a look at this video, which is part of a Spotify advertisement campaign from 2019, ‘Let the Song Play’:

As you can see, Spotify doesn’t take itself too seriously. The ad makes fun of people who get so emotionally-invested in a song that they won’t resume their plans until the song ends.

You’ll see a similar brand voice play out on Spotify’s social channels. On its Twitter account, for instance, the brand often posts tweets related to new music in a casual, friendly manner, like this one:

If I were to describe Spotify’s brand voice as a person, I’d say she’s witty, sarcastic, and up-to-date on today’s pop culture references. You’ll see that personality play out across all of Spotify’s communication channels.

2. Mailchimp

For this next example, we can look at Mailchimp’s Content Style Guide to derive important information related to Mailchimp’s brand voice.

In the Style Guide, Mailchimp writes, “We want to educate people without patronizing or confusing them. Using offbeat humor and a conversational voice, we play with language to bring joy to their work … We don’t take ourselves too seriously.”

Even in the Style Guide, you can hear Mailchimp’s brand voice shine through. The brand consistently achieves a conversational, direct, playful voice in all its content.

For instance, in this blog post, the brand writes about various “highly unscientific personas”, including the fainting goat, which links out to a hilarious video. “When startled, its muscles stiffen up and it falls right over”, strikes the appropriate casual tone that is a staple of the brand’s voice.

As you can see from this example, you can evoke brand voice in subtle yet effective ways. If the blogger had instead written, “If a goat is scared, it becomes nervous. The animal’s muscles contract and it faints as a result”, the writer would’ve evoked a voice more aligned with a scientific journal than Mailchimp.

3. Fenty Beauty

On the About Us page for Rihanna’s beauty company, it says, “Before she was BadGalRiRi: music, fashion and beauty icon, Robyn Rihanna Fenty was a little girl in Barbados transfixed by her mother’s lipstick. The first time she experienced makeup for herself, she never looked back. Makeup became her weapon of choice for self-expression.”

It’s clear, even just through this short snippet, that Fenty Beauty’s voice is bold, direct, and poetic, using language like “transfixed by her mother’s lipstick” and “her weapon of choice for self-expression”. However, the tone is also undeniably casual — the way you might talk to your best friend.

You’ll see this voice play out across all Fenty social channels, including this YouTube video description: “The blur is REAL! Rihanna wanted to create a light coverage, easy-to-apply, flexible skin tint that instantly evens out your complexion and gives a flattering blurred effect. Eaze Drop, paired with Fenty Skin’s HYDRA VIZOR for added SPF protection, is the perfect combo for a natural, no-makeup makeup look, or for when you want to look effortlessly put together.”

The first statement, “The blur is REAL!” — along with phrases like “No-makeup makeup look”, and the shortening of the word “combination” — all evoke a sense of friendliness. The brand voice matches its target audience perfectly: youthful millennials and Gen-Zers who care about makeup as an opportunity for authentic expression.

Source: Flagship Cruises & Events

If your business is trying to heavily promote your event, it’s a good idea to not create additional posts after your Events post so it remains at the top during event promotion.

Offers: Offer posts help your business promote any current specials, deals, discounts, or coupons. You can also use this pos type to create a promotion that is exclusive to your GMB profile. The GMB promotion will show up as a bright yellow tag at the bottom of the post. These posts also require a start and end date so consumers can know how long the offer is valid for. Encourage consumers to take action in an Offer post with these CTAs:

• Coupon code (optional)
• Link to redeem offer (optional)
• Terms & Conditions

Source: Brazilia Skin Care & Day Spa

Products: Let consumers know about current products in stock with Product posts. These will be displayed within the Product tab and at the top of your GMB profile. No need to include all of your products in these posts, just share new or popular products worthy of the feature.

You can also create separate categories for products that correspond to each category. For example, if you’re a brand like Home Depot, you can create categories for departments like Outdoor Living, Appliances, Tools so you can have products added to each related section. Entice consumers to take more action on your products with these available CTAs:

• Order online
• Buy
• Learn more
• Get offer

Product posts include your business’s phone number alongside your CTA of choice. Products will not expire unless you remove the item manually.

COVID-19 Update –  GMB added a COVID-19 Update post in spring 2020 for businesses to share any COVID-19 related updates. These updates can be about any changes to your business such as a change in hours, new health & safety protocols, contactless services, or other COVID-19 related news.

Source: Berkshire School

3. Create Your Post

Now it’s time to carefully craft your post. GMB Posts can be created either through the GMB Dashboard on a desktop browser or the GMB app. Google Posts have a 1,500 character limit, but you should still make your post short and to the point. Try to make your first sentence the most appealing and informative, since that will catch the reader’s eye encouraging them to click to read more. Unlike social media posts, hashtags don’t matter for Google Posts so it isn’t necessary to waste characters with hashtags.

Source: Hodad’s Downtown

The photos and videos you pair along with each post description are just as important as the content. Google recommends photos on Google Posts to have a minimum resolution of 400px wide by 300px tall, in either JPG or PNG format.  Video file sizes can be a maximum of 100 MB.

Your visuals should be high-quality and relevant to the general post. In the What’s New, Offer, and Event posts, you can add up to 10 photos or videos. Keep in mind that the order of your photos will be different across multiple devices.

Once you’re ready to post, click the “Preview” button to make sure the post is exactly how you want it to look, then hit “Publish”. It’s as simple as that!

4. Monitor Your Performance 

Analyzing the success of your Google Posts is an instrumental part of your GMB strategy. You can receive insights directly within your Posts tab, whether it’s for an individual post or posts from the last week or month. These insights will show how many views your post has received and how many times a customer clicked your CTA button. The summary view shows how many times your posts were viewed in the last week.

Understanding how consumers are interacting with your posts will help you improve your future content strategy.

Can I Create Posts to Google My Business with your Social Media Management tools?

Yes, if you’re a user you can easily create Google Posts through our dashboard with these steps:

1. Open Social tab.
2. Go to “Publishing”, select “Create a Post”, and select Google as the Provider.
3. Decide what type of post you want to create.
4. Add in your content.
5. Hit “Publish”.

Don’t have our Social Suite? Speak with a representative today.

How Often Should I Post on Google My Business?

It’s important to consistently post on your GMB. Aside from Product, Offer, and Event posts, Google Posts will disappear from the top of your GMB profile after seven days, so it’s a good idea to create a Google Post at least once a week. This will help increase your click-through rates and chances of receiving more engagement on your GMB listing. It’s also important to note that you can only have 10 maximum posts live at a time.

Build Engagement on Google My Business 

Your online presence on GMB is vital for driving consumers to your business. Google Posts is an integral feature that every multi-location brand needs to take advantage of. By establishing a consistent content calendar on your GMB profile with Google Posts, your business can reach and convert consumers at a much faster rate.

If you’re interested to see which areas of your GMB listings need optimization, you can receive a free snapshot by reaching out to us for a brand audit. This will provide you with an SEO analysis of how your brand’s locations are performing online.