We’ve talked before about branding and how it’s important to keep every aspect of your brand aligned. Now let’s discuss how to pick a brand voice that aligns perfectly with yourself and your business that your target audience will love.
To build on top of last week’s post, we’re going to dig a little deeper into your brand (specifically your brand voice) in a way that appeals to your personality as a business owner, as well as to your target audience. Hopefully, you’ve done a little soul searching and figured out what traits you have in common with your audience, so that you feel more comfortable fully defining how you’re going to speak to them.
Now here’s the fun part—you should be able to talk to your audience in a similar way that you would talk to a friend. I’ve seen a lot of big-time marketers and branding agents who would disagree with me here, but I believe that small businesses, especially solopreneurs, will benefit the most by aligning their brand voice directly to their own. Your business probably already feels like an extension of yourself, so why not take it a little further and be your unique self?
When creating your perfect brand voice, you don’t have to pretend to be something you’re not. Instead, you should lean into the parts of yourself that align the closest to that of your target audience. You can get weird and strange and quirky and eccentric, if that’s what aligns best with your target audience’s personalities.
One of my theater professors in college used to tell this story of an actor who auditioned for a play that he was directing. The guy walked onto the stage with a boombox (it was the late 90s/early 2000s, ok?) and a bucket of fried chicken. He sat the boombox down, pressed play, and sat down in a chair. He then proceeded to eat the chicken while a recording played of him reciting a monologue.
My professor, who admittedly has a quirky sense of humor, was impressed with his creativity and gave him a callback. Now during the callback, this actor had to prove that he could actually act, but his courage to lean into his personality and get a little eccentric got him a foot in the door. And sometimes that’s all you need for your target audience to start paying attention.
Being unconventional in front of the right people who will appreciate it, will get you farther than following the crowd of competitors and blending in. Create a brand voice that feels like you and speaks directly to the ones you’re trying to reach. You might have to step a little outside your comfort zone here, if only to overcome any initial fears you might have about being yourself. But if you’ve chosen a well-aligned brand voice, once you get started it will feel completely natural.
All the best,
Ryanne Zender
Disclaimer: While marketing is based in part on statistics and psychology, it is not an exact science. Every business and market are unique. What may work for one business, will not necessarily work for another. There are no guarantees in marketing, and this post is for informational and educational purposes only and does not replace professional advice. You can check out the full list of disclaimers and disclosures here.
