When your business is fighting against dozens of others that offer similar services or products, the difference between success and failure can come down to the smallest things. In a lot of cases, it’s branding that makes all the difference, with consumers ready to pay a whole lot more based on a brand name.

In this blog, we’re going over a process that will allow you to create a unique brand voice for your business. If you’re looking for more information on the importance of the story behind your brand, have a read of our blog discussing the role of storytelling in brand development, then come back here to see how we use the brand voice diamond to create a voice for a business.

What is Brand Voice?

A brand voice is commonly defined as the purposeful expression of a brand through words, prose style and language choice. In less academic terms, your business’s brand voice is how you represent yourself to the public. By your choice of wording, tone and style, you communicate the elements of your business’s personality that your customers will, hopefully, respond to positively.

So… how do you create a brand voice for your business?

Creating a brand voice can often be a difficult thing for businesses of every size to do. It may be something you instinctively understand, but find difficult to put down on paper. Our brand voice diamond worksheet and the process we’re about to lay out for you is designed to make the whole thing simple.

The brand voice diamond

The brand voice diamond consists of four distinct sections. Each of these sections is a type of trait that you combine to create a rounded personality for your business. It’s this personality that customers interact with and form loyalty to, so it’s essential for your content marketing efforts that you get this right.

The primary trait

The first trait is called the primary trait, and you should only have one. A good way to decide what your primary trait should be is by asking yourself, what is the one thing I want my business to be known for?

A few good examples of primary traits are words like reliable, exclusive, experts, fun. What do you want your business to be known for?

The secondary trait

Secondary traits are the traits your business has that support your primary one. You can have many primary traits, and some of them may not really make sense with your primary trait – but that’s ok, consumers react well to conflict – because no one trusts perfection.

Some good examples of words to describe secondary traits could be customer centric, research focused, confident and experimental.

These traits are generally more descriptive than the primary trait, and you could have quite a few to describe all the different elements of your business’s personality.

Non-negotiable

The non-negotiable trait is perhaps the most important trait for your businesses personality. It is the one concept your business is built on. You could consider it the foundations of who your business is.

This trait is often a descriptive statement, a few examples of this are:

• The customer is always right
• We are the experts
• Our time is valuable

The non-negotiable trait will often tie in closely to your primary trait.

So, if your non-negotiable was “The customer is always right” then your primary trait could be “customer service excellence”

Quirk

The final trait in our brand voice diamond is the quirk. This trait is often the most recognisable in any business’s brand voice as it sets the tone for any content. I like to consider it as the flavour of a brand’s personality.

Some good examples of quirks are traits like bold, arrogant, witty and relaxed.

Like secondary traits, you can have multiple quirks that all work together to define how your voice sounds.

Tips and tricks for working out your business’s traits

Now that we’ve outlined the traits that create your business’s personality, there are a few things you can do to make filling out the brand voice diamond easier.

• If your business was a person, what books, TV shows and movies would it watch? What do those choices say about the personality of your business?
• Think of yourself and other people in your business. What elements of their personality make them great employees? Can you carry any of those traits over to who you want your business to be?
• Have a think about celebrities or fictional characters that have personalities that encapsulate elements of your business. Pull relevant traits from these people and apply them to the brand voice diamond.

Your content strategy and brand voice

When you’re deciding on a content strategy for your business, having a concrete brand voice is a big part of getting your communication sounding right. It’s this brand voice that will make the job of your content writers easy – so spend a little time getting it right and you’ll notice a huge difference in how customers respond to your content.

Use our downloadable brand voice diamond worksheet to create a strong brand voice for your business. And if you want help creating a content strategy, just give our experienced digital marketing strategists a call, we’re more than happy to help.