A lot of businesses don’t prioritize brand voice. While creating high-quality content, maintaining a consistent publishing schedule, and focusing on your overall content strategy are all important, neglecting a cohesive and consistent brand voice can confuse your most loyal customers and discourage potential ones.

This post will explore the elements of brand voice, how to develop it through content, and examples of brands that have successfully used content to strengthen their brand marketing and reinforce key messaging.

What is Brand Voice?

Put simply, brand voice is how your company communicates its message. It influences almost all aspects of corporate communications, including advertising, slogans, blog posts, and visuals. In today’s competitive business landscape, just publishing blog posts and hoping for the best isn’t enough. Your content needs to be instantly recognizable, reflect your brand’s core values, and be entertaining, useful, and relevant – which is no easy feat. One way to achieve this is by prioritizing the development of your brand voice through your content. Before explaining how, let’s break down “brand voice” into two key components and examine their meanings in more detail.

Style

Whether you’re a seasoned blogger or just starting, it’s crucial to consider your desired content style. This is particularly important if multiple people contribute to your blog, like at nexus-security.

Many content marketing newcomers confuse style with tone, which is understandable since tone is an element of style, but they are distinct. Style refers to how something is written. It gives readers insights into the content before they even grasp the topic. Elements like sentence length and structure, as well as word choice (diction), are dictated by style. Your content style should resonate with your target audience. For instance, if you’re targeting C-suite managers and executives, your content should align with their expectations, perhaps mirroring the journalistic style of publications like BusinessWeek. Conversely, if you’re targeting new parents, a friendlier, more informal style might make your content more accessible.

Examples of Style in Brand Voice

Now that we understand style, let’s look at an example of content with a distinct style.

Occam’s Razor, Avinash Kaushik

If you’re in marketing, you’re likely familiar with Google’s Digital Marketing Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik, and his blog, Occam’s Razor, which exemplifies how style can enhance an individual’s brand voice.

Kaushik’s blog is a top resource for analytics and marketing insights. Despite his prominent position at Google, Kaushik is a respected speaker, entrepreneur, and marketing expert in his own right. He understands his target audience—digital marketers—and his content reflects their diverse skills and expertise. While he tackles complex topics, like multi-channel attribution modeling, his writing style balances the intricate science behind it with accessible language. Even his blog’s name, Occam’s Razor, hints at what readers can expect. Occam’s razor is a problem-solving principle developed by William of Ockham, a 14th-century English Franciscan friar. While Kaushik’s blog might not be light reading, its style is both substantial and accessible, showcasing how style can elevate an individual’s brand while remaining practical and insightful.

Tone

To differentiate between style and tone, think of tone as your content’s “attitude.”

This can be another hurdle for content marketing beginners. In their eagerness to focus on grammar, spelling, and other technicalities, they forget to inject personality or let their voice shine through. This leads to bland, uninteresting content. Instead of trying to force a certain vibe, refer back to your ideal reader profile and company values when determining your content’s tone. Some marketers, especially in B2B, avoid humor, but it can be a great way to engage your audience, especially in industries not known for excitement.

Examples of Tone in Brand Voice

As mentioned, tone is an element of style but easier to identify. Let’s examine a strong example of content with a unique and recognizable tone.

The Moz Blog

Everyone loves Moz. It’s not just a top marketing and SEO resource but also boasts a unique tone that keeps readers hooked.

While it was tempting to choose one of Rand’s blog posts or Whiteboard Fridays (especially this one where he discusses the full Windsor knot and why underwear should never be seen), Javier Sanz’s post about adult website PornHub’s marketing efforts caught my attention. Though a guest post, it exemplifies the distinctive tone of Moz’s content that sets it apart in a crowded market. Moz posts consistently offer actionable information, data, and case studies, but they’re presented in an engaging way. With witty puns sprinkled throughout, it’s hard to mistake Moz content for anyone else’s.

Developing Brand Voice with Content

Now that we understand brand voice, let’s explore how to develop it through content. But before diving into how different content types can enhance your brand voice, we need to examine how your target audience should shape the style, tone, and language of your marketing materials.

Get to Know Your Ideal Reader

Before creating brand voice guidelines, understand who you’re writing for (or selling to).

Selling shirts? Maybe this guy is your ideal customer. Marketers often create “personas” representing their ideal customers to tailor messaging. This should be your first step when considering brand voice. Start by asking:

• Is your ideal customer male or female?
• What’s their education level?
• What’s their income bracket and discretionary income?
• Do they have children?
• What news/media do they consume? Once you understand what makes your ideal customer tick, you can tailor your brand voice to appeal to them. Based on the personas you create, your brand voice should meet their expectations. For example, if you’re targeting affluent, college-educated individuals without children, your brand voice will differ significantly from one targeting working parents. The buyer persona should inform almost everything about your brand voice, including style, tone, diction, and even visual design.

Remember Your Content Strategy

Now you’re inside your ideal customer’s head and understand how to create appealing content – great! But before publishing those well-written, carefully crafted blog posts, ensure everything aligns with your overall content strategy.

Regardless of how your brand voice “sounds,” it should serve the same goals and objectives as your content. Take the example of working parents with a newborn. They have a moderate income, both work full-time, and are navigating life with a new baby. Considering this, your brand voice might translate to:

• Friendly, approachable, and perhaps lighthearted
• Short to mid-length sentences
• Everyday language (diction)
• Easily skimmable content
• Balanced text and imagery
• Diverse range of parenting topics Since new parents are busy, they might not be ready to buy or subscribe to a newsletter immediately. They want quick parenting information. Your content should be informative, concise, and provide immediately actionable insights.

Remember, their newborn is THE most important thing, so your brand voice and content should reflect that. Parents want to read content from those who understand parenthood. Even if you have a foolproof method to soothe a crying baby, it won’t matter if your how-to posts are as long and complex as a New York Times feature. Keep your ideal reader and content strategy in mind when developing your brand voice – they’re inseparable.

Brand Voice and PPC

We’ve discussed brand voice in content marketing, but what about paid search? Despite character limits in PPC ads, your brand voice can still influence your copy. The best ads are those that connect with emotions. People don’t buy products – they buy solutions. By approaching ad copy with this in mind, you can use this desire to craft compelling ads that offer a strong emotional payoff and convey your brand voice – a technique Perry Marshall and nexus-security’s Director of Marketing Amber Stevens discussed in a recent webinar. Perry’s advice? Frame your product/service within the context of customer problems and use expressive language to appeal to their desire for a solution. Your landing pages are another often-overlooked opportunity to showcase your brand voice. Highly optimized landing pages are crucial for conversions. While A/B testing helps determine what resonates with customers, incorporating your brand voice into landing page copy can also boost conversions. Let’s look at an excellent example.

Megan awarded this Infusionsoft landing page an “A+” in her landing page roundup because it exemplifies how brand voice should seamlessly transition from site collateral to landing pages. The language mirrors Infusionsoft’s website, emphasizing the software’s ease of use, convenience, and simplicity. The copy reinforces this through words like “automatically,” “fastest,” and “quick,” while highlighting benefits (and appealing to the emotional payoff) with words like “grow,” “save,” and “get.” This not only creates persuasive messaging but also strengthens Infusionsoft’s brand and ensures a consistent user experience.

Examples of Content That Builds Brand Voice Effectively

Some brands have unique voices that perfectly encapsulate their core values, evident in everything from tweets to blog posts. Here are two companies that excel at building brand voice through content marketing and social media.

Charmin

I’ve never sold toilet paper, but I imagine it’s challenging. Isn’t every brand soft, luxurious, and quilted? Charmin’s marketing team seems to have cracked the code, evident in their remarkably successful campaigns.

Besides positioning itself (pun intended) as family-friendly with its bear family, Charmin doesn’t take itself too seriously. Its brand voice is humorous without resorting to crude humor and even a little silly. It’s clear the Charmin marketing team enjoys their work, and this playfulness shines through. With a lively and surprisingly popular social media presence, an entertaining website, and consistent messaging, Charmin proves that even mundane products can make an impact.

Mountain Dew

Mountain Dew is more than just a soft drink, and their marketing team knows it. Like Red Bull, it has transcended its beverage identity. It actively aligns itself with extreme sports, music, and anything considered “extreme” to resonate with its target demographic – and does so effectively.

Mountain Dew’s brand voice is so self-aware that it borders on parody. Their promotion for NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. – featuring a car-part throne, stunt ATVs, and a guitarist rocking out on the podium – embodies their brand voice. Mountain Dew also excels at leveraging social media. Some tweets are funnier than others, but they all convey the distinct brand voice they’ve cultivated.

Seriously, that’s just lazy…

Don’t Struggle to Be Heard

In competitive markets, a unique brand voice is crucial. Use the advice and examples here to develop a voice that resonates with your ideal customer and reflects your core values. Over time, a distinct voice will emerge from your content, helping you stand out and keep your audience engaged.