I've been talking a lot about storytelling and how useful it is for your brand. Now, it's time to give more practical guidance and begin to develop your brand's content marketing strategy through storytelling.
The very first thing that we should begin with is finding your brand voice. This shouldn't be difficult as long as you know who is your target buyer persona (an imaginary customer). Brand voice is how you approach your customers. Brand voice is primarily built on an understanding of your target group age, gender, occupation, interests, nationality, geolocation, language and culture overall. The basic idea behind the brand voice is to speak the same language as your customers do. Mind, that's not only the way of talking, it also includes values and mission that your brand broadcasts. Therefore, brand voice is also what images you use, and is built on the ultimate narrative of your brand (about which you'll learn from the next articles).
Brand voice is marker of your brand's identity - this is your common touchpoint with your customer. It is through the brand voice your customers associate themselves with your ideas and values, acquiring a sense of belonging. Developing a brand voice means you should know exactly what's your age target groups, younger generations or older, this will define your wordings - use of slang and general vocabulary. Let's dive into more details:
1. Gender is an exclusive category, meaning that if you're appealing solely to women, then you're cutting off the customers among the men. This is crucial because brands should take advantage of today's gender diversity and make their appeal with a more inclusive approach. Therefore, avoid using gender markers, or as an alternative, include in your commercials genderqueer people
2. Profession is a very specific and powerful marker and is used depending on your niche product. Also, using a professional voice for your commercial might be challenging if your product is for a larger audience. So, make sure you combine both informal and formal elements (e.g. a successful businesswoman and a creative artist)
3. Interests are a good marker - it creates unity and feeling of belonging, and therefore directly appeals to such part of our identity that we enjoy in our leisure time: gamers, gardeners, etc.
4. Geolocation is a pretty obvious one, know where your folk lives, what state or city, village or town, the same is for nationality
5. Language is an important factor, especially for multilingual or bilingual countries.
6. And finally, culture - this is a code of what's acceptable and what's not. For instance, body-positive customers might be critical for your brand's speaking only to people who have "perfect" physical parameters (e.g. underwear advertising).
This is just a shortlist on what you should consider while inventing your brand voice.
Is there anything else you would complement this list with? What are your top three brand voice markers? Share your response in the comments.
Do you know what's the best way to broadcast your brand voice? - correct, via blogging.
Are you in search of inspiring stories? Or, you want to share yours and get heard? Zecamp — the place where creators matter!
