Recently, we wrote a piece for Copy For Everybody titled “Curate a Brand Voice That Sells.” It explained the importance of a brand voice cheat sheet and how to create a brand voice that connects with your clients.
Let’s dive deeper into the topic of brand voice and look at what kinds of things your brand voice cheat sheet should cover.
Boilerplate Copy
Your Brand Voice Cheat Sheet should contain well-crafted copy that covers the basic information about your business. This is often referred to as boilerplate copy, and the idea is that this copy can be used in multiple different ways without significant changes. Your boilerplate copy includes:
- 1-2 paragraph about page copy for your landing pages and resources
- Short bio for social media platforms and content (elevator pitch)
- 1-3 sentences about your most popular product or service
- Taglines
This boilerplate copy will allow you to copy and paste a brief description of your company or most popular services as you need it. It offers peace of mind that you can always sell your business in a compelling way, even if you are put on the spot.
Values, Mission, Core Principles
Next, your Brand Voice Cheat Sheet needs to set the tone for how your company will operate in the world. It is impossible to write a script for every single interaction your business will possibly have, but these values and core principles will help your team approach new situations and stay on-brand. This list of values and core principles will be more rigorous than those that appear on a company’s website.
- Mission – Your mission is 1-2 sentences about your company’s reason for existing. Talk about your business’s driving force in a non-product specific way. This will help you to identify new opportunities or avenues in the future.
- Values – What are the values behind what you do? These brand values can help inform the way your company operates as a whole, not just how it communicates with your customers. Write a list of words that you want your company to embody and a few sentences explaining what that means to you. One of our brand’s values is inclusivity, but to us, that means more than just the standard things. We want to nurture diversity in our company, yes, but we also want to pull up a seat at the table for diverse voices in the greater copywriting and marketing community.
- Core Principles – Core principles are the beliefs that guide your actions and decisions. How do you want your business to communicate and work with customers? Do you want your team to show up for clients with compassion? A sense of humour? Honesty?
These elements of your Brand Voice Cheat Sheet will instruct how your business acts in situations where you don’t have a guide or script.
Ideal Customer Profile
In order for your business to be effective, you need to identify who your ideal client is. Write 3 paragraphs:
- Who they are
- What is important to them
- Why they’re a good fit for your business
Then write down the pain and pleasure points of working with a company like yours. What frustrations do they have with other businesses in your industry? What is something you can do that makes working with a business like yours more pleasurable?
Don’t know where to start? Let’s look at an example from our Brand Voice Cheat Sheet.
We work with startups and small businesses that may not have hired copywriters before. So a pain point for our customers is that they don’t know what to expect or what their copywriter may need from them. In order to combat that, we hold our clients’ hands through the process. They always know what the next steps are and what they need to prepare for the next steps.
A pleasure point is that we don’t want our clients to need us. Sure, we hope they come back if they need marketing material in the future or if they want to rebrand as their business pivots, but we want our copy to work for their business for years. Small businesses often do not have the budget to redo their copy or update their content every 6-12 months, so we aim to create “set and forget” copy. We want to create lead magnet funnels that generate a constant supply of new prospects and websites that delight for years.
Our Brand Voice Cheat Sheet does not explain those pain and pleasure points in that way. But those explanations help you to see how we use pain and pleasure points to inform our policies and how we interact with clients.
Brand Voice
Next, it’s time to dive into the nuts and bolts of your brand voice. Start with the big picture with things like tone, focus, feel, tempo, and intention. This deals with things like warmth, conversational vs corporate, and the way you communicate your message.
Then, get stuck into the finer details. What are some words or phrases you use regularly? In order to create this list, you should look at how your ideal customers talk online and pick out the words and phrases they use.
No worries if you get stuck making this list. We found it helpful to start by figuring out the following things, and then the process was a lot easier:
- What you want to call your customers (clients vs customers, or perhaps something else entirely)
- How you want to announce a sale
- How you would present a look behind the scenes
- How you would congratulate a customer who left a comment or review talking about their amazing results
- What you want to call your products
- How you would present an example when writing content
Once you have these figured out, you will have a better picture of your brand voice and be able to create a long list of words and phrases. The easiest way to think of the list is a growing word bank rather than a static list. You can add and take away from this list over time.
Content Guidelines
Next, create a list of the places you will post content. Write down every social media platform, your website, and any places you plan to guestpost.
Under each place, write the purpose of your content. Remember to keep in mind why your ideal customers would use each platform. Your list may look like this:
- LinkedIn – thought leadership, build industry expertise
- Instagram – share examples of work, deliver quick tips, behind-the-scenes content
- Pinterest – promote uses of your products, share blog content
- Website blog – share case studies, provide detailed tips with screenshots
Write a list of the CTA (calls to action) you will use on each platform. They should match the purposes you have written. For example, your Instagram CTAs may be asking them to follow for more tips or to check out a case study on your website.
How to Create Your Brand Voice Cheat Sheet
Creating a Brand Voice Cheat Sheet does not have to be complicated. A Word Document or Google Doc would work perfectly fine. If you’re feeling creative, you could make an aesthetically pleasing version in Canva. The main thing is that you cover every aspect of your brand voice so that you can communicate in a consistent way.
If you need a helping hand, feel free to reach out to us. We can create your Brand Voice Cheat Sheet for you. Alternatively, you can book a Pick Our Brains call, and we can review your Brand Voice Cheat Sheet to ensure it is comprehensive.