Branding is a key part of your marketing. Most brands have a visual branding strategy (or at least have picked a logo and brand colours), but they have given little thought to their brand voice. Consider this your introduction to the brand voice basics. We’ll teach you everything you need to know about developing a brand voice strategy.
What Is a Brand Voice?
Your brand voice simply turns the way you talk to clients into a guide that anyone can use to write for your business. This ensures that your brand voice is consistent across all of your marketing and online presence. The consistency helps to build trust with your ideal clients because connect with them in the same manner every time you show up.
Why Do Coaches Need a Brand Voice?
As a coach, your business is you and your expertise. Therefore, your brand voice will be based on your own voice. Brand voice gives coaches the following benefits:
- Gives your ideal clients an introduction to your personality and coaching style
- Livens up copy by giving it a personality (yours)
- Allows clients to connect with your business
- Shows your company’s values
- Allows you to outsource parts of your business easily
- Provides a hard copy of what your business stands for
Brand Voice Basics
There are people who can develop a brand voice for you (including us), but it is also something that you can DIY. You just need some uninterrupted time to really think about what your business goals are and what you want your brand to represent for your ideal clients. Here are some things to include on your brand voice cheat sheet.
Brand Values
Identify 3-5 core values for your coaching business. You may already have these figured out for your coaching business; great. If you don’t, then think about the non-negotiables in your business. A great place to start is ethics, culture, and beliefs. Some examples could be:
- Sustainability
- Challenging the status quo
- Not taking yourself too seriously
- Transparency
Think about how you want to interact with your clients, your larger industry, and the world.
Vision
Why did you start your coaching business? What is your big picture vision for your coaching business? This all translates to your brand’s mission or vision.
Having a vision you are working towards helps you to make decisions that keep you moving in the direction you want to.
Dos and Don’ts
The next step is to create a set of definitive statements about what your brand voice is and isn’t. Take your values and vision and write down how you can communicate them through your brand voice. The don’ts are just as important as the dos
For example, you may say:
- My brand voice is approachable, not pretentious
- My brand voice is empathetic and does not shame
- My brand voice uses pop culture examples and humour
- My brand voice never tries to pass others’ ideas off as my own
Client Perception
How do you want your ideal clients to see your brand?
One of the best ways to think about this is to imagine someone who follows you is speaking to a friend, telling them about your content. What would you like them to say about you and your content? What are the reasons you would like them to give for recommending them? Write down anything that comes to mind.
Then, imagine an ideal client has just finished working with you and is giving you a testimonial. What would a dream testimonial look like? What words would they use to describe the value they gained from your coaching course? What things would you like them to say they enjoyed most about your coaching style?
Everything you have written down is your client perception.
Industry Perception
How do you want people in your industry to see you? (Both coaches and non-coaches in your industry?)
This is the perspective of people who have similar expertise to you. What kind of things would you like them to say about your work and how it contributes to the industry as a whole? It can help to picture a specific person you look up to. Think about the words that would absolutely blow your mind if you heard them coming out of their mouth while talking about your business.
Commonly Used Phrases and Words
Next, write down the words and phrases that come up often in conversation. This will help you to make sure your personality makes it into your writing. It will create a seamless experience for your clients and followers if you outsource your writing to others. The goal of this document is to be able to hand over a cheat sheet to allow someone else to nail your brand voice. This seriously cuts down the time it takes to learn your voice and how you talk.
How to Use Your Brand Voice
Your brand voice will make you instantly recognisable. The goal is to have people read an article from you or see a social media post and think, that sounds like so and so.
Think of your brand voice as the thing that makes you stand out from every other coach out there. Use the brand voice cheat sheet you make, even when you’re writing your own content or copy. That will help you to stay consistent and to build a relationship with current and prospective clients based on consistency.
Add to your brand voice cheat sheet as you go. Your brand voice is not a static thing; it grows and changes alongside you. Add dos and don’ts, add commonly used phrases and words, and add things that are central to your brand. Our own brand voice cheat sheet has a list of adjectives for how we would like to handle various situations and how we would like our ideal clients to see us in those situations. That may not work for your brand voice cheat sheet; you may want to create a list of CTAs (call to action) that you can lift when writing your copy. There is no right or wrong way to create a brand voice cheat sheet; the most important thing is it works for you.
Need a brand voice cheat sheet? It is included in our website copy packages as standard. You can also book our Talk About Your Business package for £400 where we will create business bios of varying length and a brand voice cheat sheet. Alternatively, you can book our time at £199 per hour in a Pick Our Brain Call, and we can help you plan your brand voice cheat sheet or review your brand voice cheat sheet.