S1. E2 - Finding Your Brand Voice

Words are so powerful, and the words you use to represent your business will evoke emotions, thoughts and feelings about your business to anyone that reads them. 

Potential clients will use your words to judge you. They’ll judge your professionalism, your expertise, your personality and how you might interact with them if they choose to work with you. 

So when we talk about ‘brand voice’ we’re really talking about using words that represent what your business stands for and how you want to be perceived. It’s also about how both these elements are used to inject a personality and tone of voice that comes together to appeal to potential clients. 

Does brand voice matter and how do you find the right voice for your business?

In todays episode, Leeha and Nichol chat about:

• What ‘brand voice’ actually is
• Why it’s important to define your brand’s voice
• Five key steps you can take to find your brand's voice. 

REFERENCES

During today's episode references were made to the following:

Semrush: https://www.semrush.com/blog/how-to-define-your-tone-of-voice/

CoSchedule: https://coschedule.com/marketing-strategy/brand-voice/#brandvoicechart   

Edelman trust barometer: https://www.edelman.com/research/trust-barometer-special-report-in-brands-we-trust 

Nielsen Norman Group: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/tone-of-voice-dimensions/ 

CONTACT US TODAY

We hope you’ve enjoyed tuning in to this episode. We would love it if you could please take a few minutes to leave a rating and a few words about why you love Real Talk for Women in Business.

If you have any feedback or questions regarding today's podcast or have a specific topic you would like us to cover, email:  realtalk.wib@gmail.com

If you would like to know about how an all-inclusive copywriting and website package can help you find your brand voice and connect you with clients, arrange a quick chat with Leeha from Meridian Digital (formally Mind Your Words) today: BOOK NOW

If you would like to learn how a Business coach can support your business needs, book a connection call with Nichol from Nichol Stark Business and Leadership coaching today: BOOK YOUR FREE CLARITY CALL  

A FINAL QUOTE FROM LEEHA AND NICHOL

Tone of voice reflects your brand personality, helps you connect with your audience, and makes you different from the rest. ~Semrush Blog

PLEASE NOTE:
This podcast contains explicit language

Visit us at:

https://meridiandigital.com.au
https://nicholstark.com.au

Transcript

I always ask clients had they'd like their copy to feel and sound to their audience. And recently a client's reply was that she'd like it to sound similar to the copy on my website. She told me that she got a sense of trust and felt like she was dealing with a real person, even though she was only reading words on a website.

Now this blew me away because look, I've never really put much thought into my own brand voice. Basically. I just write how I talk, but this got me through. Does brand voice matter. And how do you find the right voice for your business?

Hey there, welcome to the real talk for women in business. A podcast all about helping women entrepreneurs take off in their business. We share real truths, real insights, and really practical tips when it comes to juggling all things, life and business. My name is Leah  and I'm a coffee loving copywriter and website design.

My business is my, your words. And that's where I help the owners of growing service-based businesses, connect with clients through my all-inclusive copywriting and website packages. And of course, right here with me is my soulful friend and colleague Nicole. 

My name's Nic and I'm a soulful business and leadership coach and I support female heart-centered entrepreneurs escaping the passionless corporate grind in order to grow and scale their own unique five and six figure business 

How's it going? How's your week been? Oh my goodness. It's so wet at the moment outside. And we started recording this. I was telling you all about trying to get the cheek kids into the car, you know, in the rain. And I'm having my little fella jumping in the front seat to do no harm, which is so bad. But, yeah, it's a great start to the day, but otherwise not too bad, just chatting through some work a couple of late nights this week, which is pretty normal for me.

What about yourself? We've had a fair bit of rain 

over the last couple of days, resulting in flooding across pretty much our whole Shire. So it's been interesting juggling or trying to work out how to juggle a business as well as. Working on flooding and working on family and the floods really in this instance, since everything else has been put on hold, but thankfully we're starting to save a little bit of receding of the waterline, but 

that's okay.

Well good. Oh, it takes a little bit to sort of get back to get back into a routine when these kinds of things happen, like that can really blow out your routine, especially if you're. Know, I set business days, like I do Mondays and Tuesdays in my business. And then three other days, or what do my corporate.

Sorry, when you losing a day out of your business, it can really throw everything up in the air. And to me, it takes a couple of weeks to get back on top of it. If I've had that kind of disruption. Yeah, 

well, it's essentially it's fit to my week on its head. So my main business days are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, but now I'm doing Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, so that's just have to roll with it and look, the big thing for me was making sure that I was keeping my.

Customers. So anyone that I did have any meetings with, or I needed to get them something I just needed to be almost with it. And at the end of the day, as long as you're transparent and you're honest and, 

and keeping your clients briefed on 

what's happening, they're pretty good in the scheme of things.

So, yeah, so that's 

all fine. And people can relate like honest and upfront, right from get-go it can relate to, you know, things just happening. Life happens. Shit. Explain that to your clients. I would say that 99% of the time they would be okay with that. Yeah, exactly. 

Exactly. So, anyway, so it's good to, good to be back in the office and recording your podcast, which 

is very exciting.

Well, speaking of podcasts, how about we jump into the topic of this podcast, which is brand voice. So we're going to talk about what brand voice actually is, why it's important to define a brand voice for your business. And then we're going to launch right into giving you five key steps that you can take to find your brand's voice.

So, Nick, when I talk about brand voice, what comes to mind for you? Uh 

it's multi-tiered if you want the truth and that's just from. Working as a solopreneur for the last couple of years. So the first thing I would think is branding color things that are looking at getting my profile out there. But actually from what I understand is a bit more deeper than that now.

So it's, you know, how I speak the words that I say, how I say it, what I say now that I understand that branding, isn't just one dimensional. It's got quite a few things that that need to be 

looked at when people start their business. The first thing they think about is I've got to get my. And that's a logo is one part of your entire brand strategy.

It's not the whole part. It's a great starting point, but I often feel you get the colors and you get the logo done, but you don't think about how you're talking to your audience or how you're presenting yourself across all the different connection points, your website, your business cards, all that kind of.

Sorry, when I think, or when I talk about brand voice with my clients, I talk about how powerful words are and believe me, I'm not just telling you this because I'm a copy dried up to use to represent your business. They evoke emotions, thoughts, and feelings about your business, to anyone that reads them.

And it sounds harsh, but potential clients will use words. And the words that they read on your website or in your email marketing, they'll judge you on that, that judge, your professionalism, your expertise, your personality, and how you might interact with them if they choose to work with you. And so when we talk about brand voice, we're really talking about using words that represent what your business stands for and how you want fake.

It's also about how both these elements are used to inject a personality and a tone of voice that comes together to appeal to potential clients. So Nick, tell me when you started your business, did you think about how you wanted the words you used on your website, in your emails and even right across your socials to represent and reflect your.

Look to be completely honest. The whole idea of branding was it was new to me. I lived in the corporate space and I knew that I was attached to a corporate brand, but when I came across to owning my own business, I knew I needed to raise my profile. And I knew that there was more and more. Talk about needing to brand myself, but I actually had no idea what it meant towards the end of my corporate gig.

I ended up hiring a branding coach actually to help me understand what my brand was. And during the time we, with my coach, I resigned, I started my own business. And then. A whole, whole heap of questions that I was asked that I'd never even thought about such as, you know, what are your values? What do you stand for?

Who's your audience. But one thing that was really clean during my time with this particular branding coach was consistency, consistency across all platforms. And it wasn't just about the colors. It was about the language. It was about what I was trying to convey. It was about the messaging, logos, everything.

So it was such 

an IOP. Yeah, that's so true. You know, consistency really is the key to making sure that whoever you're engaging with, if it's your followers, if it's clients prospective clients, you want them to be able to gain that at a glance brand recognition and know who they're dealing with, whether it's on your socials, a business card, or on every single page that I visit on your website.

When I'm designing websites, I always carry across all the elements from the home page. So bringing in across all their branding colors, I use the same trying to voice, oh, I want that whoever's visiting that website. If they land on one particular page that they instantly know that this is this particular business.

And when you go back over looking at Instagram accounts, those Instagram accounts that look so beautiful, they're so well put together. They're using all their branding colors. And when you read what they're writing, it's in the same tone that they would use and the same personality shines through, um, that they would use anywhere else within marketing, um, or talking about their business.

Yeah, 

I have to say there was, like, I mentioned that there were so many lessons that I learned relating to branding. So you've just, you know, you've just touched on it. So the use of colors, including what colors work well together, I had no idea that they were colors. Supported contrastive didn't contract, whatever it might've been.

I'd never understood that. And I never understood how that would be reflected on different devices or a desktop or different forms of social media. I didn't understand what colors meant. So red, blue, green, different colors. Represent different things, emotions, all sorts of things. And I didn't understand how that would be perceived by my ideal audience, which speaking of audience, the other component is being so clear on who your actual ideal client is.

Because if you don't understand that or understand what their motives are, what they like, and don't like, you can get yourself into trouble because that will actually turn them away. If they see things that don't represent them. Don't align to them also needed to be really clear on the tone. As an example, my first website was very, very corporate.

It had probably more of a masculine feel to it and very structured and the words to be honest, probably didn't really align to me. And I think people really. So that as well, because I got questioned about, you know, why that's 

not your voice. It didn't feel like you I'm working with you on your website at the moment.

The first thing, when I pulled up your original website, I was like, Hmm, this doesn't sound like how you and I talk, how we engage. It was very formal. I think there is a tendency for people to just adopt that formal time because that's professional and that's how we want to present ourselves. But they forget that people do business with people and in a service-based business.

So you and I tend to work a lot with service-based business owners. You're the face of your business. You're the voice of your business and if the true diner line. So if you've got really formal copy on your website, But you dropped the F bomb in conversation with your clients, or you give them the HOD traits or you do it in a nice way.

We don't talk using words. Therefore we, you know, we don't, we don't talk like that. So don't write like that. Use the tone on your website to bring that personality through so that somebody knows. Working with you. This is how you're going to work with them. This is how you sound in real life. And that's how you build that, that trust.

It's a big risk people reaching out to do business with you. You want to set those expectations and make them feel comfortable. That's really 

interesting that you bring up the idea of be who you are because your client is going to be surprised. If the website looks one way and you look another way. And I have to admit when I did my website, the first time I found it really difficult, the woman on the website she has done up.

So, you know, the hair was done, the makeup. And you both know, I'd love to put my hair up. I love to wear tracksuit pants and the t-shirt and that's me. It doesn't diminish who I am. It doesn't diminish what I can actually provide for my clients, but there was this difference. So if someone, it meant that when I was actually.

Looking in clients, I needed to do the hair and makeup and I needed to put on the suit and represent that person that was on the website. And to be honest, like it just was uncomfortable. So the sessions then became uncomfortable. So the end to end customer experience was not good. And that's really important to make sure that.

You are represented by who you are on the website. So, yeah, I think that it was a big, big lesson for me and something that you and I are working on with my website to make sure we do bring in the tone of voice that I have. Now. I know the type of client I want to attract is hot sentence. So someone like.

Leads from the heart. Someone that like me is down to earth, but still wants to progress their career in entrepreneurship. So this time around my website has a softness to it. That sounds a bit weird, but when I did create the first one, as we mentioned, I did think it needed to be formal and now I get it.

It's not me. And I need to, I need to. Aligned to myself, my website was full of corporate jargon and this time I'm just going to be using words and, you know, and then if an F bomb gets dropped in so bad, it's not as though it's going to be gross and vulgar. 

It's just honestly, what's up what it's like to work.

We, then I find my clients really appreciate. Oh know, straight away whether my clients and I are kind of on the same page. Cause that initial conversation that we have will be relaxed and the conversation will just flow. And it's none of this. I've got to put on this air of formality or something, you know what I mean?

Like pretend something that you're not, and I don't do that because my website doesn't do that. My social don't do that. And that's not me. When you pick up that Brian, to talk with me, you're going to know that you're working with me and there's that consistency that we talked about previous. 

Definitely.

I didn't really understand until I did this branding exercise, how important it was me to understand my values and why these values are important to me now, why that's important when it comes to branding and tone of voice is that I want my values to be represented in the way my website or my socials or how I interact.

So that tone of voice needs to be. In conjunction with my values. Because again, when I'm attracting clients where I'm talking to them, they need to know who I am. So I see the branding voice and the tone is closely linked to who I am. So that's where your values come in, because I want to attract 

people.

Are you talking about your purse, your values as a person, or are you talking about the. That you associate, I guess, with your business. And that's a really, 

really good question. So when I first started my business, I actually had two sets of values. That for me was not right. So again, having a different website to who I was having a professional values versus a personal base, my values are may through and through.

So whether it's for the business or for me, I work the way I am. So my values all about acceptance, growth, collaboration, courage. So these are the things that I want to come through from my. Through to my business as well. So actually they one in the same. So when we were looking at these podcasts, I've got a lot, be interesting to do research into branding, tone of voice.

So to help me understand, I had a look at a website which was created by Nielsen Norman group. And what they do is they identified that four dimensions of tone of voice, which I thought was quite interesting. So standing versus. Formal versus casual, respectful versus irreverent enthusiastic. This is matter of fact.

And that was really good because then it became clear to me. I need to, I need to be clear on what I want and how I'm going to be represented. So when I first started, I was serious. I was formal, respectful, and matter of fact, and look, I'm still those things to a certain point. But that's not the whole of me.

So this is 

sort of change. I think it's important not to try and pigeonhole yourself into one of those particular categories, because there's a time and place to everything. Just like there is when we interacted with humans. So there's a time to be funny. There's a time to be serious. There's a time to be formal and there's a time to be casual and provided that you're digging into your values.

You're using the. You know, the most resonates with you. You can still adapt it. You're not stuck to it. You can adapt it depending on where that copy is going to go. If you're doing a presentation, for example, to a corporate group of people, you would adjust your tone of voice to suit accordingly. It's just about having that greater understanding of how you want to project your voice and how you want to put yourself through.

Yeah, very 

true. Very true. And, and again, this is what I've learnt over the last couple of years, because I thought I had to be just one thing. I didn't realize that I could actually be who I am because I am each day, I've got different moods. I've got different ideas, different things. Activities going on in my life, that calls all sorts of differences in your life.

So I think it's actually really important to, to represent that you can be all of these things. So maybe a question to you now. So when you're developing copy for websites, how do you help your clients understand the importance of brand tone and voice? I mean, I've just talked about how I just had no fricking clue what it all meant and.

You're going to have clients that may not understand that as well. So have you got some examples of how you have helped? 

Um, my process basically is, you know, we go through a copywriting briefing, which starts with a questionnaire. And as part of that questionnaire, I ask all sorts of questions. It's fairly detailed.

It generally takes my clients between 30 to 40 minutes to fill out. And most of them actually will start and stop and come back because of. Gets them thinking about things that perhaps they've never thought about before, like he was saying previously. So when it comes to talking about branch tone of voice and brand personality, ask them to think about how they'd like to be perceived by the audience or by the visitors to their website.

So how do you want customers or clients to feel about your business? Describe the personality of your business in three words, or tell me three emotions that you want votes from people. So. 

You've put in there, feel about your business. That's really interesting. So this is, so it's all about the emotion.

Is that what you're saying? So you want your clients to talk about how they want their clients to feel. So the emotion, bringing that emotion side out. 

Okay. It still comes back to who you are. Um, there's a part of your personality or, you know, a particular trait that you want to come across. Like some of my, you know, my actually I've worked with a lot of.

And a lot of coaches are just so down to earth. And it's kind of like what you're saying about your previous website and it wasn't really you, sorry. They want that sort of down to. Feel to come through that website, which would mean we wouldn't use a really formal time. Right. For example, I'm just looking at a questionnaire that clients just filled out for me, where I ask about those emotions.

So they want people to feel competent. They want to feel like they've got an expert, who's going to guide them and they want to come across as reliable and trustworthy. So that's the emotions they want to evoke. And then I go deeper than that. And we've started really talking about tone of voice. So I ask them to describe the kind of vibe you want your copywriting to have.

Again, it's give me three words. So do you want it to be formal, which I have not written a formal website yet friendly, conversational, that kind of stuff. And this client has written conversations. But they don't want the sentences to be too lengthy. They want to feel like they're connecting, want their audience to feel like they're connecting with a team that's focused on their needs.

Honestly, when it comes to writing the copy for my clients, I will always write in a conversational tone. I have not yet done a website where we've strayed away from that. And it's just how far we want to take that. Conversational time to inject their personality. Is it just right how we talk? And I I've actually in the past, even listened to YouTube videos of my clients talking and pulled out words that they've used.

I'll pick out words that they use all the time and try and inject that through their copy because that, again, it's creating that consistency. And that's natural. That's how they talk. I like that you research that person 

as well. So it's not just about taking what they've said because I, yeah, I know that when I did this exercise with them, Oh, my God.

I've got no idea what to write here, but I know that you've then gone into my previous website or you've gone into my webinars or to my Facebook page. And then you take these grabs and you've incorporated the mean, and yeah, I find that found that really, 

really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So I haven't, you know, when I go through the revisions process, I will write, I will design the homepage for client first.

So that's the design element of the project. Then I will write draft copy for that homepage. So when I'm presenting that first, I guess, iteration of the website to my clients, they can not only get a feel for the colors and the emotion that the designers are evoking, but they can see the tone of voice that I'm using as well through the headers, the subheaders and then the body copy.

And that's really just a check to make sure that we're on the same page when it comes to making sure that I've used words that they would use, that I've created that conversational or down to earth feel. And they have an opportunity then to come back to me and say, you know what, Leah, this isn't a word that I would normally use.

Can we change that for this? Or I can't actually use this word in some industries. You can't use particular words or maybe there's some jargon that I've used that they don't want to use. And then that's what informs the rest of the copy. So you just mentioned that the 

feedback, have you ever have you, if I go to just not right.

Has that ever happened or you, your set up and prices has been pretty speak up until now? 

You know what, like I hand on heart can say that I've got maybe in my website designs on that first iteration, maybe some of the design elements haven't quite aligned with what they were looking for, because they can be, you know, some people come to that don't have any idea what they want for their website, other than.

No, they want the cup, they brand and colors on it. So I can, you know, sometimes need tweaking on that. But when it comes to tone and the personality that my copy puts across, I haven't gotten it wrong yet. Like, there'll be changes, they'll want changes for sure. And that's why we go through three rounds of revisions.

But I would definitely say that on the first that they will go, this sounds really good. This sounds like. Yep. And that's what they want. And that's what they haven't had or haven't had in the past, if they've already got a business and they were missing that. And when they see it written down, they're like, wow, you get me.

This is, this is me, but you know, it could happen, but not only do we do the questionnaire, we spend an hour and a half in a strategy session going through the brief, talking about all that kind of stuff. I do a client who they. Um, what their pain points are, what keeps them up at night? What motivates them?

What are they hoping to achieve? What problem do they do you solve for them? And then we talk about branding and we talk about tone of voice and personality. So we cover it twice. So it reduces the risk of not getting it. Right. That's a good thing that I 

could. All right. So should we get, should we go on to less than two?

I know we've talked about our lesson one. Should we get stuck into listen two? And why does 

it? We did a little bit of research as well, and I want to refer to a special report from the alderman trust barometer, which is called in brands. And they talk about how brand trust can be a deal breaker or a deciding factor, 81% of consumers when they're considering making a purchase for consumers, want to believe that they can trust a brand to do what's right.

And a big factor in helping your clients to reach this point is through your brand voice. 

So what you're saying, their customers want to feel like your company cares about. 

For sure. And they wanted feel like they're in good hands. So even though they might come to your website and they're just reading words, if you've nailed your tone of voice and your personality that is going to stand out and they're going to know.

But this person is for real, like, this is somebody I feel like I can work with. And if your brand voice, on the other hand, isn't communicating in a way that's relatable, familiar, or that establishes your brand is trustworthy and credible. You could be losing business. And if you come to a website that, um, is a wall of words, so you can't work.

What the hell they're talking about. If it's full of typos, if the is shitty, what does that do for your brand? It's going to make you look unprofessional. It's not going to connect with your audience and they're going to hippy hitting that back button. 

Um, and, and like we said before, customers want to believe that you share the same values as they do.

So again, that's coming through with that building trust element, more research. Did you know that according to a survey done by semi. K color's improved brand recognition by 80%. So what we were saying earlier around colors, building emotions and the perception of the audience it's 

quite high, all comes together.

Definitely. This is one of the reasons why, I mean, I started as a copywriter as you know, one of the reasons why I branched out into website design. Was to bring these two elements together because I identify this gap where clients were paying a copywriter to write the words, then they're paying a website designer to design a website.

And when you brought those two elements together, they didn't match. And the designer may be breaking up the copy and using it across a website using in a way that it wasn't intended to be used, or the copywriter's writing a shitload of copy that doesn't need to be written because the design doesn't need.

Um, branding's all about bringing it all together. Yeah. 

And look, I know we've talked a bit about when I first came, became a coach. I had a branding coach. I had a website designer and then I had a copywriter. Honestly, I just did what I was told to do, and I didn't really understand what the value was and, and the interdependency between the two, like that just blew me now.

I get it. And I would have done things quite differently, but yeah, really interesting. So here's a 

question 

for you. What is the difference between brand voice and tone of voice? Are they the same or are they 

actually doing. Yeah. So we've kind of been throwing them around a bit loosely.

I look, I guess it's more brand personality and tone of voice. So there's this personality in three words, I would say that it's friendly, authentic, and professional. They're my three. And these are the attributes that form the foundation of my brand voice and are a guide for the content that I produce.

But as we were saying earlier, just like in real life, your brand's tone of voice will adjust depending on who you're talking to and what you're talking about. But the voice remains the same, so that the foundation of that voice. So let's go from one extreme to the other. If I'm at a party, I'm going to talk one way.

If I'm at a funeral, I'm going to talk the other, right. So you can kind of see depending on the audience that you're talking to, if I'm writing a thought piece for somebody's website and then they're, you know, Personality is quite formal or they're writing for a very formal audience. You would adjust your turn of voice to suit.

Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah, that 

does CoSchedule actually sums it up really nicely for us. They describe a brand's voice as your business's personality. It's consistent and unchanging. On the other hand, your tiny is the emotional inflection applied to your voice and adjust to what suitable for a particular piece of messy.

Yeah. 

All right. Sorry. I reckon we should just jump into helping you guys find how to work out, how to find your own brand boys. Let's go. There's five things that we're going to cover off here. So the first tip is about auditing your existing content, and this is going over all the content that you've produced to date.

If you have produced content today, whether it's. So sures or perhaps you're an avid blogger, which is fantastic. You always hear me back on about how important blogging is go back over and basically just do a bit of an audit, have a look at words that you've been using throughout your copy, pick up on particular words, that tone of voice that you're using and make notes of it.

Okay. And then once you've done that, step two is going back to what Nick said earlier about really knowing your ideal client, because let's face it, almost everything in business boils down to how well, you know, your ideal client, the people that you want to attract and work with the most and your brand voice plays a big part in this.

Once you understand your ideal client, you're going to know the best way to communicate with them. So I don't know about you Nick, but when we're doing. Talking about coming up with this podcast, we did our own ideal client research and we came up with avatars, which was really just drilling down on the type of people that we felt that this podcast was going to appeal to.

That was going to deliver the most value to. And, you know, we needed to do that. Research research is so important. You want to see the world through their eyes and walk in their shoes. And we also wanted to 

understand the frustration. So when it comes to starting your business, running a business, what are the things that are frustrating business owners right now, but also what are they going to feel like afterwards?

So how are they going to feel once they've got this information, because this makes sure that we're adding the right value and also understanding that's going to help us as well when we're looking at our own branding and what we we're doing for clients as well. So I think that 

there's yeah, a lot of.

But when you think about your ideal clients, like where would you go to do that research? Like if you're thinking, okay, I want to work with this particular service-based business in this industry. How would you go about trying to find that information? 

Honestly, it's been many, many things to be honest, being part of Facebook membership groups.

So listening to. What the challenges are with female business owners. I've got an email list already that I get feedback from people on, on the challenges that they're having. It's a lot of listening. So in this world of COVID, I haven't been networking out with a lot of people. So I rely on zoom and, and building connections online.

And reading. So it, lots of reading on websites, actually just looking at other service-based organizations and looking at what they do and seeing if I can, if I can get in and help them. But the big ones are the membership sites and the Facebook 

groups, to be honest.

To that is having a look at reviews. So doing some review, my

writing for your own business, go and check out your reviews. What are people telling you about how they've found working with you and also then go and look at your competitors reviews, find out what frustrates your potential clients. If they've worked with other people in your industry, what frustrates them?

What did they love about. So you can really draw so much information from all that stuff that we've just spoken about through Facebook groups, the comments that people leave, the questions that they ask the reviews, and it might sound like a waste of time to be doing this, but it's so informative and it gives you so many little gold nuggets that you can use in your copy to make those connections and just.

I guess drawing on those emotions that your ideal client is having. And we didn't speak about competitor 

analysis and we were doing out a previous conversation about things that we should do. That's. One thing that I did do was do a lot of research into what the competitors are doing. And with the website, as an example, I would provide feedback to say this, this title, this look, and feel.

Aligns or doesn't align it and actually helped me really grasp what I wanted to do as well, or especially what I didn't like. It was actually really important around what I definitely didn't want to have on my website or my socials. 

Yeah. So just before we move on to step three of finding a brand voice, I'll just quickly tell you what I've just done with my packages, my copywriting website packages.

So I've just added in a voice of client questionnaire. And I haven't done it before. And I feel like kicking myself up the bot buys 10 questions and it asks my clients. How were they feeling before they, you know, started working with my clients? Like what w what led them to start searching for a business coach?

For example, we'd ask them questions about obstacles that might've stopped them from actually trying to get that help, whether it's time, whether it's money, whether it's, I'm just not competent enough in taking that next step and ask questions then about how that service changed their life. And as a business owner, If you do this sort of once every six to 12 months, you're going to get so much information that you can use.

Not only to inform your copy and your newsletters, it can inform your blog strategy, your social media strategy, because you're going to learn about those pain points or those problems that your clients have that you can solve, that you can offer value to. Yeah, develop a question. Now I use, um, I'm using Typeform to do it.

It's quite interactive if you haven't, if you haven't checked it out and do so to have a free plan. So you can have three questionnaires with up to 10 questions on them age and yeah, it's just, it's changing the way that I write copy, which is amazing. Okay, so we have audited or existing content. We've gotten to know your ideal client.

Now it's time to start thinking about your brand personality. So with your brand audit complete and your ideal client research. Your brand, you need to stop thinking of as just like a person, but your brand has unique characteristics that set it apart from other brands that make it easily recognizable.

So we're talking here about personifying your brand in a way that makes it relatable to those clients that we've just talked about, but also staying true to your values, which would equal always come back. It's so important. If you start by thinking of your business as a person, these are the. Three questions that we were talking about earlier in my questionnaire, how would you describe its personality using three human life adjectives?

So is it quirky? Is it passionate or is it sincere start listing those traits down on a piece of paper? Right. So when you've got those three trains, now take your three personality traits and consider how each of these can be represented in your copy or in your communications. Sorry with quirky. Your tone of voice might be irreverent, unexpected, and humorous.

Right? If you're passionate and you want that to come across your ideal client, your copy might be generous, encouraging. If you are wanting to project a sincerity to your brand, your copy would be down to earth, honest and friendly. Now you might find it helpful to create a brand personality framework that you can come back and refer to.

Or you can also create a brand chart, which is step four in how to find your brand voice. So with your brand voice chart, this is what I'm talking about. If you're in a bigger business and you've got other people that you employ to write your copy for you, for your socials or whatever, this is really handy to have this available, where they can access it all the time.

And it lists your brand voice characteristic on the left. So you might have passionate on the left and then a description of what that means. So we're passionate about changing the way the world works. And it talks about words that you can use and words that you shouldn't use. So do use, if you're passionate, strong verbs, be champions, be the cheerleaders and have that come across in your copy, but don't be lukewarm or wishy-washy.

So don't use a passive voice. So, um, check out the show notes. It's kind of hard to describe a chart on a podcast, but yeah. Check it out. And the content marketing Institute recommends this kind of chart. For your brand voice. Awesome. Now I want to come back to step five in finding your brand boys, and that is consistency.

We've already covered this off Nick, but this is really about breathing life into your brand and the most effective way to do it. It's ensuring that you're speaking with that voice consistently. For example, if you use a sophisticated brand voice on your website, copy, don't use a rugged, super casual voice in your email marketing, because you're likely to raise a few eyebrows or worse.

Your audience might even question if the email is really from you. Oh, that's interesting. 

I hadn't thought that. Yep. 

So again, Making sure that they have this at a glance recognition or they can tell automatically that it's still you. So even if we're talking in videos and social media, it still needs to feel like you and sound like your friend.

And that's, that's pretty much it. That's the five steps. I'll just run over them quickly again for you. So audit your existing content, go back over emails that you've written, social media posts that you've put up blogs that you've written. If you wrote the copy for your current website, go back over that, pick out those gems that you use all the time.

You know, and a great tip here. Maybe Nick is even have a chat with a friend and say, what are some words or phrases that I use all the time and write them down? 

Yeah. Like an ID, because that's when I physically I professed website, I actually asked a few people and I've recently just found out from one of those friends.

He didn't want to give me any feedback because he just knew it didn't align to me and what I stood for. So he 

actually. 

Didn't tell me, whereas my mum and dad were like, this is a sheet. Like it doesn't, it just doesn't represent 

you at all. 

So, and because that's my mum and dad, I didn't listen. But I said he was my friend last week and I said, Mike, why didn't you tell me, like, that's the stuff I needed to hear it.

Yeah. So it was really, really interesting. But then I have had other people, so a female friend in the corporate space who had. Tried to rise to that corporate professional feel like it's amazing. It looks so good. And yeah, I think another lesson here is go with your gut, go with your intuition and go with your gut.

If something doesn't look or feel right or it doesn't align to you sought that shit out and make sure that it does, because you are going to find further down the track. You're not going to attract the right customers or. You just going to feel awkward every time you speak to someone. 

Yeah. A hundred percent.

Don't try and be somebody that you're not because people, people will know no calling. Yeah. Well, not with 

my friend, 

but

you're right. They'll know.

You know, it's about creating that familiarity as well. And the more you speak, your business speaks in this language and the more you project, your personality, people will become familiar with that and they'll start to expect it and it makes you relatable. And that's how you're going to create those deeper connections with your clients.

You've get that client loyalty and you know what, you'll get more bookings or sell more of your products because. We loyal people. I think humans are loyal in nature. And once you sort of get to know our brand and you're connect with that brand, you tend to stick with them. Yeah, definitely. 

Well, this has been good.

Thank you. Oh, I'm stumbling a lot. This, these sessions, 

my pleasure. And it was really great to chat with you. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed today's show, don't forget to leave a review on iTunes, Spotify, Google podcasts, or wherever you are listening from, you will help other people just like you find us to be notified when our next episode is released.

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