How to Write your Website: Nailing your Brand Voice
Seriously, what the fricken’ frick is a brand voice and how do you make one?
Do you have to invent a character? Like that Geico lizard? Why can’t you just say stuff? Or write stuff? Why do you need to use a voice?
All good questions. Developing your brand voice is what keeps you from sounding fake or salesy. Your clients will feel that you are speaking directly to them, that you are on their side trying to help them.
A lot of the advice you hear about your brand voice, and your “Ideal Client Avatar”, more on that later, is geared towards professional copywriters, people who do this a lot and need lots of different voices. But if you only have one business a lot of this advice won’t make sense until you’ve reached a much later stage in the process. But don’t worry, developing your brand voice is easier, and more engaging than you probably imagine.
What is a Brand Voice?
Your brand voice is just the tone that you use when you write for your company. If your company is mostly you, your brand voice is mostly your voice.
But which one? You contain multitudes, as the poem goes, and you have lots of voices. The voice you use to talk to your dog, the voice that you use for interviews, the voice you use when you’re listening to a five year old tell a really interesting story.
Which Voice is My Brand Voice?
You have to develop the specific voice you use when talking with potential clients. If you’ve started working with clients, you have already done some work towards this. The easiest way to develop your brand voice is to imagine yourself talking to a client you really enjoy working with. It can be anyone really, it doesn’t even have to be an actual client. I do recommend using an actual person however. It’s just less brain power to conjure the memory of a person than it is to create an imaginary character from scratch.
This person is your “Ideal Client Avatar” or ICA for short.
Who is My Ideal Client Avatar?
This person must meet the following criteria:
They would benefit from the service you are offering, and
You gotta like talking to them.
That’s really it. You do not need to find the exact perfect person for your business, and you don’t need to know what they take in their coffee and what kind of socks they wear. Full disclosure, I do know these things about my ICA, but I didn’t start knowing it. Sure, it helps to learn little details about your person, but you can waste a ton of energy in the beginning trying to learn things that won’t help you yet. The main thing you need to know about this person is that they have a problem and they want you to solve it.
You are going to have lots of conversations with this person in your head. While you are writing for sure, but also just when you are thinking about your business. This is the person you are pitching ideas to (in your head) and explaining new offerings to (in your head).
Why Choose One Person?
There’s a copywriting adage, if you try to write to everyone, you aren't writing for anyone. You can’t have a conversation with 1000 people. If you want your copy to sound genuine, you have to write as if you are talking to one specific person.
The people who fit the description of the exact person you are writing to will feel like they are in a private meeting just for them. It will be transformative.
What About All the People Who are not my Ideal Client Avatar?
That doesn’t mean excluding everyone else! A huge other layer of people will get enough out of hearing the conversation that it won’t matter that they aren’t the exact target market. I have tons of examples of people whose work I follow religiously, who are not speaking directly to my demographic. Paige Brunton is a good example.
I am clearly not in her target demographic. I am male identifying and I wear mostly dark colors. But I’m close enough that I can hear the conversation and appreciate the dialogue. And that is what you need to get out. The genuine conversation. That will be the fount from which the rest of your strategy will flow.
Later on, after you’ve been talking for a while, if you find that the person you want to talk to has changed, you can bend your conversation in a new direction. But if you start out trying to talk to someone you don’t understand very well, who you have trouble visualizing, or who you don’t know why they are talking to you, you won’t have a genuine basis for the conversation and that’s when things start feeling salesy and fake. You avoid that problem forever by talking to people you know want to hear what you have to say.
How Do I Talk to Them?
Take all the angles out of it. While you are writing, you aren’t doing this to make money (of course we want you to make money, but that thinking goes in other parts of your business. When you are writing your copy, you are in service mode. You are there to help.
This part is important. You need to be able to believe that you are actually helping. Let me help you take a short cut: you fucking are helping. Ok? If you’ve gotten this far, and you didn’t literally wake up one morning thinking “ok, how am I going to trick idiots out of some money” you are helping people. Our economy is not geared towards rewarding people who are simply helpful. So just because your work may not be valued, yet, doesn’t mean you aren’t helping.
Second, you need to believe that you deserve to be paid for your time and effort. As you talk to your ICA, you’re going to get better at communicating that value. Not convincing someone of your value, communicating it.
A good brand voice is something you develop over time through authentic conversations with your Ideal Client Avatar, mostly in your head. The better you get at it, the more in tune you will be with your actual audience and the more effective your communications. In many cases, nailing this voice will be the difference between a failed business and an unmitigated success. It takes time, but you absolutely can do it.
