Brand Voice Audits and Are You Speaking to the Right Audience

In a continuously highly competitive market, it has never been more critical for brands to maintain their brand voice. While many people consider the visual appeal of a brand, the brand's voice also matters significantly. It can be a key step in future-proofing your brand to stand out in an oversaturated market.

According to one study, customers suggest the following factors as what makes a brand memorable. These are:

• 40% suggest standout content.
• 33% suggest a unique personality.
• 32% suggest compelling storytelling.

The brand voice encompasses all these factors. This article will guide you in creating a brand policy that ensures you are speaking to the right audience. It will also help you audit your current brand voice to ensure you are speaking to the right audience.

What is a Brand Voice?

A brand voice refers to the unique personality through which your brand communicates to its target audience on different channels. It features a consistent tone, style, and messaging that reflects its goals and values. This can be observed on various communication channels, including social media, websites, advertisements, emails, and blog posts. This consistency should be maintained across all your channels. 

A good voice enables a brand to connect deeply with its audience and stand out from the competition. For instance, if you are a brand that manufactures streetwear apparel, your brand voice can consist of street slang. On the other hand, if you are a travel brand that promotes family holiday packages, you can speak in a mature and more professional tone. 

Why Does a Brand Voice Matter?

A brand voice is what will enable you to stay recognizable and consistent in a digital landscape that is crowded with video and written content. It will determine the form of content you create, from the videos to the testimonials. To future-proof your brand, you need to give it a sense of personality and purpose.

You want your target audience to understand your brand voice, love it, and remain loyal to it, just as they do with their friends. If their friends keep changing their personality and do unexpected things, it can be hard for people to love them. In the same way, brands need to have a consistent message that tells what their brand is about.

While elements such as logos and colors can enable your brand to stand out, only well-written content will keep your brand noticeable in the long run. That's why you need to provide the same level of attention and care to your content as the other elements of your brand.

Brand Voice vs. Brand Tone: Key Differences

While brand voice focuses on what you say, brand tone focuses on how you say it. The brand voice will project your brand personality across different distribution channels, as it focuses on your target audience to build meaningful connections.

The brand tone is an emotional representation of the brand voice. It can change according to the current situation you are writing about and communicating with. Also, it can help you capture the feeling of the target audience and enable you to empathize appropriately. 

How to Audit Your Brand Voice

If you want to determine if your brand voice is compelling, consistent, and meets the needs of your target market, it's essential to audit it. You will do this by evaluating your current voice to identify any challenges and opportunities. You can then focus on creating brand voice guidelines that align with your best practices for your future communication. Here are the steps to follow in auditing your brand voice:

Determine Your Desired Brand Voice

First, consider what you want in a brand voice. Do you want a humorous, authoritative, or friendly brand voice? You can capture your desired brand voice using phrases, sounds, and adjectives. Define your brand voice in four attributes that are unique, specific, and relatable to your brand.

Perform a Content Audit

You will need to audit your current content to determine if it aligns with your desired brand attributes. You can achieve this using various methods, such as feedback, surveys, analytics, or competitor analysis. Your aim should be to assess whether your content is clear, engaging, and consistent across different formats, channels, and audiences. Do you have content that already exemplifies the attributes of your brand voice? Can the content help you to monetize your brand in 2025?

After auditing your content, you will indeed see the areas that require improvement. For instance, if you discover that your brand voice is inconsistent across different platforms, or if it sounds too generic and similar to that of your competitors, it's an indication that improvement is needed. Consider using a SWOT analysis to summarize your strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities, and then choose your priority areas.

Create a Brand Voice

Finally, the final step in your brand audit is to create guidelines for your brand voice. These guidelines are the rules and recommendations that will define how your brand voice sounds in various situations and contexts. This can include multiple elements, such as vocabulary, style, tone, formatting, grammar, and punctuation. 

The brand voice best practices are examples of content that illustrate how to teach your team to use the brand voice. It can include the dos, don'ts, checklists, templates, or content samples.

Tips For Developing Your Brand Voice

There are several steps you can use to create a distinct brand voice. These are:

Create Your Audience’s Persona

You want to ensure that your brand voice aligns with the goals and values of your company. However, you also need to consider what you are discussing and why. Therefore, the first step in formulating a brand voice is to consider the target audience and target personas. 

This will provide insights into the adjectives, traits, and vocabulary you need to use in your brand voice. To even get a better understanding of the target audience, you can research more about your target audience.

Audit Your Current Brand Voice and Tone

Consider your current brand voice by examining your existing communication channels to gain an overview of your current brand tone and style. Check if there are any consistencies. For instance, do you use a different voice on Facebook than on Instagram? You can check how your audience is interacting with you.

In addition, check your top-performing posts to see the tone or voice used. Did the video or post resonate with the target audience? Was it a meme or did you use a serious tone? Consider what made the content resonate with the target audience and check if the particular tone and voice traits in your best-performing content resonate with your target audience.

Tailor Your Brand Voice to Different Channels and Content

As noted earlier, the brand tone refers to how you convey your message and will vary according to the different channels and types of content. For instance, if you are creating an organic social post, you should use a different tone from another post responding to a customer's question or complaint. A good idea would be to use a light-hearted tone for your new posts.

On the other hand, use a professional tone when responding to customer inquiries. Consider also changing the tone to match different social media platforms. For instance, you cannot use the same tone on TikTok and LinkedIn. You should consider the various scenarios you face as a brand and create a distinct tone for each, ensuring it is tailored to your target audience.

Document Everything

Document your voice just as you would do with your social media strategy or brand visuals. This is important as it will serve as a reference for people writing in different brand voices, ensuring their social media posts maintain consistency and that marketing copies are aligned.

Leverage the style guide to create protocols for your communication assets and ensure your entire team has access to it. It would also be a good idea to have one or two training sessions on brand voice for your in-house and remote content creators. Ensure you have two to five key attributes your brand needs to convey. Describe the meaning of these practices and add some best practices to make them clearer. 

Add a framework for the tone so that the brand is seen as suitable for the context. For instance, you can have:

• Media communication. Make these concise, authoritative, and clear.
• Social media communications. Make them casual, humorous, and empathetic. Use GIFs and emojis.

You can include different components in the brand voice document, such as the common vocabulary to use, brand phrases, and personalities. You can also give specific examples of the use of the brand voice to clarify what is considered going outside the brand voice. 

Include a list of the dos and don'ts. When you make it clear what you don't want done, it becomes easier for people to understand what you want to achieve with your brand voice.

Keep Monitoring and Reviewing

Like any other social media strategy, creating a brand voice wouldn't be complete without monitoring. Even after establishing the brand voice, it is essential to review it periodically, such as every quarter. Consider the voice during every brand-related event or other significant occasion that may impact your brand strategy. 

Since language keeps on changing, the style or words you were using five years ago might become obsolete today. If you are not regularly checking your brand voice, you may end up sounding outdated, which can cause your target audience to lose interest.

Final Thoughts

A brand voice is a crucial tool for understanding how to effectively communicate with your target audience. If you already have a brand voice, you need to audit it, as this is never constant. By following the steps outlined in this article, you can establish a brand voice that will make a positive impression.