In life, things are constantly changing and even though we can evolve into someone we don’t even recognize, we’re always the same person at our core. Our values, beliefs, and core personality carry over throughout all of life’s challenges, and the same is true for eCommerce retailers who focus on marketing strategies that enable growth. In this edition of our brand basics series, we’ll be discussing one of the most fundamental elements of who you are and how your customers see you. Your brand voice is about more than just communicating your offerings to customers; it’s what makes you unique and sets your brand apart from your competition.
Consistent communication in marketing is extremely powerful. A study from Lucidpress found that consistent brand presentation increased revenue by 23-33% across all channels for retailers. Consistent messaging empowers retailers to build trust and credibility. A solid foundation for communication helps to maintain an identity that’s easy to understand and remember, reducing friction in the customer journey. At the same time, a brand voice that is uniquely you helps you stand out, giving customers room to develop their own individual perspective on who you are. Over time, that impression grows into strong relationships and increased eCommerce revenue.
The Foundations of Brand Voice
Page-Level
When you’re looking to create editorial content to display on your site, you’ll want to consider the structure at page-level. This includes how many topics you’ll discuss, as well as how many paragraphs and images will be displayed throughout, and the overall length of the piece. The beginning of each paragraph, also known as an “entry point” for example, can have a big impact on the performance of your content. Few entry points make content less approachable, but too many can be difficult to read.
Paragraph-Level
Paragraphs organize content in a way that’s much less overwhelming, especially for users who scan content. As a guideline, keep paragraphs to no more than 5-6 sentences for maximum readability. It’s not just humans who prefer to consume your content in organized chunks; Google and AI crawlers prefer this structure, too.
Sentence Level
At the sentence level, the way you structure your words Affects both readability and tone. Concise sentences are easier to read, but it can be challenging to communicate complex ideas in a smaller phrase. The frequency and type of punctuation you use shapes meaning, so it’s important to make sure that aligns with your brand voice.
Grammar
Grammar can help or hurt the perception of your content, especially if your brand serves customers in different regions. Geography can impact dialect and spelling differences that might cause confusion for customers viewing your content across the world. For eCommerce retailers who don’t have physical stores, you can use Google Analytics to pinpoint where the majority of your customers live to tailor your content to them.
Formality and Tone
The way your content is structured at every level can make a difference in the way it feels to read it. For example, longer sentences with frequent punctuation can feel more structured and professional than short sentences that get straight to the point. The tone of your content will vary across every page on your site depending on the purpose of the communication, but sticking to a consistent vibe across all content helps you maintain a recognizable brand image that will improve the customer experience, and in turn, increase eCommerce revenue.
How to Find Your Brand Voice
Define Your Audience
You can’t evaluate your brand voice without first establishing who’s receiving the message. Start by identifying key demographics like age, gender, and location to get a better idea of who your customers are and their preferences. You can learn even more about your customers by simply asking them for feedback and why they chose you. It also helps to study your competitors and how they approach messaging to uncover how to speak directly to your target audience.
Establish Your Personality
To develop your brand’s personality, you can call back on your mission statement and core values. Brands who keep strong on their values tend to positively impact on consumer perception. Use this to guide you when considering who you want to be or imagine who your brand would be if it was a person. How would they act and what would they say? Additionally, you can come up with a few words to describe your personality such as quirky, educated, bold, or supportive.
Break the Scroll
Your individuality is what sets you apart from competitors, so don’t miss the opportunity to use that to your advantage in your content. To make your content more engaging, start your message with something funny or unexpected to break away from the uninventive, repetitive content we’ve grown too familiar with. This creates tension, which is much more effective at capturing attention and engaging customers who are looking for something fresh and unique.
Authenticity Matters
Now that AI has become a fundamental tool for content creation, it’s important to keep in mind that your customers still want an experience that’s familiar and feels human. Regardless of your strategy for writing content, it should always sound like something that would be spoken out loud. This way, your copy will always feel authentic and real.
Create a Glossary
Once you’ve centered in on the key characteristics of your brand voice, build a glossary with common words and phrases that signify your brand. If you think about brands like Starbucks whose entire brand identity is reinforced through language, you will only ever see their drink size options marked as “tall,” “grande,” or “venti.” The way you identify and describe your offerings is important, and it can be helpful to keep a glossary of terms as well as clear messaging guidelines to help your marketing team align their campaigns with your communication standards.
Next Steps
Your brand voice isn’t something you set once and forget. It’s a living part of your business that should show up consistently everywhere your customers encounter you, from product pages to customer service emails to social captions.
Here are practical ways to put everything above into action:
- Audit your existing content to identify where your tone feels inconsistent and close the gaps.
- Document your voice in a style guide that captures audience definition, personality traits, formality level, and a glossary of terms. Be sure to include do’s and don’ts to make the guidelines easy to apply.
- Provide writing samples to demonstrate the style guide and give writers on your team tangible examples to emulate.
- Train your team by walking through the style guide together and review early drafts until the voice becomes second nature.
- Revisit your brand voice regularly to make sure your voice still reflects who you are and who your audience is as your business grows.
A clear, consistent brand voice builds trust, sharpens recognition, and drives growth. If you’re looking for more ways to grow your eCommerce business, Virid can help. Our Unified Commerce Solution helps enterprise retailers reach the next level of revenue growth. Our eCommerce platform, marketAgility, provides the solid technological foundation to help increase average order value, optimize load times, and grow conversions. Schedule a consultation today to get started.
