How Do You Find Your Brand Voice?

Benjamin Ard (00:05)
Awesome. Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Courtney. Courtney, welcome to the show.

Courtney Todd (00:13)
Thank you so much. so glad to be here.

Benjamin Ard (00:16)
Yeah, Courtney, I'm excited for this conversation. Before we dive in, though, let's get to know you, your background. Let's hear kind of a little bit of your history.

Courtney Todd (00:26)
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm Courtney Todd. I founded Umlaut Agency in 2018 after running marketing at a series of companies, including Dallas Morning News and Arteriors, a luxury home furnishings brand. At Umlaut, we're a strategy-driven branding, design, and marketing agency. And we provide top-of-the-line services with bottom-line results. And I work with every single client as their strategic leader to ensure both niche expertise and holistic strategy.

So in a nutshell, we help increase brand visibility and strengthen customer relationships.

Benjamin Ard (01:01)
I love it, I love it.

So the question we always ask right on the get go, what do you love about content and marketing?

Courtney Todd (01:09)
I love being able to be creative. The thing about working with different brands is that you get to reinvent something every day. You really get to challenge yourself both creatively, but also through copywriting, through strategic thinking. And I think it's just, if you're really into it and you do it right, then it is exciting and new every day.

Benjamin Ard (01:37)
I love that. I love that. Yeah, it is exciting and new every day. And honestly, that's why some people hate it. And for those of us that love marketing, it's because we're okay getting the variety of things, but it's not for everyone. And it is a ton of fun. love that definition. Courtney, today we're going to talk about how to find your brand's unique voice through content.

Courtney Todd (01:45)
It's true.

Exactly.

Benjamin Ard (02:02)
And there's a lot of different directions we could take this conversation, but let's get a baseline before we dive in. What is a brand voice? What does that actually mean? And why does it matter? Why does it matter that my brand actually has a voice?

Courtney Todd (02:20)
So your brand voice is really, it's how you speak to your customers, how you even speak to your employees, how your brand lives in the world and interacts with people and other brands. So, and you know, in today's world where brands are competing for attention across many, many, many platforms, not just traditional, but all of our digital social, you know, different websites, you name it.

Having a distinct brand voice, isn't optional, right? It's essential. And what a strong brand voice does is it makes your content instantly recognizable and it builds trust and it creates deeper connections with your audience. So like you can think of it this way, like your visuals will get people to stop scrolling, but your voice is what keeps them engaged and will have them coming back for more.

Benjamin Ard (03:14)
I love that. That's great. So how do we define our brand voice? How do we really nail it down? How do we make sure it's consistent across everything we're doing and really make it feel organic? Sometimes it feels push, but how do you really define and execute on having a brand voice?

Courtney Todd (03:32)
So first is a lot of research and soul searching for the owner and the key stakeholders in the brand. So I work with a lot of brands on defining their brand and also redefining their brand. So when we first start working together, I give them a very long survey. It's actually like a big PowerPoint deck and it's a bunch of questions and it's made to, it's designed to make them think.

Basically, it's a journey together so we can uncover what their brand feels like, sounds like, and looks like. Because we don't just do the brand research, we also create the brand visuals, the messaging, and then the website content, whatever, after that. But during this journey, I even asked them what you would think of silly things. What kind of car would your brand drive? Or which celebrity would they be? And I'll tell you, I've had at least two people tell me George Clooney. So that's a popular one.

Everybody wants to be the George Clooney in B2B. But yeah, I mean, I think it really is like, how are people going to interact with you? And that's how your brand voice really comes to life. So one thing that you really think about, or three key elements actually that you want to think about are your tone. So are you formal? Are you casual, authoritative, educational, thought leader, fun, irreverent?

And then language, it's, you know, are you using simple conversational words or are you using industrial technical jargon? And what, you know, the channels we can talk about in a little while because there's different ways we can adjust that for channel. But the third thing is going to be personality, right? It's also, you know, if your brain were a person, what traits would it have? Are you reliable? Are you trustworthy? Are you honest? And sometimes, know, sometimes they align with like a

company's mission and values to an extent. And sometimes it is very much tweaked and it's very different from what it would be in the kind of external world, what they're looking at towards consumers.

Benjamin Ard (05:37)
I love that. I had a really unique opportunity once where a consultant came into a business I was working at and she ran a very similar survey with us. It's funny that you mentioned the car question because that's what we had as well. That was one of the questions I remember. And what was fun is she had the executive team fill out the survey, but then she spent like 20 hours with customers, asking them the same survey. And then she showed the difference of results.

And it was funny because at the time we said we're the Tesla, the high technology cutting edge kind of an idea, but the customer said we're the Toyota, we're the reliable brand and things like that and whatnot. And so it was really fascinating to hear the difference. And I think this is a great exercise to do in house. Obviously working with someone like you, what's cool about the external resource. And this is not a paid promotion, but I'm just telling you from an experience.

Courtney Todd (06:10)
Ha ha ha ha.

reliable.

Benjamin Ard (06:35)
Having that survey come from an external source for your customers versus from your employees gathers very authentic answers. And so it's really cool to have this independent third party that says, hey, I don't work for this company. I'm not getting compensated off of your answers. I just want to know the facts, kind of an idea. And I think that's such a powerful way to figure out your brand voice.

Courtney Todd (06:40)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's so eye-opening when you can actually understand what your customers think versus what your, especially leadership team thinks. And you're right, it is often a very large disparity. And that's why, you you really in this day and age, you have to be data-driven even about your content, especially about your content. Because you can, what did we used to say? You can't be a hippo. You can't rely on the highest paid person's opinion. I always love that because it's so true. Either you're a hippo,

or you're listening to your customers, you're performing that research, you're doing surveys, you're watching how they're reacting, not just through analytics, but just also through like daily engagement with your content, with your social channels, with your website, with your podcasts, whatever it might be, and really digging in and understanding how people are engaging on a human level and not just on a numbers and averages level.

Benjamin Ard (07:57)
Yeah.

I love it. So a lot of our listeners are in the B2B space and with artificial intelligence and the markets and everything like that, no one for the most part, there's some exceptions, but no one is truly in a category of their own. There is competition for literally everything. And so one of the ways that businesses can stand out is having a unique brand voice.

Courtney Todd (08:26)
and

Benjamin Ard (08:27)
How do you build the uniqueness into your voice in an authentic way? That's not let me just be over the top or try to mimic something, but in a way that rings true, but yet at the same time, provide some differentiation from some of the competition.

Courtney Todd (08:45)
It's a really good question. When I come in with a new brain, one of the first things I do is look at the competition, not so we can copy what they're doing, but we can find gaps and holes in what the industry is missing, whether that be from a product perspective, a voice perspective, a content perspective, and say, everybody's doing events here. We should do an event here. Or everybody's doing white papers. Let's try a podcast, whatever that might be. And so that's always a good place to start.

just for your knowledge, right? It's not gonna make those decisions for you. But in terms of format, you can find out a lot of things. And in terms of voice, you're like, hey, everybody's blue or color, you you're like branding, everybody's blue, well, let's do green. So just understanding the marketplace, understanding what people are really responding to. And then I think the next step of that is just being true to your brand and not trying to be something you're not. So laying a foundation that

you know, you're being authentic because a consumer will sniff out inauthenticity a mile away, right? Consumers know it, they feel it, we know it as consumers. Like the minute it feels fake, we're gonna run because that is one of the B2B, B2C, it doesn't matter. Because that is kind of a cornerstone of what we're living through now with so much inundation of products and knowledge and information that we just want those connections. So I think

That next step is yes, you're unique. Yes, you know what gaps to fill, but also like what, how can you relay information to your potential customers that they need? So you're filling their gaps too. So I think it really is, it's just about listening to the market, listening to the audiences and listening to yourself and finding that cornerstone of all three together to really create something that's new and

unique, authentic, however you want to put it, but you know, it really becomes who your brand is. And if you're authentic like that, people are going to respond positively. And then you keep tweaking, right? It's never set. It's never one and done. You're never like, great, we've got our brand and we have nowhere, nothing else to do. Here's our content. Let it run for the next five years. It's, it takes daily work, daily work, daily experimentation.

Benjamin Ard (11:09)
Absolutely. And I love that formula that makes perfect sense. So shifting gears a little bit. I'm a business and we've got a brand voice. It's unique. It's authentic. It's us. Like we've really understand it. How do I tailor that to different channels? Cause every channel has a different algorithm and a different audience in a different format or a medium.

How do I kind of portray that through all of the different channels?

Courtney Todd (11:42)
think one of the biggest misconceptions about brand voice is that it has to sound exactly the same everywhere. Consistency is not the same as like rote, like rote, right? Where it's the same on every single channel and you are literally putting the same thing on LinkedIn that you would put on Instagram and the posts aren't changing but the hashtags are. That's not how you do good content, right? It should be consistent, but it also needs to be adaptable.

So, you know, it's all based on the platform and the audience expectations, and we're all conditioned to know and react to different content in different formats. So like your website and blogs, right? You own this. This is a great place for like long form content. It's structural, it's informative, but you can still keep your personality. You can showcase that personality in a lot of different ways and a lot of different formats. But here, especially for B2B brands,

need to see, it's really for educating, building authority and trust. And you want to make the experience, of course, like easy for the reader to take in and then convert, right? It's always what we want them to do is to convert. Social media, right? We're all trying to figure out the best things to say and do and be on social media. But, you know, overall, it's where you can be more playful, more human as a brand, especially B2B. You can really push that authenticity. You can engage at a personal level.

You can partner with other brands, which is fantastic because you get to, you know, the brand gets to feel like a person, if you will, because there's a lot of that, they can be more playfulness, might be super polished on the website, but could have, you know, more fun trend driven, like lean into some of those really fun things that are happening on social. Um, a couple more like emails, right? Your tone in a newsletter might be more casual and trendy than in a sales email, um, HTML versus just regular, you know,

There's lots of different ways that you can utilize your brand voice. Ads versus organic. Ads are very like called action, wherever you are on the funnel, of course. But it might be more strategic, conversion-driven tone. And organic is going to be about storytelling. Organic engagement, and storytelling is a big part here, too. You also are looking at format. Your static ads are going to be different than your video ads. Your long form is going to be different than your short form.

Benjamin Ard (14:09)
I love that.

Courtney Todd (14:09)
I think it's

all about just having fun, being adaptable, and understanding that it doesn't have to be the same everywhere, but you want to maintain that foundation of who you are and always come back to those pillars of your brand.

Benjamin Ard (14:23)
And I think it's a perfect mirror of what real life conversations look like. I like how you talked about different tone and brand. The conversations I'm having at church are different than the conversations I'm having on a podcast or at a sporting event, or who knows where that it's natural. It is authentic because that's just how life works and a brand voice can do the same thing. I love that.

One final question, Courtney, because we're running out of time. It goes by so quick. You have seen this so many times in your whole career, especially with what you're doing now and working with so many different businesses. What are some of these like common pitfalls, mistakes that people should and can avoid?

Courtney Todd (14:51)
Exactly. Yes. It does.

Yeah. Number one is not listening to your audience. So tone deaf is the end of a brand these days. You have to be, you have to engage, you have to respond, you have to adjust. I think the next one is trying to copy competitors. If you do your competitor research and you're like, great, that's working for company X, we're just going to do the same thing. No, just don't. I'm just going to put that out there.

Next is inconsistency. You can be adaptable, but you cannot be inconsistent. Consumers want to find your brand to be the same on every channel in terms of, hey, I understand what you offer. I understand who you are. understand what it would be like to work with you or buy one of your products. So companies that do sound one way on social media, that is like so completely different on the website, it's too jarring. So you have to at least have, like I said, those brand

pillars to really connect all of that content together. And then last, anyone that's too afraid to show personality is a huge loss. just, I know too many B2B brands that are kind of scared to even tiptoe into anything but LinkedIn and just don't understand the value of content like podcasts or anything beyond like a white paper, right? And you see it all the time on, I see it all the time on LinkedIn,

the companies that are doing really great are the ones that have leaders that are doing really interesting things socially. And often it is that thought leader at the front of their company because people are trusted more than brands. So I think, you know, showing a personality, whether it's a brand personality or a leader's personality to tie it back to the brand, I think it's really important to just do it. it's not, you know, your brand will not collapse because you

went out of a little blue box of your B2B tech or whatever it might be. you know, I think one of the biggest lessons I've learned is that personality drives connection. And you don't need to appeal to everyone. You just need to resonate deeply with your ideal audience.

Benjamin Ard (17:27)
I love that. Plus my personal opinion is if you do connect with everyone you're actually connecting with no one.

Courtney Todd (17:34)
Exactly. Exactly.

Benjamin Ard (17:35)
And

so your personality has to be off putting to some people in order for it to be acceptable to others. And it's just kind of the sad reality of how human work, you know? Courtney, we are out of time and this has been amazing, but if anyone wants to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?

Courtney Todd (17:40)
You

Yeah, it really is.

Absolutely. You can reach me on my website at umlautagency.com. That's umlautagency.com. Also on LinkedIn and I'm on Instagram at umlautagency. So I really look forward to connecting with your listeners and Benjamin, it's just been a pleasure.

Benjamin Ard (18:15)
I love it. Anyone listening to this episode, all of the materials below in the show notes will link to Courtney's website and her LinkedIn profile so you can find her nice and easy. Courtney again, thank you, thank you, thank you. This has been a lot of fun. I appreciate the insights.

Courtney Todd (18:31)
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

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