Break through the marketing noise by developing a brand voice for your practice

Developing a brand voice contributes to more consistent brand messaging and increases the likelihood of landing your message

What do Morgan Freeman, Dame Judi Dench and Sam Elliot all have in common? In addition to all being well-known actors, they’ve also all made the list of the 20 most iconic voices in Hollywood. When you hear each of their names, you can also instantly hear their voices. Their pitch and tone are so memorable, so unique. That’s the type of reaction you want when someone hears the name of your practice. By developing a brand voice you also begin developing a brand persona.

Your brand persona

In marketing, there is a lot of talk about developing your target audience’s persona. This is where you create an image of what your ideal patient looks like. It involves identifying how old they are, where they live and work, their level of activity, any sports they play, and other features important to who they are.

Developing this type of persona for your practice — called a brand persona — helps ensure that when you are speaking to your target audience, you are using the same voice each time. Verge Marketing explains that a brand persona is a “collection of personality traits, attitudes and values that enables your audience to identify and connect with your organization.” It creates a clearer image of your practice while also increasing its recognizability by everyone who hears your messages.

Think about your practice as if it was a person. What would it sound like? Would it have a soft, gentle voice or a loud, booming voice? What words would it use and how would it say them? What about its tone?

By creating this persona for your practice, you then have a test through which all of your marketing messages could run before releasing them into the world.

The interplay of emotion

Once you’ve developed a clear image of your practice’s persona, think of it as if it were human. In other words, your persona isn’t going to have the same emotion day in and day out. Sometimes it may be happy or excited (like with an upcoming sale or promotion), while other times it may be more assertive or stern (such as when warning the audience about how lifting wrong can create back pain).

One reason this is important is that it keeps your voice from becoming stagnant or one-note. By inflecting emotion into your practice’s voice, you’re also able to better connect with your target audience.

So, in addition to creating your practice’s persona, think about how it responds when it experiences various emotions. How does the tone or pitch change? What words would it use to express how it feels?

Incorporate these responses into your brand messaging to not only create consistency but also to stand out against all of the other marketing messages in a more memorable way.

Developing a brand voice checklist

Keep your practice’s persona in mind when developing any new content. Think about the tone of the content, the verbiage used, and how the message is being delivered. Then, before publishing it, run through this list of questions:

• Does your content reflect something that your persona would say? Does it use words that your persona would use? Is the message one that the audience would expect to hear from your persona? If so, then it may be ready to go. If not, you might have to tweak it a bit to better match your practice’s voice.
• Is the content authentic? For the message to be trusted by your audience, it has to feel genuine or authentic. Put another way, the more it feels as if your content comes from the heart, the more it will be received in a positive way.
• How is the audience likely to feel when they hear the message? Put yourself in your audience’s shoes when developing a brand voice. How would you feel if you read, listened to, or watched the marketing content? Does it evoke the emotions you want? Is it consistent with what your practice has said before?

Developing a brand voice contributes to more consistent brand messaging. It also increases the likelihood that your practice will be instantly recognizable by your desired audience.