How do you test and refine your brand messaging and tone of voice?

Before you can create your brand message you need to know the four O’s of your audience. 1 - Objectives What does your audience want? What are they trying to achieve? 2 - Obstacles What are the pain points and challenges your audience experiences that prevent them from achieving their objectives. 3 - Objections What does your audience say or feel about the obstacles they face? 4 - Outcomes What are the results you help you audience achieve? Once you know this, you’ll know how to create your message and your positioning.

To improve your brand's messaging and tone, set clear goals, listen to your audience, and test different approaches. Use data to see what works best. Keep your brand unique compared to competitors, make sure your employees are on the same page, and review your messaging regularly. Be ready for changes in the market, follow the rules, and plan for crises. These steps help your brand connect with your audience effectively.

Your goal is not to replicate what your competitors are doing; you want to be better than them. Replication makes you a poor facsimile. Be an original. No one chooses a facsimile when they can have an original.

True enough. Understanding a persona, or Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is also important. This goes beyond the 4 Os, which are awesome, and begins to paint a picture in a creative way of who the customer is. Flesh out a name, a title, a background, and draw the insights that the Os bring in. "Alice is vice president of sales for a mid-sized manufacturing company where she has worked for 15 years. She is challenged by.... and wants to accomplish.." This personality can help pull out insight into things like your brand purpose and tone as well as what the message is. It starts the creative journey to how the brand comes to life.

It's crucial to set clear and reachable goals within your strategy. Here it is very helpful to gain as comprehensive an overview as possible and to understand the needs and pain points of the target group. It can be very helpful to analyze the strategies of your competitors. Not to copy them, but to analyze the strategies and challenges and draw conclusions for your own strategy. Personas are also really helpful and are a good first approach.

In this respect, I find the story of the brand Patagonia inspiring. Patagonia was founded by Yvon Chouinard (1973), an avid climber and outdoor enthusiast, who initially started the company to produce high-quality, durable gear for climbers. In the early days, Patagonia's tone of voice was characterized by authenticity and a genuine love for the outdoors. The company spoke directly to the community of outdoor enthusiasts, sharing stories and celebrating the spirit of exploration. As environmental issues gained prominence, so did Patagonia's voice. It evolved into a powerful voice for environmental advocacy. The brand became known also for its bold stance on issues like climate change, public lands, and sustainable business practices.

Validation is essential for testing and fine-tuning tone of voice and brand messaging. To acquire input from your target audience, run focus groups, surveys, and A/B testing. Examine feedback to find out how well your message is received and to spot any inconsistencies with the expectations of your target audience or your brand. Make use of social listening technologies to keep an eye on sentiment and online discussions surrounding your brand. To improve engagement, evaluate your messaging's performance on a regular basis using key performance indicators (KPIs) and make any adjustments.

An A/B testing is a good way to compare two versions of a key message against each other to determine which performs better. It usually involves two variants, but can be extended to multiple variants. While in the world of digital marketing, ways to conduct a split or A/B test is quite simple and often built within the platform, it goes back to the days before internet. When I started out in Advertising, I remember conducting multiple vox-pops and focused group discussions to understand how a campaign may perform on a fraction of the audience, before committing to bigger costs.

Your brand voice is directly related to what your target audience think about your brand. Taking regular feedback and analysing how consumers are engaging with your brand can help craft a good brand messaging that your audience can relate to. Social listening is another way that many brands now use to get closer to decoding the aspirations and mindset of their target audience. Pay close attention to what your consumers say about you on social media. This will help you not only understand the psychology of your audience, but will also help you refine your brand identity and story.

Brand messaging and tone of voice isn't something solely objective as each and everyone who will distribute the brand message will add it's own personality and it will become slightly subjective. I strongly believe it's the customer feedback that gives us insights into how and what they love about messaging, and if they don't - silence or rumors will speak for themselves

Consistency is key to creating a brand voice that lasts the test of time. Every channel you use (external and internal) should sound like it's coming from the same person. This takes care, dedication, and most importantly, education for anyone who is communicating on behalf of the brand. You may experience someone on your team who prioritizes time vs. quality. Beware these detractors. Trust in a brand is easily lost and hard to regain. However, if you are consistent with your brand, think Coca-cola, Apple, Xbox, it will pay dividends for your business.

Insights will be critical at every stage of this process. It is helpful if your teams that are developing brand elements and the teams that are gathering critical brand insights are aligned & working in partnership - but not necessarily directly joined (or provided by the same vendor). For instance, it is extremely helpful for a vendor that will be tasked with building brand elements to have access to prior aggregate research results, and have the opportunity to weigh in on (or possibly execute, if they have that capability in-house) the research phases that are meant to directly inform their efforts - whereas it usually makes sense for a different team or provider to do validation of the resultant work.