When a prospective customer encounters your brand in the wild, the last response you want to evoke is, "This doesn't sound right." Brand inconsistencies give consumers pause. They might consider your brand disingenuous or untrustworthy.
If you want to avoid those circumstances, find the following brand inconsistencies and nip them in the bud.
Consumers want to know exactly what they're buying and from whom.
Product descriptions are designed to do one thing well: sell the merchandise. Consequently, they sometimes ring false because the branding and voice are different from what the consumer seeks on your blog or in your emails. Kissmetrics advises businesses to inject personality into their product descriptions. Don't just rattle off a list of features and benefits; engage consumers the same way you would in a blog post or on social media.
Before you write product descriptions, read some of your other content to re-familiarize yourself with your brand voice. Keep that voice in your head as you craft your descriptions, staying true to the tone and inflection you have developed elsewhere.
It also helps to run your product descriptions through multiple people. Ask each individual to read specifically for brand voice. If you don't catch the inconsistencies, someone else will.
When your team answers customer complaints and queries, you don't want each missive to sound radically different from the last. Customers use the tone, language, and content of your support emails to evaluate your customer service and to better understand your company culture. Inconsistencies will make those consumers uneasy.
Consider creating a template for your tech or product support team. Provide "canned" responses to the most common customer questions so the answers stay consistent no matter who's assigned to a particular customer. Alternatively, use a style guide to inform support assistance of voice guidelines. Include words and phrases they should and shouldn't use.
A consistent brand voice makes your company more trustworthy.
From email to blog posts, you want every piece of content you publish to reflect your company culture and ideals. A consistent brand voice makes this possible.
Create a style guide that everyone who creates content for your business should memorize. Address issues like capitalization, punctuation, headline formatting, and linking preferences. You can also create separate style guides for different types of media. For instance, a style guide for social media channels might look slightly different from one for your blog.
Distribute the style guide and update it regularly. You'll see a consistent voice emerge from your content, which will make your customers feel more confident in your products or services.
It also helps to have a two-stage process for content creation. One person writes the content, then passes it off to an editor or quality control agent. That way, if the writer strays too far from the brand voice, the editor can catch the problem and fix it.
The most effective companies eliminate brand inconsistencies. If you're not sure whether you've achieved this goal or if you need help getting your marketing strategy off the ground, schedule a consultation today.