Why Your Brand Needs to Find Its Voice

October 25, 2021 Freya Whiteside Branding, Small business

The importance of speaking your audience’s language

You never really know someone until you get talking to them, and the same goes for brands and businesses. When your brand looks the part, you want it to sound the part too. But how do you start creating a voice that communicates who you are and what you stand for that really resonates with your audience?

In this blog, we’re deep diving into why your brand tone of voice is an essential part of helping your customers get to know you.

What is a brand tone of voice?

Your brand’s tone of voice is all about the way your brand talks to your audience. It’s a distinct personality that captures who you are and includes things like the words you use, the way you talk and the tone or emotion behind the messages you’re putting out.

The way you talk tells your audience a little more about what you’re about and helps them get a feeling of the kind of company you are. Think of your brand’s voice as an initial impression, like striking up a chat with someone new: what kind of conversation would get them to stick around?

Why is a brand tone of voice so important?

A well defined tone of voice will be used everywhere. From your website to your socials to emails and advertisements, your tone of voice should be front and centre, and is as essential to your branding as a logo or colour palette.

More than just telling the world about who you are, a tone of voice can also help to build community, especially on social media channels where consumers can opt-in to following your brand. Smart brand positioning, articulated through your brand’s voice, can foster a real connection between your brand, individual customers and a wider community, creating loyalty that goes beyond the quality of your offering.

It’s therefore vital that your tone of voice is right for your audience. You wouldn’t want to buy baby products from a brand that sounded harsh or cold, for example, or alcohol from a brand that reminded you of your old headteacher. But how to get started?

How can I define my brand tone of voice?

Your brand’s tone of voice is all about you – your company, your values, your mission and your purpose – so thinking about how to get those on paper is a valuable place to start. Defining your business in a few key words, or thinking about the sort of language your brand brings to mind, can help you start thinking about what your voice could become.

Your voice will be a key touchpoint for your audience, and this is particularly true online. As you start thinking about your tone of voice, consider the purpose your voice will serve as you create an online presence. Will your brand make your audience laugh? Empower your customers to be their best selves? Whatever your message, it’s up to your brand voice to get it across – so you want to get it right!

Thinking about how to find the right words for your brand? Reach out to me at [email protected] to chat more about copywriting and your brand’s tone of voice.

The Facebook Ad Funnel: What Is It and How to Make It Work for You

October 18, 2021 Paff Evara Facebook, Paid Media, Small business

The Facebook Ads Funnel is one of the most powerful tools in helping you generate leads, sales, increase ROI and ultimately grow your business. We want to help you get the most out of the funnel by breaking down what it is and how you can make it work for your business.

Are you ready to start advertising your business on social media? You’ve established your brand identity and your core offering, but now you’re ready to really drive up those conversions. Before you dive into the world of Facebook ads, it’s important to understand how the conversion funnel works and how you can use it to get your message in front of the right people to reach your goals.

The Facebook ads funnel is split into three key stages in the buyer journey (Awareness, Consideration, Conversion) and is designed to pull qualified users down the funnel to convert. A conversion is when the recipient of a marketing message performs a desired action, which might look like purchasing a product, booking an appointment or filling out a contact form.

Top of Funnel (TOF) – Awareness

At the top of the funnel is the awareness stage. This is where you target cold audiences, people who are not yet aware of your brand’s products or services, as your ideal customer persona. At this stage, your key focus is to introduce your brand and clearly communicate your brand purpose and offering. The ads you push at this stage should spark curiosity with potential prospects and educate them on your brand through an authoritative tone of voice.

Middle of Funnel (MOF) – Consideration

Moving into the middle of the funnel, you are targeting a warm audience as prospects: people who are aware of your brand and have previously shown some interest but who haven’t taken it further. For example, these prospects may have visited your website previously, engaged with your social media channels or engaged with the ads you are pushing at TOF.

At this stage, you want to push ads that communicate not only the key features of your offering, but also its benefits and how it can help users overcome their pain points. Here, you want to focus on clear and concise ad creative that communicates your core USPs in the first 3 seconds of a user seeing the ad.

Bottom of Funnel (BOF) – Conversion

At the bottom of the funnel is the conversion stage, where your prospects are now a hot audience of users you are retargeting. These users have come close to converting but have pulled back to consider further (e.g., adding product(s) to cart but abandoning before completing their purchase). Therefore, at this stage you want to push strong ad creatives that answer the ‘Why us?’ question and work to push users over the conversion line. You might use techniques such as highlighting social proof, featuring customer testimonials or using an offer (e.g., 10% off code) here.

The successful implementation of the full funnel Facebook ads structure works to nurture users and pushes those qualified users down the funnel to convert. It’s important to remember that most users are not going to convert on your core offer at the first touchpoint (particularly with high value conversions) as it’s likely they won’t know or trust you yet. Therefore, users need to interact with your brand over multiple touch points before converting – as the Facebook ads funnel is set up to facilitate.

To maximise the success of your new Facebook ads funnel, it’s important to implement an omnichannel marketing approach that uses various touch points including organic social media, paid social media, email marketing, SEO etc., ensuring an integrated and seamless experience for customers across each. At Pilot Fish Media, we can help you build a successful Facebook ads strategy as well as help you implement a full digital omnichannel marketing strategy to maximise its success.

Get in touch at [email protected] to find out about how our creative and strategy teams can help you reach your goals.

3 Tips for Using Social Media as a Small Business

October 4, 2021 Rachel Fox Business, Small business, Social Media

Hey there, Rachel here! Last month I joined the wonderful PFM team as a creative content producer. As you may have guessed from the job title, I am obsessed with almost everything to do with design. Although graphic design has my heart, I love experimenting in other creative areas such as rug tufting, painting, sewing…the list goes on. This love developed into a small business last year which is where the real learning process began!

Social media is something we all use and are comfortable with in our day-to-day lives. When you’re starting out as a small business, social media can be a key step to ensure success is around the corner…but only if you’re using it correctly. As well as being completely free to use, there are almost double the amount of active social media users browsing different social channels each day compared to just five years ago. So why should small businesses let this opportunity go to waste?

On average, each user spends around 2.5 hours scrolling per day, although the screen time feature on my iPhone has let me know on numerous occasions that my scrolling time is much higher than this – oops. These few hours offer an incredible opportunity for you to grow your business by building brand awareness, connecting with your audience or even making direct sales through different channels.

Having some experience running a small business, here are some tips I’ve learned along the way on how best to utilise social media for your business!

1. Choose your platforms

To ensure you’re using social media effectively for business, I cannot emphasise how important it is to do some research! It can be easy to assume which social platforms your target market is using regularly, but you may be shocked when you get down to the nitty gritty figures.

For example, you may assume that the average age of Facebook users is between 35-55. With this thought in mind, you may be inclined to skip over this platform when trying to reach a younger demographic and jump straight into both Instagram and TikTok. However, according to Digital 2021, surprisingly almost a quarter of Facebook users are aged 18-24.

It’s always great to start on the platform(s) your desired audience are using and build from there. That’s not to say you cannot and should not use other social platforms as well! Trialling new platforms and different channels can be great for expanding your audience and meeting different business goals. The beauty of social media is that you don’t need to take an all-or-nothing approach: experimenting can be fun, insightful and is all part of the process.

2. Consistency is key

No matter what you may be selling or what service your business is offering, posting consistently will help build strong relationships with your target audience. This doesn’t mean you’ll constantly need to bring out new products and offer new services every other day: posts can simply be about keeping your audience in the loop. Sharing what’s going on behind the scenes, resharing products and services you already offer or even having some fun and jumping on board with current trends can help create a buzz and build excitement.

Basically, don’t go radio silent and disappear completely! With all this being said, I believe it’s also necessary to touch on the importance of keeping your audience’s current needs in mind. Making sure you are up-to-date with what is going on in the world (especially within your target audience) is key as social media is constantly changing. What might have worked last year or even last month may not work today!

3. Have fun and be creative!

In my opinion, coming from a background and love for all things design, this is arguably the most important tip when it comes to posting on social media as a small business. You’ve got to be loving the content you’re creating and putting out into the world for everybody to see.

Now more than ever with how many posts we see per day, it’s clear to users when a brand hasn’t put thought into their content. These posts will be met with a quick swipe of the finger and likely never to be viewed again! If you’re not enjoying creating your content then you can’t expect viewers to engage.

As I mentioned before, it’s not a secret that social media is constantly evolving. With this comes each individual platform adding new features for us to creatively play about with. Even switching between static imagery, video, carousels or interactive polls can do wonders and keep the creative juices flowing…just have some fun with it!

Need some inspiration for your social media marketing? To get a complimentary audit of your current social strategy, get in touch at [email protected].

CategorySmall business