What is Brand Voice, Why You Need it, and Why You Shouldn’t Trust AI to Deliver It

It’s getting tougher to stand out from the crowd if you’re a business owner, especially online. Your competition grows daily, and there’s a flood of generic content for people to wade through to get a nugget of authenticity.

One way to separate yourself from your competition is to develop a unique brand voice. But what is a brand voice? Why does it matter? How do you create it? And why can’t you rely on AI content to provide it?

Let’s get into it.

What is Brand Voice?

Brand voice is your unique, consistent, and recognizable company identity. Think of it as your personality. Brand voice is the tone, values, and style you use across your communication. Developing a unique brand voice is like creating a memorable fictional character.

We all know these characters and what makes them unique.

• Tony Stark: Playboy, genius, sarcastic
• Han Solo: Resourceful, cynical, blue collar
• Homer Simpson: Simple, dim-witted, easy-going
• Tony Soprano: Charismatic, intimidating, impulsive
• Charlie Brown: Shy, kind, innocent, gentle-hearted
• James Bond: Adventurous, confident, resourceful

The list is endless. But you get the point; people remember these iconic characters because they have unique personalities; the same is true for companies.

• Harley Davidson
• Old Spice
• Apple
• Starbucks
• Nintendo

The characters and companies mentioned above resonate with people, so you need to develop a unique brand voice and avoid deviating from it if you have one.

How Important Brand Voice is To Your Business

Having a unique brand voice may not directly impact your revenue, but it does contribute to your success, and here’s how.

Differentiation

As mentioned above, whatever market you’re in, it’s probably oversaturated now and getting more so every day. Having a unique company personality and brand voice differentiates you from your competition and can make a lasting impression on customers.

Emotional Connection

CMS Wire says it best,

Today’s customers want to be satisfied, that’s true. But there’s something else they crave even more: emotional connection.

If you connect with your customers emotionally, they’re more apt to buy your product or use your service, regardless of the price. Apple is an excellent example of this. Whether you like them or not, Apple products sell in the millions despite the high price tag. Why? Because Apple connects with people emotionally.

Apple’s unique brand voice makes people happy about buying their products, and their stance on security makes customers feel safer buying iPhones than their competitors.

Your company doesn’t have to have a cult-like hold over customers like Apple. Still, if you can trigger their emotions like trust, empathy, or happiness, you develop loyalty, which translates to higher revenue.

Brand Consistency

Another benefit of a well-defined brand voice is that it ensures consistency across all of your communication channels, like advertising and social media posts. Brand consistency fosters loyalty and trust and can lead to repeat customers.

Customer Perception

If you don’t tell your customers who you are, what you’re about, and what values you hold, they write the narrative themselves. Your brand voice influences how you’re perceived, which can increase demand for what you offer.

So, What Does this Have to do With AI?

If you’re a business owner, you probably have an online presence, whether it’s a blog, website, newsletter, or social media accounts. AI tools like ChatGPT are excellent for helping create content, but you shouldn’t rely on them, and here’s why.

AI Doesn’t Get Your Customers

One key to developing your unique brand voice is knowing your customers. What do they want? What are their pain points? If you’re an attentive business owner, you know the answers to those questions — AI doesn’t and can’t.

While AI tools grow more sophisticated every day, they can’t entirely replicate human intuition, especially when it comes to changing customer wants and needs. AI tools also lack cultural trends and references that humans need to tap into to build a unique brand voice.

Difficulty Understanding Context

AI now struggles to understand and interpret context in complex or ambiguous situations. Trusting AI for your messaging can get you in hot water on social media with a blunder that could take months to smooth over.

Difficulty Identifying Values

Another key to developing your unique brand voice is having a well-defined mission and strong core values. If you use a tool like ChatGPT to write content for your website, newsletter, or social media posts, what it creates likely won’t reflect your values or mission unless you add it later.

Risk of Sounding Generic

Lastly, generic AI-created content is flooding the internet, and it will get worse. Much of what you get from these tools now is generic and lacks personality — the personality you must have if you want to create a unique brand voice and stand apart from the crowd.

This quote from Yoast sums it up best:

AI-generated content often lacks nuance, depth, and originality, which can harm the credibility and reputation of a brand.

In my next post, I’ll talk about strategies you can use to develop your unique brand voice.

If you’re a business owner, you probably have an online presence, whether it’s a blog, website, newsletter, or social media accounts. AI tools like ChatGPT are excellent for helping create content, but you shouldn’t rely on them, and here’s why.

AI Doesn’t Get Your Customers

One key to developing your unique brand voice is knowing your customers. What do they want? What are their pain points? If you’re an attentive business owner, you know the answers to those questions — AI doesn’t and can’t.

While AI tools grow more sophisticated every day, they can’t entirely replicate human intuition, especially when it comes to changing customer wants and needs. AI tools also lack cultural trends and references that humans need to tap into to build a unique brand voice.

Difficulty Understanding Context

For now, AI struggles to understand and interpret context in complex or ambiguous situations. Trusting AI for your messaging can get you in hot water on social media with a blunder that could take months to smooth over.

Difficulty Identifying Values

Another key to developing your unique brand voice is by having a well-defined mission and strong core values. If you use a tool like ChatGPT to write content for your website, newsletter, or social media posts, what it creates likely won’t reflect your values or mission unless you add it in later.

Risk of Sounding Generic

Lastly, generic AI-created content is flooding the internet and it’s going to get worse. Much of what you get from these tools now is generic and lacks personality — the personality you must have if you want to create a unique brand voice and stand apart from the crowd.

This quote from Yoast sums it up best:

AI-generated content often lacks nuance, depth, and originality, which can harm the credibility and reputation of a brand.

In my next post, I’ll talk about strategies you can use to develop your unique brand voice.