Voice Works
Voice Works: Clarify your brand message, define your brand voice, grow your business.
According to a 2021 survey by Lucidpress, brand management experts estimate company revenue would increase 10-20% if their brand was consistently maintained.
You have an excellent product. Your customers love what you do. When your people talk directly to customers, they have conversations that build relationships, drive sales and strengthen your reputation. In short, you’re great at helping your customers. Your marketing and sales copy should be, too.
Does this sound familiar?
Unfortunately, as soon as you start writing copy for your website or other marketing channels, you disappear down an introspective rabbit hole and land with a splash in a vat of word soup; full to the brim with information but sorely lacking in engagement and persuasion.
Your copy, which should be a conversation, becomes a lecture.
Not only are you shouting at people, you’re shouting at them in the same way as the 37 other companies that operate in your space.
It’s a sure-fire turnoff and you’re most likely losing business because of it.
What does your brand strategy actually mean?
Today, increasingly, creating a brand strategy means thinking deeply about why your organisation exists and what it stands for. But how does a set of values or a mission statement translate into an effective sales page or a series of useful and interesting blog posts? Your writers need practical guidance. Otherwise, those fancy strategy slides aren’t worth the money you paid for them.
There’s a better way
Here’s the thing. You don’t need to shout at people. Or waste money on planning with no practical benefit. Your brand message and voice could be working so much smarter. They could be the most valuable members of your marketing, sales and customer relations teams; enabling you to:
- Have more fruitful conversations with customers.
- Stand apart from your competitors.
- Get better results from your marketing campaigns.
You’re not alone
There’s an epidemic in the business world. An epidemic of taking the written word for granted. If you can write an email, you can write a web page or marketing brochure. Yes, you can. But will it be any good? Probably not.
Complacency leads to crap copy. It’s everywhere, filling our eyes and minds with unwanted blah. Sophisticated companies spend thousands on new websites and get the boss to write the copy. Oops.
You didn’t get where you are overnight. It was a journey. You made mistakes, learnt from them, and found ways to make your experience ever more valuable. It’s the same with your brand message and voice. They don’t just unfurl effortlessly from your keyboard and onto the page. It’s a process. If you want your copy to hit home, you have to put the work in.
When you take words for granted and fail to build strong foundations for your brand message and voice, you end up:
- Communicating inconsistently across different marketing channels.
- Reinventing the wheel every time you start a new marketing campaign.
- Failing to engage the reader or persuade them to take the next step.
- Trapped sounding like the old you when your company has moved on.
- Sharing dry information that doesn’t empathise or tell a story.
- Blending in with all the other companies who lack a clear message and voice.
Imagine a world without these symptoms.
Find your voice, cut through the noise
Imagine if you…
- Understood what your customers want on a deep level so every conversation, in-person or via your marketing channels, became more fruitful.
- Knew what was unique about how you solve your customers’ problems so you could establish a defensible position in your market.
- Had a brand message framework you could return to again and again to inspire any campaign or piece of content.
- Had a brand voice that revealed the qualities and quirks of your organisation allowing you to communicate authentically with customers.
How would that affect your marketing operation?
Our Solution: Voice Works
Voice Works is an intensive programme designed to help you clarify your message, define your brand voice, and build strong foundations for all your marketing efforts. It will give you:
A clearly defined brand story
This document sets out the fundamentals of why and how your business is useful for your customers. You will return to it again and again to inspire campaigns and content. There’s no need to start from scratch every time you want to create a new piece of marketing.
A punchy brand statement (aka value proposition)
This communicates who you help and how in just a couple of sentences. Less blah more BOOM. Use it on your website, in sales pitches, anywhere you want to get noticed.
New web and marketing copy
We apply your newly clarified message and voice to live, customer-facing marketing. Your website is a great place to start, but we can also include email, social media or internal comms. You and your customers will notice the difference immediately.
A comprehensive guide to your brand voice
This easy-to-use handbook captures everything we’ve learnt and explains the parameters of your brand voice in a way that’s practical and relevant for anyone who writes on behalf of the business (and that means everyone).
Training for your team
To get the most value from your brand message and voice, we run training sessions to on-board anyone from the chief exec to the marketing intern. These sessions give your people buy-in and turn your brand message and voice into practical tools to upgrade your marketing function.
Research by The Writer shows just under a third of top businesses in the UK have a tone of voice.
You don’t need a brand strategy to create better marketing
The Voice Works process is closely linked to brand strategy, but not having one doesn’t stop you from taking part. In fact, Voice Works is more practical than simply theorising about what your plan for success should look like. Voice Works helps you clarify your brand’s position and unique strengths and turn them into punchy copy so you can use them to your advantage straightaway.
Sometimes you do need an outsider
You can’t be great at everything. My clients – directors, founders, marketing leaders – are not able to fix their brand message and voice problem themselves because it’s not their core expertise. They don’t have the methodologies to uncover their most impactful messages and define their unique tone of voice. Plus, they’re simply too busy. It’s hard to zoom out and have an objective perspective when you’re immersed in the day-to-day reality of your business. If you feel like you’re always working in your business and never on it, Voice Works gives you the chance to step back and look at the big picture.
Brands that use storytelling to create empathy are 80% more likely to have a positive overall public impression and are 40% more likely to command a premium for their products.
Five steps to brand message and voice clarity
The five steps of Voice Works help you put a stop to those feelings of frustration that surround your brand message, brand voice and marketing copy. By the end of the process, you have complete clarity and confidence in what you offer and how you talk about it. Plus, the resources you need to embed these insights across your entire company.
1. Discover – the journey begins
Where are you at? The first step includes a two-hour online Discovery Session and research of your company and customers. We explore the issues, find the bright spots, and make a plan that will help you overcome your challenges and move towards success. By putting the time in at the beginning, we achieve the level of mutual understanding essential for a fruitful project.
Outputs:
- Strategic brief: confirming objectives and requirements.
- Project timeline: with milestones and target sign-off date.
- Market research: exploring what your competitors are doing.
- Brand voice audit: what are you doing well or badly?
2. Workshop – bare your soul
An intensive, hands-on workshop, in-person or online. The Voice Works process calls on your heart and head as we clarify your audience-focused message and define your voice. We find the edges of your comfort zone and step beyond them into a place where few of your competitors dare to tread.
Outputs:
- A detailed workshop insights document: the raw material we use to build your brand story.
- Brand story: a seven-stage narrative detailing how you help customers overcome their problems and achieve success.
- Brand statement: a punchy statement that captures the value you create and makes your customers lean in.
- Tone of voice definition: a written overview of what your brand voice is, what it isn’t, and how it reflects the unique qualities of your organisation.
3. Rewrite – put it to the test
We apply the insights from the workshop to live customer-facing copy. At this stage, we’re aiming for accountability. We recommend writing new copy for your website and A/B testing on your highest traffic pages. Or creating a new email marketing campaign and tracking the results. We’ve created the tools, now let’s use them.
Outputs:
- Copy plan: what pieces of marketing copy are we working on and why?
- Copy platform: sets out the most important messages for your web or other copy, page by page in note form.
- Up to 10 pages of new web copy or a combination of web copy and other marketing copy.
4. Codify – make it practical
We capture everything we’ve learnt about your message and voice in a comprehensive set of guidelines that your entire company can use. Not one page in a tome of logo-use advice, but rather detailed instructions that are accessible and useful for anyone writing on behalf of your brand.
Outputs:
- Detailed brand message and voice guidelines.
- Before-and-after examples for up to five marketing channels.
- Practical tips to make your team’s writing more effective.
5. Integrate – empower your people
To get the most value from your brand narrative and voice, we run training sessions to on-board anyone from the chief exec to the marketing intern. These sessions give your people buy-in and turn your brand message and voice into practical tools to upgrade your marketing function.
Outputs:
- One hands-on tov implementation session for the main tone of voice champions in your company.
- One larger lecture-style presentation for up to 20 people (invite people from across departments).
- One check in clinic after three months.
Client success stories
From blank page to lift-off
Sometimes it’s the most creative companies, the ones whose job it is to help their customers tell stories, that struggle to create their own narrative and voice. Working with Ben, co-founder of production studio Megaphone Creative, I explored the deeper motivations of his customers. Together, we created a punchy, problem-solving tone of voice to help him communicate clearly in his market.
Turning science into storytelling
Elyadata is a data engineering company; a team of scientists applying the latest research to create real business results. Below you can see brand strategist Taieb sharing his thoughts on how the Voice Works process helped to uncover the insights that became the foundations of Elyadata’s marketing output.
The first step to making your brand voice work
You don’t have to commit to the whole Voice Works programme straightaway. The first step is to book a Discovery Session. This is your chance to get an objective opinion on how you could be using language better to reach more customers and grow your business.
The Discovery Session is an opportunity to share the specifics of your business, your objectives, and the marketing challenges you’re facing. During this two-hour session you’ll also learn more about the Voice Works process and how it can help you save time and make money.
Book a Discovery Session: £400 + VAT
According to Harvard Professor Gerald Zaltman, 95% of purchasing decisions are subconscious, driven more by emotional and creative thinking than by rational analysis.
Get your tailored proposal
After the Discovery Session, I’ll send you a proposal outlining how I can help you achieve your copy and business goals. You’re under no obligation to accept the proposal. You might decide you’d rather take this work up with another agency. That’s completely up to you.
Book a Discovery Session: £400 + VAT
The Discovery Session Guarantee
I’ve designed the Discovery Session to be engaging, revealing and highly practical. It should help you understand your business better so you can make strategic improvements to your copy. If it doesn’t work for you, just let me know what happened and I’ll refund you.
More client success stories
Helping a tech company find its voice
Kaltura is a listed technology company with blue-chip clients all over the world. The marketing team hired me to develop their tone of voice and train their writers. At the time, the company was on the cusp of huge change. Watch the vice president of marketing, Nohar, talking about how Kaltura’s new tone of voice had a positive impact on the whole company.
Building a better message
It’s extremely frustrating when you know you can do better but feel hamstrung by the tired conventions of your sector. PHNX Modular Systems is addressing the US housing crisis by helping developers use the latest building techniques. Director Matt hired me to update PHNX’s message and voice so the company could communicate clearly with their ideal customers and stand apart from their competitors.
Frequently asked questions
Q: How is this different from just hiring a copywriter?
A: The Voice Works programme focuses on building the foundations of your brand message and voice. It goes beyond copywriting and content creation to create message and voice alignment across your entire organisation. It’s the difference between taking a long-term strategic view and fighting fires with tactical writing services.
Q: Isn't this just about wordsmithing and making things sound nice?
A: I’ve developed Voice Works from more than 15,000 hours of running workshops and writing copy for clients around the world. It’s a robust process designed to help you achieve business growth. Rather than surface-level polishing, we delve into the true personality of your business and the deep motivations of your customers. The goal is to help you achieve leads, sales, and real pride in your brand.
Q: We already have a brand strategy - why do we need this?
A: Many companies have a brand strategy. How many of them see that strategy being applied every day by their marketing team? There is often a big gap between the theoretical ideals of the strategy and the practical reality of the writers working on behalf of the brand. Does your brand strategy tell writers how to translate your mission statement into useful real-world content? Does it provide specific parameters and training for organisation-wide implementation of your message and voice? Voice Works complements and builds on your existing brand strategy, turning it into something much more valuable.
Q: I could just figure this out myself, do I really need an expert?
A: When was the last time your to-do list was empty? Even if you could make the time for a major realignment of your message and voice, as a company leader or employee you are poorly placed to make objective calls on what’s working and what isn’t. It’s easy to get lost in detail, waste time defending old ideas, and run out of steam when you encounter hurdles. My outside perspective gives you true objectivity, plus a methodology developed from high-value work with hundreds of brands.
Q: Isn't this going to be really time intensive and disruptive?
A: Voice Works is thorough. You do have to think about it and contribute. It does take time. But will you notice the benefits of a fresh perspective from the day of the Discovery Session onwards. Rather than treading water in a reactive marketing environment where you solve the same problems over and over, Voice Works is about establishing the fundamentals of your brand message and voice so you can save time and make money over the long-term.
It’s a cliche because it’s true
As a poet and a storyteller, a brand strategist and a copywriter, I know words have the power to create understanding between people. My mission is to help businesses use words better, so they can develop those bonds of understanding: within the leadership team, between leadership and employees, and between the brand and its customers. Isn’t it time your marketing copy was a true reflection of who you are and what you stand for?
Book a Discovery Session: £400 + VAT
Not everyone is ready for this
Voice Works is a comprehensive and intensive programme that will help you enhance your marketing operation. It’s natural to be nervous when investing ambitiously in your future. Voice Works is best suited to highly motivated business leaders. Professionals who see language as an important part of their brand strategy and recognise the importance of working with an independent expert who can turn their knowledge into an irresistible story. If that sounds like you, welcome. I can guarantee your effort will be rewarded.
Book a Discovery Session: £400 + VAT