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See if you can get this….

Which laptop brand is this copy from?
“Impressively big. Impossibly thin.”

A) Apple
B) Dell
C) Samsung

You guessed it. It’s Apple.

Notice how you were able to pick out the brand from a random piece of its copy, without any visual cues.

That’s voice.

When people read the copy of your website, emails, or ads, the voice they hear from that copy is what will either make your brand unique & recognizable

or…

Just another one of the 1,002,520 Shopify stores we have in the US today.

If you haven’t yet created a voice for your brand that gives it some real personality that pops out at you, then today’s Deep Dive is for you.

By the end of this email, you’re going to be one of the few in your ecom community who knows what voice really is — the differentiator that 99% of brands are missing.

Once you truly understand it, you can use it as your secret superpower to dominate your niche.

We’ll walk you through the easy, practical steps to give your brand a voice that will make all of your Shopify friends jealous of your stand-out brand.

Let’s dive in!

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Make All of Your Shopify Friends Jealous With A Stand-Out Brand Personality

“To set your voice free, set your words free. Set your characters free. Most important, set your heart free.

It is from the unknowable shadows of your subconscious that your story will find its drive and from which it will draw its meaning.

No one can loan that or teach you that. Your voice is your self in the story.”

Many of you will be glad to know that this isn’t voice.

You see, voice isn’t just subjective. You can measure it.

In fact, it can be broken down into three elements. And when you know the elements of voice, you can put them in your copy for your website, emails, and ads to give your brand a personality that pops.

The WTF of voice

WTF stands for Words, Tone, and Frequency (naughty you if you thought it meant something else.)

• Words is your vocabulary, which is unique to your personal dialect and the niche you’re in.

• Tone is the underlying feeling of your copy.

• Cadence is a combination of the sentence length, word length, and punctuation.

All it takes to create a unique voice for your brand is to choose the words, tone, and cadence you’ll consistently use in all of your copy.

Once you have this outline and apply it to your copy, when people see your ads, website, emails, and customer service messages, they’ll know who they’re interacting with, even if your brand logo or colors aren’t on display.

What type of personality do you want for your brand?

Before you set a WTF outline for your copy, we need to decide what type of personality you want your brand to be.

Remember how we said voice is measurable? Well, there are three main categories of voice.

1. Authority

This voice educates, informs, and positions your brand as a source of truth.

Example voices of authority include Neil De Grasse Tyson, Dan Martell, and Jordan Peterson.

2. Accessibility

This voice calms, uplifts, and positions your brand as a trustworthy friend.

Examples of accessibility voices include Joe Rogan, M&M’s, and Lay’s potato chips.

3. Outlook

This voice questions, advises, and positions your brand as someone with a view on the world.

Examples of outlook include Louis CK, Honey Bunches of Oats, and Cheetos.

Have an idea of what type of voice you want for your brand?

Now let’s finish off with some practical steps you can take right now to create a unique voice for your brand that gives it a stand-out personality.

How to create your brand’s personality

Once you’ve decided on your voice category, you then need to set up the WTF of your voice.

W: words

Words for an authoritative personality are long and complex, whereas words for an accessible personality are short and simple.

The type of words you choose should be suited to your audience.

If you sell to an old audience of a traditionally-educated, upper-class demographic, then you might want to use complex words that invoke sophistication in your voice.

If you sell to a younger audience, it might be better to use simpler words; maybe even include slang.

When it comes to using jargon, this also depends on your audience. For example, techy people tend to love jargon that most of us don’t understand.

T: tone

Tone is the feeling your copy invokes. It’s easy to put tone into your voice when speaking, but when writing it’s a bit trickier.

When you write or instruct your writer to produce your copy, use some adjectives that are characteristic of the tone you want to convey.

This will allow for consistency of feel in your copy.

Example adjectives:

• Authority = factual, encouraging, empathetic

• Accessible = casual, friendly, sincere

• Outlook = hopeful, excited, critical

F: frequency

Frequency is the tempo of your writing.

Long sentences that take the reader along a stream of conscious thought calm the reader and tend to be more outlooking, deep, and symbolic.

Short sentences are direct. They get to the point. They’re authoritative, forceful, and clear.

Bringing your voice together

With your voice category and WTF structure, you have an outline that you or your writer can use in all of your copy to create a consistent, distinguishable voice for your brand.

Choose your words. Define your tone. Set your frequency.

You can simply list them all out in a doc using the WTF structure.

When you start injecting your copy with your unique voice, all of your Shopify friends will instantly see the difference in your brand.

And so will your customers and audience.

They’ll trust your brand more because its recognizable. If they like the personality your new voice creates, then they’ll spend more and stay with your brand longer.

To finish off, we wanted to provide you with some tools that can help you create and measure your brand’s voice:

• Hemingway tells you how readable your copy is. It also grades its tone and quality

• IBM Tone Analyzer grades your copy’s tone

• Grammarly corrects your writing errors

• Verbatim measures your brand’s voice, including its words, tone, and frequency

Was today’s Deep Dive helpful? Share your opinion when you give your rating below (we read all replies!)

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