3 easy steps to adopt your holiday brand voice during COVID-19

How to differentiate your seasonal marketing campaign in 2020

When it comes to defining your brand, it’s easy to get caught up in images: the logo, the font size of the text, the images you want to represent for your business…

But define how you are going to to talk your customers is also essential.

You may have the most beautiful, fast, and well-stocked website in your industry, but if you don’t have a powerful brand voice, it won’t have the impact you want, resulting in disappointing sales.

The voice is the personality of your brand, and it is always the same. Your tone is what you change depending on the context.

This is how I remember it:

Your personality remains the same (voice), but you express yourself differently (tone) in different situations. For example, your tone may change when you’re having a drink with friends vs. Meeting with your financial advisor.

So when you’re designing your seasonal marketing campaign, you want to keep your brand voice consistent, even if your tone changes in some cases.

Infusing your tone with a bit of holiday cheer, urgency, and excitement can be a great way to encourage your audience to do their holiday shopping with you.

Here are some of the benefits of defining your brand voice:

• It makes your business instantly recognizable.
• Allows you to authentically connect with customers to build relationships vs. simply hitting them over the head with sales copy.
• It helps you deliver consistent messages, whether you’re writing an email or a video script.
• It attracts your target audience and keeps them engaged.

With consumers receiving thousands of marketing messages during the holidays, it’s important to consider your voice to differentiate your seasonal marketing campaign.

According to some recent statistics, about 45% of Canadians they plan to spend less on holiday shopping in 2020 than they did the year before, so it will be even more of a challenge to capture their attention.

Step 1: Have you defined your brand voice?

The most important thing to do when choosing your voice is to make it relevant to your customers.

It’s not about the way you like to write or talk, think about who uses your product or service.

You want to speak to your target audience and create an emotional connection with what you offer.

Step Two: Look back to see what worked and what didn’t.

It’s almost impossible to be successful in the future if you don’t know what worked in the past.

If you’ve previously run a seasonal marketing campaign, were there certain slogans or ads that your target audience responded favorably to? Is there data I can refer to from last year to make decisions this year?

While repurposing what has worked in the past can be an efficient and effective technique, consider ways you can update any existing creative.

Update images or content so your loyal customers don’t see the same things from last year!

READ: Brand marketing during the coronavirus: what you need to know

Brands are much more than just a visual representation, slogan, jingle or website; and it’s not just something that only the “big guys” should pay attention to.

Your brand represents the total experience of working with you. From the colors of your website to your core values ​​to the customer service you provide, every touch point someone has with you shapes and helps define your message, whether they feel favorable or not.

It’s time to take another look at how we’ve positioned our brand.

Read more on our website.

Step Three: Tap into people’s emotions in relevant ways.

There’s a reason you see so many of those overly sweet TV and digital commercials featuring cute kids and puppies: they work!

If you can connect with your customers in an authentic way while stirring up their emotions, you can increase awareness and engagement.

Here is a commercial canadian tire did last year, tugging at the heartstrings as he brought back a truly Canadian winter pastime: sledding!

It’s important to consider how you’re representing your brand’s voice and images right now.

Many people will be staying home this year, avoiding visits with family and friends due to COVID-19. Consumers are stressed, burned out and uncertain about the future.

Think of ways to be sensitive and use empathic marketing techniques to really connect with your target audience and avoid offending anyone.

Always own your brand voice.

There is quite a bit of controversy surrounding the use of words like “Christmas” in a seasonal marketing campaign. Other companies stay away from the use of traditional images such as Christmas trees or nativity scenes.

I am not saying that you should or should not censor what you say, but this decision is related to the values ​​of your company. Think about what you want your small business to stand for and how you want your customers to perceive it, and then support it.

Whether your brand voice is friendly and approachable, formal and professional, or fun and silly, using these tactics can help you cut through the noise and create a memorable and meaningful seasonal marketing campaign.

What kind of campaign do you want to run this year?

For the success of your business,

Suzanne