How to Craft a Genuine Brand Voice for Your Cannabis Business
As a cannabis business, you’re doing more than just selling a product. You’re inviting your audience to participate in a lifestyle and be part of a community.
But, of course, you’re not the only cannabis business doing that. In a very saturated market, you have to stand out.
How can you do that? With a unique and relatable brand voice.
With the right brand voice, your audience will resonate with your brand and understand your message loud and clear.
A Brand Voice: What Is It and Why Is It Important?
A brand voice is the personality of your business and the tone that you use in all of your communications. It’s how you express your values, mission, and what makes you unique – across all media.
Your brand voice should reflect who your company is at its core; its character. Is your character professional and formal? Educational and friendly? Entertaining and bubbly? Zen and focused on self-care? Those are questions you should know the answers to when coming up with a brand voice.
Your brand voice is your identity. It’s how you stick in your audience’s brains. It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it.
Having a firmly established brand voice is especially important in the cannabis sphere because our market is so crowded, and having your identity firmly established sets you apart from the competition and doesn’t let consumers mix you up with other brands.
Creating Your Unique Voice
Here’s how you can craft your unique voice as a cannabis brand:
Identify Your Ideal Customer
Putting together an avatar of your ideal customer helps focus your brand voice by giving you a specific person to “talk” to.
Start out by studying your current customer base. Find common demographics and behavior patterns – like age, marital status, economic status, education level, lifestyle, consumption habits, and reasons why they use cannabis.
After studying what you have already, create a profile of an ideal customer that fits within those boundaries. What do they need? Where are their pain points? What are their preferences and buying habits?
This unique marketing persona will guide your messaging and help you find what really resonates with your audience.
Identify, Then Target
Now that you’ve identified your ideal customer, it’s time to speak directly to them. Create content that addresses the needs that you outlined and take the time to consider the language that you’re using.
Is this particular marketing persona likely to gravitate towards scientific, research-based findings? Are they concentrated on the way cannabis makes them feel? Or are they focused on using it in a social setting? How do they like to consume cannabis? All of these things matter when you’re considering your messaging. Think about what benefits matter most to them and start there.
Research the platforms where your target audience is most active. Whether that’s social media, in-person events, or streaming video, you’ve got to meet your customers where they are – that’s the only way they’ll hear your message and engage with you.
Building Your Voice
Instead of finding your brand voice, you have to build it. Start by defining your mission, core values, and what your business stands for. Think of any unique perspectives that you bring to the table in the industry and how those should be reflected in your business’s persona.
Make a list of the personality traits associated with your brand. Is your cannabis business the friendly Gen Z-er who posts on TikTok and consumes the latest and trendiest products? Or are they a Deadhead who sticks to their tried and true products they’ve been using since the 70s? These two audiences may both be cannabis enthusiasts, but they resonate with very different brand messaging. It’s crucial to understand who you’re talking to.
Pro tip: utilize authentic storytelling along the way. When you give your audience the chance to get to know the “face behind the curtain” and meet the human side of your brand, you foster important emotional connections.
Consistency Is Key
Consistency is paramount in creating your brand voice. Your messaging should sound the same across the board – that way, people will understand who they’re talking to and they’ll know what to expect from you.
Remain consistent by identifying your brand’s tone and style. Do this by choosing adjectives that sum up your brand’s personality and use them to guide your tone’s direction. From there, create a style guide that anyone on your team can refer back to. Include usable vocabulary, words/phrases to avoid, and examples of your brand voice on paper.
Raise Your Voice
Use these steps to identify your brand voice and then perform regular audits to make sure that it’s coming through loud and clear across all channels. For help on building your voice and/or clarifying it, reach out to Cannabis Digital Solutions today.
