Brand voice is the tone and personality of your brand when communicating with customers. Just as some of your friends are funny and some are serious, brand also has different personalities.
Most of the time, for handmade businesses on Etsy, customers expect the brand voice to be that of the creator of the products. You can be a bit more casual and friendly, and don’t be afraid to let your own personality shine. Just keep in mind to be clear and professional in your messages.
Brand voice is not limited to just communicating with customers in messaging. It should be used in all interactions with them, including:
The most important thing is to be consistent. The tone you used to answer Etsy messages/convo should be the same as the tone you reply to your Instagram DM. Fail to do so would confuse customers.
Mailchimp has a fun and casual approach. You can see that with their friendly tone and use of emojis in this post caption.
Dollar Shave Club takes a humorous and light-hearted approach to their branding, which suits their younger group of target customers.
Now, let's look at how you can use a unique brand voice to the maximum effect. Here are some areas that you can incorporate that in your Etsy business.
One of the most direct ways that you will use your brand voice is in the Etsy convos.
My recommendation is to write down a number of templates for common enquiries. For example, for my Growing Your Craft shop, about 80% of the customer's questions are about editing, changing size of designs and not able to find the order email. Writing down a sample answer for those questions (with the right brand voice) saves me a lot of time.
One of the area that is often overlooked is the product description. Writing your Etsy listing description with your brand voice is a great way to stand out from your competitors if they are not doing that.
A brand story can help push an interested shopper to being a customer, and transform a customer into a loyal fan.
Here are a few questions that can prompt you to write a good brand story:
Your brand story can show your personality to shoppers, making you more approachable and personable.
The story can be used in the ‘about’ section of your Etsy shop, and they can also be referenced in other places like the listing description or your own blog. You can also experiment with printing the brand story on a thank you card to include in orders.
