Knowing Your Business's Brand Voice with Danielle Lim, Co-Owner of Haven Collective
Knowing your brand voice isn’t just key to your marketing, it’s one of the biggest factors when it comes to pivoting and growing your business.
Meet Danielle, co-owner of Haven Collective and marketing guru. In today’s podcast episode, we dive into branding and finding our business voice - speaking of voice, stay tuned to the end of the podcast to hear our fun facts!
How Haven Collective got started.
After years of working from home as a marketing guru for a venture capital firm and working in the green industry, Danielle knew how isolating it was and she could see the problems with the options offered to her around Columbus, Ohio.
Danielle’s best friend, Melissa Blackburn talked about all the missed opportunities and decided to partner up and jump in. They wanted a space that worked for people like them and are thankful that it resonated with others. Danielle says, “It's been a lot of fun building this brand and using my past experience... to help all of our members kind of grow and expand their businesses.”
Your business and it’s brand voice.
Finding your brand voice starts with a part most business owners hate. Danielle calls them the most annoying questions on earth and, personally, I believe she’s not far off. “Most of our members are freelancers and small business owners, entrepreneurs that don't necessarily have a team or a business partner to push them in these areas,” says Danielle.
Get started with your brand voice by asking these questions:
Who you are.
What you stand for.
What value you’re providing to potential customers or clients.
Then, keep asking yourself “Why?” Again and again, “until it's down to the smallest little thing that's going to make the biggest impact for those potential clients and customers,” says Danielle.
What happens when you don’t ask enough questions? You’re not challenging your assumptions and your brand doesn’t resonate. AKA: it doesn’t stand out. The business looks just like everyone else’s. Most small business owners think they know who their client is and run on guesses, which is a great place to start but verification is always needed.
Once you have gotten your information with surveys or other methods, you can iterate. “If you start with something, and then you learn that your client isn't necessarily who you thought they were, you need to be willing to change up what you're doing and change up your brand voice to connect with the actual person,” says Danielle.
It’s all about being clear in the beginning about who you are and how you speak about your brand to the customer. Then, be consistent. “If you're constantly shifting, or changing, because you didn't narrow it down and it was just a whim, they're not going to really get to know you, they're not going to necessarily trust you.” When this happens, they’ll easily switch to another business. Really need to change it up in your brand? Be transparent about it with your customers.
Save time, and money, when it comes to your marketing.
Knowing your brand voice “...allows you to know every caption you're going to post,” says Danielle. You’ll understand the image needed, tone and language. “A lot of companies try to cut costs by writing copy themselves, because they think, ‘Oh, I can write an email, I can certainly write the copy on a website, I just don't have the technical skills to code it.’ Surprise, surprise, that ends up usually being the holdup of a lot of marketing efforts,” she says.
When it comes to marketing tools, such as a website, not knowing your brand voice can cause you to recreate a website every 3 months because it feels like something is off. Same happens with brochures, paid ads and so on. They don’t resonate and have to be redesigned, coded or printed.
The top fundamentals for a successful business brand.
Start with your Values, Mission Statement, Purpose and the other basics of a business that you can come back to again and again. You can then determine the brand voice, such as the level of silly or seriousness versus conversational or educational.
Then you can get to the fun part like logos, images, photo shoots, print outs and a website. Although we all love the visuals more, you actually need that foundation as a way to check in on the brand. If you’re a minimalist brand but your images or logo are coming out busy and cluttered, you know you’re deviating from the path.
Pivoting your business without losing your brand voice.
Before pivoting, go back to that foundation and ask the same questions you started with. Your customers just experienced a major shift in their lives and you want to meet them where they’re at.
During the pandemic shutdowns, as an example, Haven Collective provided a co-working space in Columbus, Ohio. It’s a physical location to get work done. “But beyond that, they come for connection, because they don't want to be isolated,” says Danielle. “...and with that isolation usually comes the inability to grow, either within a company, going up the ladder, or to continue growing their business, because by yourself, you don't often have the motivation, inspiration to keep you motivated every day, right?” Danielle and Melissa went back to their building blocks and asked how they could still achieve that connection and growth.
“So in pandemic times, a lot of people are working from home, they have completely different needs and expectations than they had before but a lot of their problems are still the same. And so you just need to figure out, how do I reach them today? How do I provide them value today, that looks different than what it did six, nine months ago. And that's really where it all starts.”
If, during this business pivot, you realize you don’t know what your value and purpose was, you’ll need to figure it out. What do you really provide? I.E. If you’re a website agency, it’s not just websites, it’s a way for your clients to attract their own customers.
Back to the example of Haven Collective: Danielle and Melissa tested a few things in the beginning and realized that, although people were trying to continue the connection and growth on social media, they felt bombarded with so much noise. That’s were the virtual memberships and Collectives came in. Their goal is to provide the same connection that members got when grabbing a cup of coffee in the kitchenette and the growth from chatting with another entrepreneur.
Increasing your brand recognition during a pandemic.
“The ways that we did it before the pandemic are still probably going to be the same, just slightly modified,” says Danielle. Word of mouth is still key, sharing with your network and attending virtual events are ways to go. The opportunity now is that you can connect with others nationally now due to the virtual meetups.
Got a feel good story? It could more easily be picked up by earned media. Take a look into PR, local journalists, local bloggers. They want interesting stories that have a positive spin.
Have yet to focus on advertising? You might have a better chance to stretch your budget now. “If you're looking at more local or smaller organizations, they're hurting, and they need your advertising dollars, and they're willing to cut deals,” says Danielle.
Last tip for entrepreneurs: be visible.
Danielle encourages entrepreneurs to put themselves out there instead of hiding behind their brand but “...people have always done business with people not with brands. They choose people and so the more you can allow them to see who you are, they'll actually feel the authenticity, they'll see the transparency and it allows them to connect and feel like you really know them.”
Danielle Lim is the Co-Creator of Haven Collective, a coworking community in Columbus, Ohio. Danielle has over 17 years experience in marketing, project management, and venture capital. When she’s not building the Haven community, Danielle is often participating in green volunteer activities, snuggling her two cats, or enjoying the latest Columbus restaurant with her Husband, David.
Catch up with Danielle on LinkedIn or Instagram. You can find out more about Haven Collective on their website, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook.
