How Your MSP Stands out with a Unique Brand Voice

We talked recently about the importance of a personal brand for your managed service provider (MSP) business. In that blog, we looked at what makes you different from everyone else, how you deliver your service and your business values. We also touched on branding visuals. 

This time, we’re going to be looking at your brand voice, which is another key piece in how you stand out and stop being generic. It’s not as complicated as it sounds, I promise! But it is important to think about it. 

What is Your Brand Voice?

Your brand voice is how you interact with the world in person. It’s also your digital personality, and it should be consistent across every platform where you have a presence. That includes social media, your own website, anywhere you make a guest contribution, in paid ads, your email newsletter and more. 

It’s also how you demonstrate your vision, mission, values and your USP, even if you don’t talk about them specifically in your content. If one of your values, for instance, is ‘fun’, then your tone of voice can be light-hearted. 

Your brand voice needs to not only reflect you as a business and as an individual, but it also needs to resonate with your target audience. If you’re selling luxury timeshares, don’t borrow buzzwords from your eight year old! 

You need to think about the words you use, and those can be your favourite words you use frequently in real life. They might be short phrases that you’ve coined that are specific to one of your services or how you deliver them. 

As an example, my friend Susanna Reay describes herself as an ‘authority architect’, helping people to define frameworks to reflect their own authority. TubbTalk guest Kennedy’s business is called “Email Marketing Heroes” and not only is it visually branded with superheroes, every person in his team signs off emails with ‘kapow!’

Consistency is Key

No matter what industry you’re in, if you’ve got an online presence, the places you show up will be busy. In order to be memorable, you have to give people a reason to think of you first. 

So once you’ve decided on your brand visuals, messages and brand voice, you have to stick to it. Yes, you can have a rebrand at some point, but people need to be able to recognise you when your content appears in their feed or in their inboxes. 

When you first start out, it might be handy to pause before you press publish and check over your content. Does it reflect your brand voice? Have you used key words, phrases or even emojis? Does it sound like the post you put out yesterday and last week’s email? 

One quick note on brand voice and tone of voice, which I think is an important distinction. Qualtrics explain that ‘brand voice’ is your personality and ‘tone of voice’ is how you shift what you say to the situation you’re in. Just as you sound different in a business meeting and in the pub with friends, your online brand voice changes depending on the circumstances. 

(PS – scroll down the Qualtrics post to find a video from our old friend Col Gray. I didn’t know he was there until I spotted the beard!) 

Be the Same Online and in Person

Once you’ve defined your brand voice, the words you’ll use, your taglines and key messages to share, make sure you sound exactly like that in real life! We tend to meet people digitally before we encounter them in person, and it can be quite jarring if we feel we’ve got to know them only to find they’re like a stranger. 

What often happens is that people think they need to be professional at all times online, and this translates to a stiffness and formal language that they assume will attract customers. But most of us don’t really talk like that outside of work, so it confuses people. 

And unfortunately, it sometimes makes them distrustful of you, too. If your online voice and in person voice aren’t the same, how can they be sure that your values, services and delivery will be the same? 

You might need to be brave and build up to using more of your unique brand voice, but look at what you’ve written before you share something. Ask yourself: “Would I use that word in real life? Could I find a shorter way to say that?” And beware of using industry jargon! MSPs especially can be guilty of that. 

Brand Voice Matters Regardless of Company Size

If you’re just starting out, then brand voice is a great way to establish yourself in a crowded marketplace. Use your voice to attract peers, collaborators, vendors and ultimately clients whose values align with yours. This is how you’ll see success as an MSP. 

As your business grows, it’s a good idea to have all of your branding visuals, brand voice, business USP, values and even preferred fonts and email opening and sign off lines all ready to share with new employees. 

Even if you just decide to outsource your emails or social media to a freelancer, you must make sure that whatever they create sounds like you. Any sudden shifts in language, tone or messaging will be noticed by your audience, and just as with your online/offline personality, they’ll be suspicious of differences. 

If you’re part of a large organisation with offices in multiple locations, ensuring a cohesive brand voice is just as important as the other elements of your MSP’s branding. 

In case you don’t already have brand guidelines, now is the time to set these out, share them with department heads and ensure that all teams in all locations sound the same.

And don’t be afraid of letting employees post on their own LinkedIn profiles. If you lay the ground rules and ask them to follow the guidelines, they can be great advocates for your business. 

Swearing in Your Brand Voice

Finally, a note on swear words being part of your MSP’s brand voice. Personally, I would avoid it. In my experience, business people do tend to swear in social settings and even meetings, when they’re comfortable with the people they’re talking to. 

However, in online social updates and blog posts, it’s not quite as common. A few businesses do use swearing as an effective part of their brand voice. It allows people to self-disqualify themselves as potential customers and saves the company time on wrong-fit clients. 

If you want to do this, please proceed with caution! Words can easily be misconstrued online, and people can be hurt by reading or hearing language they’re not comfortable with. Why risk isolating and offending people before you’ve even started a conversation? It’s always better to give a good impression.

What do you think? Do you have a brand voice for your MSP? Have we inspired you to think about it?

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