Your marketing materials “speak” for your business, and one of the things that helps determine whether they’re doing a good job is the “voice.” What voice does your company use to communicate with the world? Is it an appropriate voice for all of your target audiences? Does it reflect your corporate culture? And most importantly, is it working for you?

Need help ensuring that a consistent (and appropriate!) voice is used across all of your marketing materials? Give me a call. I’m here for you.

Your company has a “voice,” and this voice is reflected in the writing style, tone and words used in your marketing materials. You’re company’s voice might be “corporate” or “professional.” It might be “folksy,” “warm and fuzzy,” “high tech,” “fun,” or anything else. Whatever voice you use, it’s important to ensure that (a) it will resonate with your prospective customers and (b) it is used consistently throughout your marketing materials.

To give you a feel for the difference that voice can make, I have taken a message that I wrote for Mellano & Company (a major player in the cut flower industry) about product grading standards, and written it three different ways:

1.      "Folksy” Voice (the actual text used in their brochure)

No doubt you’ve heard the saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Here on the farm we have another saying: “If it ain’t gorgeous, don’t keep it.” We’re so passionate about our quality standards that we’d rather send a marginal stem to the compost pile than ship it out to our customers.

 2.     “Corporate” Voice

Quality control. It’s at the heart of everything we do. And although creating high-quality flowers and greens starts out in the field, it’s our very exacting grading standards that ensure consistent product for you. Any stem that doesn’t meet the grade simply isn’t shipped. We guarantee it.

 3.     “Obnoxious Teenspeak” Voice

Hey Dude! How do we make sure you get flowers and greens that are totally sweet every time? We check them out. I mean, like, we check out every single stem to see if it totally rocks or if it sucks. And if it sucks, we chuck it onto a big compost pile instead of shooting it out to you. Cuz that would be bad. And we’d never do that.

Voice really can make a significant difference!

CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT: MELLANO & COMPANY

Mellano & Company is one of the major players in the U.S. cut flower industry. From growing (their Southern California farms are really something to see) to imports, wholesale sales and mass marketing, theirs is a fully vertically-integrated operation.

Last year Mellano began developing a unique voice for their marketing materials. They call it the voice of the “sophisticated Midwest farmer.” Click here to read the full text about grading standards that I mentioned in the article above.