Brand Voice as a Sales Weapon – Elle Connolly, Founder @ 23 Wise Words

Automated Transcript

Alastair Cole 0:00

Hello, good afternoon, and welcome to The Sales Scoop. This is a live show for the founders and senior leaders of technology businesses who want to improve how they sell. My name is Alastair Cole. I'm a Computer Science and AI graduate, and ex Software Engineer with two decades experience in sales and marketing, and I'm delighted to say that I'm joined today by Elle Connolly, brand voice expert and content strategist, as well as copywriter. Hello, Elle. Tell us a little bit about you and your journey to hear and 23 Wise words go on, introduce yourself for us.

Elle Connolly 0:44

So yeah, I'm Elle from 23 Wise words. So I started off working in creative agencies and lots of kinds of project management and copywriting in agency land, and then started my own agency about 10 years ago. Well, freelance copywriting started on the content side, and my background is in psychology. So I did psychology at university, and as I was kind of writing content, which back in those days, was lots of blogs and things everybody just wanted blogs, I started to realize how much psychology was involved in marketing and in copy, in content writing, and kind of moved over to the copywriting side. So lots of kind of point of sale conversion, copy and bringing in that behavioral psychology into what I do, and then more recently, have kind of evolved into the brand voice side as well. So combining the idea of, again, still bringing in the psychology side and the science into brand voice, and then executing it into copy. I think there's a real gap there where there's a lot of kind of brand voice or brand strategists, and then there's copywriters, and there's not that many people that combine the two. And I think it's such a way of bringing the brand voice to life and making it into a secret weapon, is when you can actually take what's written in that PDF or that Google folder and actually convert it into actual words and copy that work in the wild.

Alastair Cole 2:17

Yeah, I think you're somebody who understands the two sides, the art and the science. And you know, for a lot of our audience there, you know, everybody's selling, it's really hard to stand out. How do you combine those two, the kind of psychology and the behavioral science and the copywriting skills? How do you combine that to get help to make a firm stand out and be different?

Elle Connolly 2:46

Yeah. So I think standing out is especially important in tech land. It can be quite difficult, because people kind of team default to this tech voice, which we all kind of know of that kind of SAS voice, that it's warm and it's friendly and helpful and conversational, which is all great we need. We like that in brand voices, but differentiating yourself can be hard. And if we look at the kind of big tech companies like Apple, for example, will differentiate themselves by being really minimalist, very simple, very their headlines are kind of never really more than five words long, and that's reflected from what's in their product. Their product is very minimalist. Their product is very simplistic in how it looks, how it's packaged, all that stuff. So I think in order to stand out, it's important to take the brand values and bring them out in the voice. And we see like Duolingo do that really well, where their brand is very much about gamification and play, and they're so therefore their brand voice is very playful. So I think that can help you stand out. Like kind of going back to what was that? What were those brand values? Why did we start what's our mission? What are our values? And bringing that into the brand voice can be a good way of starting to stand out. And then there's other ways of weaving things in, like, I'm very big on weaving in the customer conversations that we're hearing so voice of customer, and closing that empathy gap between what your customers or clients are saying and what your brand is saying. How can we reflect what they're saying in your words as well? So a lot of businesses, there's a big, what we call the empathy gap there, where people are businesses talking about themselves, not using the language that actually their customers are using. So that's a really good way of standing out as well, so your customers can see their words reflected in your brand voice.

Alastair Cole 4:43

I'd absolutely love that. So how is that? How is that? How did the mechanics of that work? If I was a founder or senior leader, and I was thinking, That sounds amazing, because obviously that's a differentiator, because it is our real customers, yeah, what would you do? What are the steps that you take in order to get the customer's voice? Just yeah, onto the page,

Elle Connolly 5:01

yeah. So there's the human side of it, which we've done for many, many years, which I still do now, which is interviewing. So we start, if I start working with a new client, I would then interview their customers, if we can, so really kind of speaking to them, asking questions, story based questions, getting those anecdotes out of them, then you can go and look through review sites. So if you're a tech company who is on Trustpilot, is on g2 all those kinds of review site sites, scraping all of those kinds of comments and things quotes, you've got sales calls. You're doing all the kind of discovery calls that your sales team are doing with potential customers and new customers. There's loads of places the list goes on, and we can go around and manually, which I've done for years manually, kind of go in and take all that really good stuff, quotes, words, things people are saying, and create a voice of customer database of a bank. And the good thing is now that as technology moves on, and we've kind of, we're now going to start using the AI word. We're what, 12 minutes, 30 minutes in, and we haven't said AI yet, but here we are. AI can actually do a great job of doing this for you. I still think the human element comes in from the interview side. I would still want to kind of do those face to face and actually speaking to people, but in terms of real time keeping up with customer conversations, we can set up AI agents that are constantly looking through Reddit, are constantly looking through Facebook groups, if that's where your audience is, are constantly looking through when you're the transcripts of your sales call and constantly keeping that real time updated, Voice of Customer stuff. So it's actually loads easier to keep up with nowadays. And then the trick is then translating what you get into actual words of random voice, yeah.

Alastair Cole 6:54

And that's a bit that no agent right now is going to be able to do, right?

Elle Connolly 6:59

Yeah, yeah. I mean, they can, they can categorize it really well. So they can kind of look out for a pain point, they can look out for an objection or a desire, and they can categorize those for you, but at the moment they're not great. Then okay, translating that into copy that actually sounds good, and uses that psychology and uses the kind of behavioral science as well it can all be trained, but just connecting those two dots aren't quite there at the moment.

Alastair Cole 7:28

Yeah, yeah, awesome. And I'd love to chat a little bit more about AI and tech, but actually the psychology piece that I think is most interesting is behavioral economics, nudging and the right language. And, you know, it makes sense to me that that would be able to, you know, actually make the difference between someone being a prospect and being a buyer. So what have you got any, any thoughts or tips on how, how that kind of brand, voice and words, how that actually influences conversion rates or sales performance?

Elle Connolly 7:59

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think one thing that it's really important to differentiate is when I talk about brand voice, I'm talking about yes, the tone of voice, yes, the personality traits, but also the messages, the brand messages, the unique standpoint that your business has. So for me, brand voice does encapsulate all those things, and therefore that's how I kind of translate it into the copy side as well. So for me, your brand voice and your copy are intertwined, whereas some people will talk about tone of voice, which is slightly different in that it's just a section of the brand voice. So the tone of voice is maybe that we, you know, we talk very directly, or we are very welcoming in our tone, like, you know, Airbnb, for example, whereas when I talk about brand voice, I'm talking about the messages as well, and the brand messages and the unique standpoint, what you stand for in your industry. So from that respect, it becomes easier to measure, because we are actually taking that brand voice and using it in copy, which then is very easy. It's got very, you know, metrics that we can measure, click through, rates, engagement, rates, all that kind of stuff. So if I had done a brand voice refresh, I would be looking at those metrics, because I've translated it into copy as well. It's very hard to measure. If you're just looking at a PDF, and it's just a kind of tone of voice PDF. How do we measure the ROI on that? But from brand voice and copywriting, we can kind of look at, okay, so where is our where we are in the customer journey? Here? Are we talking? Are we right? Have we? Have we reflected this brand voice in a LinkedIn post, for example, where the customer is maybe quite at the top of the funnel. Therefore, I'd be looking for more engagement. Okay, are they engaging more on than the posts in this new brand voice than they were two months ago when we weren't using this brand voice if they're further down in the journey. So if they're in your email list, for example, and you've translated this new brand voice into email sequences, then we can start looking okay. Is the click? Through Rate better than it was. So there are real metrics we can measure, because we're translating it into copy. Yeah,

Alastair Cole 10:07

Okay, that's fascinating. Thanks. I mean, I'm a big follower, I'm a subscriber of your YouTube channel at 23 Wise words, and one of the things I love about this channel is that it's just dripping with tips, right? And I've forgotten some of the ones that I've I've learned from you, but ones that stick in my mind are kind of copy on buttons and links and how they're associated and the psychology of of choice, what, what you know, what are the best, what are the best, what are the best little things, or the things that people have fed back positively on? And there's kind of tips that you drop, practical tips.

Elle Connolly 10:46

So occasionally, I'll be asked by a client to do a kind of audit of, okay, we've got this, let's call it a landing page. We've got this landing page. It's not converting like we thought it would. What could be, what's the problem? As a copywriter, I would always start at the point of conversion and work backwards. So the point of conversion is the button. So that's really where you're , the main bit of your psychology wants to be focused. So I started the button. I work backwards, so the button copy itself should be written in the first person from the perspective of your reader, of the reader. So you should be answering the question I want to or I want you to on your button. So for an example, if we were doing a if you were kind of a tech product that helped people count calories or lose weight, or that kind of thing, or do exercise. Your button copy might be, and you had, say, a landing page that was a kind of a PDF, five tips to lose belly fat. Let's say your button copy might lose belly fat. So they would be answering the question, I want your button copy to say, lose belly fat. That's why they click the button so it's always written in the prospective first person from the reader. And then we also put click triggers around the buttons, so that could be testimonials, it can be stats, it can be what's going to happen after you click. You'd be surprised how many people are scared of clicking buttons because they don't know what might happen next. So we put click triggers around the buttons, which are different kinds of psychology triggers to help people feel more comfortable in clicking. So there's lots of psychology bound buttons. And then I'd kind of work backwards, then up the landing page to look at other points where conversion might not be happening, the headline and that kind of thing. So yeah, the buttons are very, very important.

Alastair Cole 12:43

I absolutely love that you start at the button and work backwards, right? Because that, that's the, that's the science part for me as a kind of technologist, that that's where it should start, so that that's, that's delightful to hear, right? And which is not just, you know sounds good is, you know, full of alliteration and polysyllabic words, but it's like getting down to, is someone going to click this because that you just want them to take the next action, right? It is just about that next action.

Elle Connolly 13:10

Yeah, yeah. And I'd like to, I suppose people kind of may be thinking about the ethics side here. Okay, what are we trying to do? Some kind of evil trick to make people click buttons they don't want to click. But what I always say is, by the point of somebody being at the button and thinking about clicking, the work that you've done to get them there, the content, they've the touch points, they've they've seen the content, they've read, all that stuff has kind of pre qualified them to the point where they are the right person. Hopefully, if they're not, then the job beforehand hasn't been right. So we're not kind of coercing somebody to click a button and do something they don't want to do. They at this point, they are. They know they're the right person. They know what they want. They have a problem that you can solve. They're just not. They're just not sure whether it's that fight or flight thing in their brain. Shall I click? So we're just helping them to solve a problem for themselves.

Alastair Cole 14:06

Yeah, I hadn't. I loved that idea that you might underneath the button explaining what comes next, right? And, you know, click, click or click. You know, lose belly fat, and all you have to do is fill out the next form on the next page or something. And I hear you about the ethics, I think it's, I think, for, you know, we've all been on those sites where they'll, they'll bury the cancellation section right at the end of the East Wing, right down a, you know, down the stairs, that that's more worrying for me, that kind of dark UX. I mean, still, the copy is often like, you know, are you really sure because you're going to lose these benefits, which is fair enough, but, but no, there's no, there's no, it's gentle nudging, right, rather than, rather than coercion. So, that's great. And you know, we talked a little bit about AI and weaving that. Are weaving that in, and your story about getting the customer insights and doing that deep research by hand, obviously, that can be kind of supported by AI, but What? What? What? How are you using tools to harness the or increase your capacity, or your or the quality, or for your clients. How are you using AI as a kind of copywriter and brand voice strategist in your day to day?

Elle Connolly 15:28

Yeah, I mean, for me, I find using AI to write takes longer if I would write than if I write it myself, just because that's my job. You know, that's what I've been doing for years and years and so you I've kind of learned the craft enough to be able to do it quite quickly, but I can 100% see how for somebody who's copywriting is not what they want to be doing for a start in their business and what they're good at in their business. Let's use this tool to help the way I would use it? Yes, definitely. I'm starting to use it more and more for the voice of the customer side, and kind of harnessing that technology too, because I couldn't sit for 20 hours a week scrolling through all the different sites myself or all my clients. It's just one of the use cases that is just amazing. Let's harness that so definitely for the voice of customer stuff. Sometimes it can be good for structuring first drafts. I never use it for first drafts, because I always find once you've got a draft in front of you, it's really hard to then take a step back and think about how else it could have been written, or how it could be written better, because you've got something there. So for me, the whole blank page, getting rid of the blank page isn't useful, whereas I know for other people, it might be having that kind of structure there. So I always write the first draft myself, and then what I might do is use it as an editing prompt. Use an editing prompt to say, Okay, let's look at this from an editor's point of view. How might we change the centered structure? Is there anything grammatically that we could make more succinct? It's quite good at that kind of thing. And then I'll see what it comes back with, compare it against my own and and make a judgment call. So what do I do? Use it as a kind of co worker. And sometimes I'll kind of use it and come up, give me 20 headline ideas, just because I want to. I want to see loads and loads and loads of rubbish, so that I can piece together and maybe come up with something that really works rather than sitting and kind of brain dumping myself. So, yeah, I kind of use it as a co worker, but I can see why it's it's very helpful people that don't want to or like writing,

Alastair Cole 17:38

yeah, yeah, like you. It's a kind of sparring partner, I think copywriting for me. And actually I I use on both the mobile and the desktop. I use the voice interaction a lot, and I just have a chat because and then stop it. And almost like a kind of, you know, exploration of a new topic and a new idea, just to get my brain going. And then and then and then the kind of the real work happens happens somewhere else. You've talked about a lot about how being, you know, forgetful is fatal, and how beige is bad, right? And how most brands beige, because I know a lot of a lot of the clients that we work with and people we talk to, you know, brand voice is something that they would say later, right? Later? Yeah. But at the same time, they're struggling to get any sales because they sound and look exactly the same as everyone else. So why is being what's wrong with beige, and what do we do about it?

Elle Connolly 18:33

Yeah. So when I talk about beige, and they've been fatal, there are two elements to it. The first is the fact that it's not memorable, like you've said. So I mean, from a very basic recall point of view, if you want your brand to be top of mind when somebody needs what you're selling, you know you need to be too memorable. They need to remember who you are. You need to stand out. So there's that side of it, and then there's the inconsistency side of it, which I think is worse. So there are studies. I think Forrester did a study recently about brand consistency, and found that revenue increased by 23% if a brand voice was consistent. So there is, there's kind of science to back this up, because inconsistency leads to mistrust, and we know that if somebody doesn't trust a brand, it's very hard to get them to kind of, you know, use, use you, buy from you. So inconsistency, I think, is the major issue for a lot of tech businesses and a lot of tech misses that are growing quickly. It's like, how do we keep that consistency across all the different people that need to be writing for us? And that's why coming back to a really strong brand voice works, and that's why I always say it's important to incorporate your brand values in your brand voice, because it gives you that benchmark. I think. A lot of tech businesses, when they're first starting out, the kind of founder becomes the de facto brand voice. So you kind of find that because they, you know, started things, they were writing things to start with, then maybe signing off on most of it, until you really scaled. So almost the brand voice becomes their voice. But that doesn't scale. And that's not possible when there's a few people in your team that are all writing different things. So I think a good way of keeping that founder's energy in the brand voice is by just using the brand values, because it's unlikely that the brand values don't reflect that. You know, they found the reason the founder started the business place. So they can be a good benchmark for keeping things consistent and weaving those into the brand. Voice is really important.

Alastair Cole 20:47

Yeah, and those you know, when you talk about inconsistency, it makes me think about past and clients we've had where it's like, oh, it's Monday. We got to get something out trying to keep feeding the content machine, and so last minute, and because it's last minute, and that that work hasn't been done, the cornerstone work, it's inconsistent, because it might be a different person or a different feel or different channel, right? It's social media, not email. So it's that kind of structure, the rigor of having the brand voice defined, and then it's so much easier. It's an absolute delight to take that and what's been as long as it's organized. So I hear you on that, on that organization, and the truth is that expectations are unbelievably high. 87% of B to B buyers expect to be delighted before and after purchase. So expectations sky high, and 60% 61 1% of buyers. They don't want any reps at all. They prefer an overall rep for free buying experience. So your sales content, your sales collateral, is going to live on your website. It's going to be in your emails. It's going to be in all those self service areas, right? Not in, not with, with sales people. So, the quality, or the it has to be, you know, unique and ready to be received. So expectations are really high. Look. L, that's fantastic. Thank you. Some really delicious nuggets there, where? Where should people go to find out more?

Elle Connolly 22:21

Yeah, so I'm at 23 Wise words. So the number 23 that's my website on LinkedIn, elle Connolly, I think I was LinkedIn. I'm just thinking about my full name or not. Yeah, that's the website. So yeah, that's probably the best place to go and find out a bit more about what I do. Yeah?

Alastair Cole 22:40

Or you can Yeah, find hell on LinkedIn where you are right now. I'm on LinkedIn as well, in terms of putting, you know, great content out there. We, we've we've gone, taken the exciting decision to make our pricing 100% percent transparent. So that's out there on our website. If you'd like to see any of our prices, you can get them all now. And if you're interested in any of our previous shows, you can head over to the sales group and grab them or watch us back me and Elle. Delightful to have you on. Thanks Al, for your time and insights. Is there anything out there that's happening in the content world that you're excited about this week, or you'd like to leave with us as a parting gift? Yeah, fresher,

Elle Connolly 23:37

I think there's a lot going on out there. At the moment, we've talked about this, about the whole AI stuff, and I think a lot of businesses are kind of wondering how to deploy it in a way that feels authentic, and it goes beyond using chat GPT just to write a blog post. So there's lots of stuff going on there, and, you know, I'm happy to have a chat with anyone about how that could work for their business. So that's kind of one of the main things, but I think as an actionable thing, that if someone wants to go back into their business,

Elle Connolly 24:13

all those sales calls and things and looking at the transcripts, seeing if you can weave it into your copy,

Alastair Cole 24:20

Okay, well, yeah, like you say, there is an awful lot going on in this world, you know. But I think the the advancement of technology and all this AI stuff coming in, as we were saying ahead of the show, it does mean that the pinnacle of written words is even more valued by people and and I think we should, you know brand voice is, is, is a genuinely a killer sales weapon to differentiate yourself and, crucially, get people to click, click links, click buttons and convert into into buyers. So absolutely of the moment. So thanks very much for your time. Thank you. All right. Bye. Alastair, bye, everybody bye.