Tune Into Your Marketing Campaigns Through The Magic Of Audio Branding

Now is the time for every brand, big and small, to take their knowledge of audio branding to the next level, and hone their unique sound. With the emergence of countless new audio channels, from smart speakers to podcasts, the ‘Era of Voice’ is firmly upon us, and your brand’s audiences are listening. As brands are looking to capitalize on the power of Audio-Video Commercials for marketing campaigns, people are today more than interested to listen and act.

In fact, voice-based platforms and messages communicated through audio are predicted to become more and more desirable for audiences, especially those looking to reduce visual stimulation in their day to day lives. For brands, this means that crafting a distinct and identifiable audio identity is as essential as harbouring a unique visual identity. Uncovering your brand voice by getting back in touch with your brand origins, values, and aspirations can help you to reach a wider mass. Your brand voice can enliven your company’s image through all modes of expression. It is how your brand’s core values are expressed, and acts as the joining force between all of your content, ensuring that your brand seamlessly feels ‘like you’ and creates the right emotional reaction, no matter the channel.

Audio has always had a role to play when it comes to brand voice, exhibiting personality, evoking emotion, and building recall through commercials, jingles, radio ads or more. However, with the rise of audio content consumption, audio’s prominence has increased. Several major brands are making headlines for investing millions into the development and launch of an audio branding strategy, which includes everything from new audio logos, to full-on, independently released singles. Audio branding can help you to uncover your literal brand message and this can be done by hiring a professional voice actor/artist who can bring your content to life.

Today, audio branding is held up as a unique identifier, as distinct and carefully crafted as a brand’s logo. The intentional selection of sound elements is meant to create consistency throughout every touchpoint of the customer experience.

Because of its importance, audio branding needs not only to mirror, but to enhance your brand voice. Luckily, showing personality and striking an emotional chord is exactly what audio is good at – bringing your values and intended emotional reactions, quite literally, to life. Here’s how you can take your brand’s voice and bring it to life through audio by following these simple steps:

Reflect on your brand’s ‘why’

It is always important to ask yourself why you’re in the business that you’re in. Think back on your origin story. Remind yourself what your company initially set out to accomplish. What problems are you solving with your products and services, and why is your brand the most desirable option for your customers? What is your main selling idea, and how does this purposely differentiate you from your industry competitors?

As you rekindle the passion that fuelled the founding of your brand in the first place, the underlying characteristics that define your brand will begin to emerge - whether they’re grit, determination, empathy, or the desire to make the world a better place. This step is also one phase of conducting a brand audit and will eventually help you to choose professional dubbing services in India and select the right voice artist for your brand.

Focus on the emotional connection you want to create

When you have a distinct brand voice, you open yourself up to the possibility of achieving a strong emotional resonance with your audience. But first, of course, you have to ask yourself what kind of emotions you want to evoke.

Do you want to inspire feelings of health and sustainability for being globally conscious? Do you want to convey toughness? Or maybe build a reputation for being fun and light-hearted?

Sound has an incredible ability to evoke an emotional response, so any audio branding that you create has to be in line with your goals. Test your audio brand with focus groups, surveys, and other methods to make sure that your sound is striking the right chord.

Integrate your audio brand through every customer touchpoint

The emotional relationship you create with your customer should span direct engagements as well as the emotions that endure long after a transaction. So, you need to ensure that your audio brand is woven through all of your branded materials.

You can start by building a list of branded materials that would involve an audio component, and either update those assets, or ensure that your audio brand guidelines are well-documented and adhered to the next time an asset is being produced.

Remember, audio branding doesn’t necessarily mean that you use the exact same sound file in every piece of branding, but that the audio components you include either have ties to your audio logo, or, at the very least, evoke an emotional response that’s in line with your goals.

Discovering Your Brand Audio is Within Reach

Audio branding is where the traditional outlets for brand expression, such as copywriting and graphics, take on a new dimension with the adoption of an audio identity. On one hand, audio branding is built on tactics that have been a central component of marketing since the dawn of salesmanship. On the other, it is an underdeveloped, yet widely influential arm of marketing that has for so long flown below the radar and is only now gaining dominance. Nevertheless, quality voice over recording services can help you to identify with your audience better. If you know upfront what your company’s goals, expectations, and motivations are, you will be more successful in your audio venture. Hiring the right voice talent will also help you to achieve the desired results and here are some essential skills one needs to look for in the voice artist to turn their audio branding into a sensation:

1. Getting the Tone right: The tone of the voice plays an important part as to how the audio or narration will sound. The voice actors should be able to captivate the listeners through their tone and should have a consistency throughout the script. Whether you want to hire Animation voice over actor for Hindi or any other language, different scripts require tone variation and only a professional voice artist can provide the right tone to enliven any story or character.
2. Native Accent to enhance the voice overs: Providing the right accent to any character is one of the trickiest parts of any voice over. Rigorous voice and speech coaching is required to master the art of accent with which the native audience can relate.  Accents can make or break any voice over, hence it is important that you go with native voice artist so that your voice over hits home with the target audience and does not sound ‘foreign’ to them.
3. Moulding into Characters: The voice artist must be able to morph into whichever character is presented to him/her to play. Also, there must be originality in portrayal and a streak of creativity. It takes years of efforts to master the art of sculpting and illustrating a character and only a seasoned voice actor with years of experience can help you achieve this challenge.
4. Creating an aura of the character: It is essential to create a ‘life like’ persona of the characters through voice.  And this only happens when the voice artist knows certain techniques and has enough experience to modulate his/her voice such that it adds substance and depth to the character. Reacting to different scenes with the appropriate reactions and understanding the essence of the character are required while making any script sound genuine and a seasoned artist can help to incorporate various facets to the same line or scene.
5. Understanding the context: If the voice artist does not know the context behind the message and is unaware about the terminologies, how will he/she breathe life into the content? Professional voice artists will have a complete idea about what and how to deliver as they are the bridge between your brand and the listeners.
6. Expertise in Studio Techniques: Knowing the studio equipment beforehand can help to ease out during recordings and produce quality narration. Artists with little experience behind microphones make fidgety head movements that can ruin the recording. A good Animation voice actor will have a thorough knowledge of various types of microphones used in recording, how to use editing software and how to position the mic appropriately.

While audio branding may be a rapidly growing topic of interest, getting started doesn’t have to be daunting. By developing a solid understanding of your own unique persona, sound, intended emotional response and selecting the right artist from the professional voice over company like Voyzapp will help you to enhance the overall reach of your brand.

The time to dive into our audio era is now. As long as you have the ‘perfect voice’, there’s no reason why your audio branding won’t hit the spot with the right people!

Related Blogs:

How To Create Captivating Radio Advertisements Through Professional Voice Overs

Leverage the power of dynamic voice overs in your Animation videos

Enhancing the platform - Our launches and updates in 2020