Author: Laura M. Browning

Developing a consistent brand starts with creating a brand style guide. These branding rule books help graphic designers, marketers, web developers, community managers, and even product packaging departments present a unified vision of the brand to the public.

The best brands stick in our brains because their presence is defined by the repetition of the same logo, fonts, colors, and images. Once we see them enough, they become instantly recognizable. All of this is possible when each member of your team adheres to a cohesive brand style guide.

So, what is a brand style guide? In this article, I'll go over the elements of a style guide and share some amazing examples of them in action to help inspire your next branding project or website redesign.

Table of Contents

• What are brand guidelines?
• The Elements of a Brand Style Guide
• Style Guide Examples
• Branding Guidelines Tips
• Build a Memorable Style Guide of Your Own

Picture the most recognizable brands you can think of.

Chances are, you've learned to recognize them due to one of the following reasons:

• There's a written or visual consistency across the messaging.
• The same brand colors are reflected across every asset.
• The language sounds familiar.
• It‘s all very organized, and while not rigid, it’s cohesive.

But before you sit down to create your branding guidelines, I'd recommend taking a step back and defining your brand’s mission statement and buyer personas. These strategic elements will help you dive into the tactical components of your brand style guide later.

Brand Guidelines Mission Statement

Your brand guidelines mission statement ensures that all your content is working toward the same goal and connecting with your audience. It can also guide your blog and paid content, ad copy, visual media, and slogan.

Brand Guidelines Buyer Persona

Your brand guidelines buyer persona guides your blog content, ad copy, and visual media, which can attract valuable leads and customers to your business. You can create one quickly with our free persona tool.

The Elements of a Brand Style Guide

A brand style guide encompasses much more than just a logo (although that’s important, too). It visually encompasses everything your brand is about — down to your business' purpose.

Here are some key elements that I believe make or break a brand style guide, with links to in-depth articles if you need more guidance or info:

• Logo. Logos are a powerful way to determine how your brand is perceived. We’ve got a nine-step guide to walk you through it.
• Color palette. Your brand color palette affects every aspect of your design, especially visual impact and user experience. We’ve got 50 unforgettable palettes to inspire you.
• Typography. Typography plays a critical role on any website by ensuring we can comfortably read and process all its text-based content. If a website’s typography works, we won’t notice. If it fails, chances are we’ll bounce off the page.
• Imagery and iconography. Ensure the best possible user experience with these icon best practices.
• Brand voice. Build your best brand voice using our free brand-building guide.

1. City of Chicago

See the full City of Chicago brand guide.

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What I like: Chicago’s brand guidelines rest on the beauty and simplicity of the city’s flag, both in terms of color and design. Plus, the tone of the guide is fun and casual — like its acknowledgement of how popular Chicago stars are in tattoo designs.

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A fun detail: The custom font, Big Shoulders, comes from the Carl Sandburg poem “Chicago,” which gave the city its nickname “City of Big Shoulders.”

2. Olympic Games

See the full Olympic Games brand guide.

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What I like: The Olympic Games still use the logo and colors from 1913, but the brand was refreshed in 2022 by Ben Hulse (whose work shows up a few times in this list). The bold interpretation of the Olympic colors embody the brand characteristics: hopeful, universal, inclusive, vibrant, and progressive.

3. Amnesty International UK

See the full Amnesty International UK brand guide.

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What I like: Amnesty International UK spells it all out on the cover: bright, bold, and positive. The pink, yellow, and blue brand colors are cheerful, optimistic, and bold. This guide also does a particularly nice job of illustrating do’s, don’ts, and exceptions.

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4. Sonic the Hedgehog

See the full Sonic the Hedgehog brand guide.

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What I like: Even cartoons need a style guide. Sonic the Hedgehog’s include phrases for each character, which is a fun and novel way to ensure brand consistency.

5. Burger King

See the full Burger King brand guide.

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What I like: Burger King says that everything it does should make the food “even more craveable” — including the shape of the font, which is custom-designed to evoke the shapes of food.

6. Eurovision Song Contest

See the full Eurovision Song Contest brand guide.

What I like: The font is so customized that no other characters exist other than the ones in the word “Eurovision.” That gives the brand an unmatched distinctiveness.

7. OpenAI

See the full OpenAI brand guide.

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What I like: OpenAI has put a lot of thought into the symbolism behind all its color choices. For instance, it uses a lot of black and white in its branding to signify that “OpenAI is an empty vessel that adapts to its content.”

8. DC Comics 1982

See excerpts from the DC Comics 1982 brand guide.

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What I like: What’s not to like? Even MCU apologists can appreciate the storytelling that went into DC Comics’ 1982 style guide. Superheroes are grouped by color palette, and each character includes a written introduction with catchphrases, mythology, and other details.

9. Reporters San Frontières

See the full Reporters San Frontières brand guide.

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What I like: One of RSF’s slogans, “Fight for facts,” is simple but powerful, which is reflected in RSF’s three colors: black, white, and a vibrant pinkish-red. The guide specifies how to use accent colors — red or black should only make up 20% of a design, with white using the other 80%. That reinforces RSF’s spare but muscular branding.

10. Major League Soccer

See the full Major League Soccer brand guide.

What I like: Major League Soccer’s style guide has to include color combinations for 20 teams. To ensure brand cohesiveness, MLS has a single logo mark, the crest, with no design variations. It also includes specific guidance on applying color layers to images.

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11. Czech Railway

See the full Czech Railway brand guide.

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What I like: The Czech Railway’s beautiful color palette is centered around a dark blue and deep orange, and the logo mark evokes railway tracks.

12. Coronation 2023

See the full Coronation 2023 brand guide.

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What I like: This 23-page guide covers one thing and one thing only: The emblem used for the coronation of Great Britain’s King Charles in 2023. As such, it’s a fascinating case study in detail. The guide includes half a dozen examples of how to use the emblem on royal swag, and it’s exceedingly specific in its do’s and don’ts.

13. EPA (1977)

See excerpts from the EPA brand guide.

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What I like: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 1977 brand guide is a favorite of graphic designers for good reason. Check out the patterns designated as program identifiers, like “toxic substances,” “noise,” and “radiation.”

The EPA’s jewel-toned rainbow of brand colors includes a muddy green called “Pesticides Green” and a color called, ahem, “Solid Waste Brown.” The EPA must have been a fun place to work in the 1970s.

14. Docusign

See the full Docusign brand guide.

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What I like: Docusign includes a page of colored pie charts to demonstrate the correct color ratios. Docusign also stands out with a zinger of an accent color — a bright coral that beautifully contrasts with the purples in the brand palette.

15. Zagreb Airport

See the full Zagreb Airport brand guide.

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What I like: Zagreb Airport in Croatia uses a simple triangle as a building block for complex iconography that references Croatian heritage and culture.

16. Oxford Student Union

See the full Oxford Student Union brand guide.

What I like: The addition of colo(u)r combinations is a nice touch here. I’m one of those people who can take a perfectly lovely color palette and make a muddy mess of it, so this is something I’d love to see in more style guides.

17. Fiat 2019

See the full Fiat 2019 brand guide.

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What I like: The four diagonal lines in Fiat’s logo are mesmerizing. Fiat has incorporated those simple four lines across its branding in playful, creative ways, like changing the length of half the lines, as it’s done on the cover (above).

18. Team Canada

See excerpts from the Team Canada brand guide.

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What I like: Even though only a few excerpts are available from the full 88-page brand guide, I’m including this because it’s simply gorgeous. Canada’s red maple leaf could have been a tired symbol, but the designers reimagined it with complex geometric patterns and bold colors.

19. Hulu

See the full Hulu brand guide.

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What I like: Hulu does a lot with a relatively limited palette, mixing it up with bold typefaces and whimsical illustrations. I also like this shade of green — despite being a common color, Hulu has landed on a standout hue.

20. Brasil Governo Federal

See the full Brasil Governo Federal brand guide.

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What I like: Brasil Governo Federal’s bold style and brash colors are eye-catching, to say the least. The style guide includes information on how to use the logo in video, which in my experience is a brand question that often goes unanswered.

21. IBM

See the full IBM brand guide.

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What I like: IBM’s brand guide is an incredible interactive experience with videos and custom typeface previews. It’s also among the most comprehensive of this entire list, since it includes support for non-Latin scripts like Arabic and fonts that support alternate glyphs and even ligatures. There’s even an entire section dedicated to data visualization.

22. American Airlines

See the full American Airlines brand guide.

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What I like: American Airlines’ style guide has a ton of examples, including specifics like what part of the airplane can be shown in a photo. Considering how many different types of ads the airline runs, it’s useful to have so many specific details to help avoid human error and inconsistencies.

23. British Rail

See the full British Rail corporate identity manual.

What I like: British Rail’s corporate identity manual collects several decades of brand changes — it’s worth a look just to trace the subtle differences over time.

24. Elizabeth Line, Transport for London

See the full Elizabeth Line brand guide.

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What I like: TfL, London’s transport authority, created a brand guide for its newest addition, the Elizabeth line. It even includes a section on “design idiom flexibility,” which provides guidance on how much Elizabeth line branding to use on a scale of “localness” to “Elizabeth line-ness.”

25. Medium

See the full Medium brand guide.

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What I like: Medium‘s simple brand style guide emphasizes usage of its logo, wordmark, and symbol. Medium’s logo is the brand's primary graphic element and was created to feel “confident, premium, timeless, and modern.”

26. Walmart

See the full Walmart brand guide.

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What I like: The guide includes the brand‘s logo, photography, typography, illustrations, iconography, voice, editorial style, and more. Walmart’s color palette is so integral to its brand identity that its primary color is called “Walmart Blue.”

27. Asana

See the full Asana brand guide.

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What I like: Asana‘s simple style guide highlights its logo and color palette. It also explains how to properly use the brand’s assets.

28. Spotify

See the full Spotify brand guide.

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What I like: Spotify‘s color palette includes three color codes, while the rest of the company’s branding guidelines focus on logo variation and album artwork. The style guide even allows you to download an icon version of its logo, making it easier to represent the company without manually recreating it.

29. Starbucks

See the full Starbucks brand guide.

What I like: Starbucks' interactive brand style guide includes details about how to use its core elements such as the iconic Siren logo and green color palette. Plus, the guide features a visual spectrum of how their creative assets can be used across different channels.

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30. Paris 2024

See the full Paris 2024 brand guide.

What I like: Paris 2024's brand identity pays homage to the 1924 Olympic Games through Art Deco-inspired design. Best of all, designers applied eco-branding methods to reduce the amount of ink and paper needed for physical materials as well as limit the power and data consumption on digital elements.

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This brand guide also reinvents all 62 pictograms from the Olympic and Paralympic Games as “coat of arms that serve as rallying cries for sports fans.” Each pictogram is designed on an axis of symmetry that reinforces the coats of arms iconography. Go straight to the pictogram guidelines to take a look. The ones below represent surfing, swimming, table tennis, and taekwondo.

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31. Urban Outfitters

See the full Urban Outfitters brand guide.

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What I like: Photography, color, and even tone of voice appear in Urban Outfitters‘ California-inspired brand guidelines. Plus, the company includes information about its ideal consumer and what the brand believes in.

32. Love to Ride

See the full Love to Ride brand guide.

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What I like: Love to Ride, a cycling company, is all about color variety in its visually pleasing style guide. The company's brand guidelines include nine color codes and tons of detail about its secondary logos and imagery.

33. Barbican

See the full Barbican brand guide.

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What I like: Barbican, an art and learning center in the United Kingdom, sports a loud yet simple style guide focusing heavily on its logo and supporting typefaces.

34. I Love New York

See the full I Love New York brand guide.

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What I like: Despite its famously simple T-shirts, I Love New York has a brand style guide. The company begins its guidelines with a thorough explanation of its mission, vision, story, target audience, and tone of voice. Only then does the style guide delve into its logo positioning on various merchandise.

35. TikTok

See the full TikTok brand guide.

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What I like: TikTok‘s style guide isn’t just a guide — it's an interactive brand book. First, it provides an in-depth look into how it brings its brand to life through design. Then, it gives an overview of its logo, co-branding, color, and typography.

36. University of the Arts Helsinki

See the full University of the Arts Helsinki brand guide.

What I like: The style guide of the University of the Arts Helsinki is more of a creative branding album than a traditional marketing guide. It shows you dozens of contexts in which you‘d see this school’s provocative logo, including animations.

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37. Western Athletic Conference

See the full Western Athletic Conference brand guide.

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What I like: The Western Athletic Conference's brand style guide includes extensive information about its history, mission, and vision. It also highlights its member universities and athletic championships and awards it is involved with.

38. Discord

See the full Discord brand guide.

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What I like: Discord‘s brand guide is as colorful and playful as the communities it serves. The brand’s motion elements are based on the dot, which represents the Discord user interacting with others in the communities it belongs to.

39. Netflix

See the full Netflix brand guide.

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What I like: As far as its public brand assets are concerned, Netflix is focused primarily on the treatment of its logo. The company offers a simple set of rules governing the size, spacing, and placement of its famous capitalized typeface.

40. NASA

See the full NASA brand guide.

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What I like: NASA‘s “Graphics Standards Manual” is as official and complex as you think it is. At 220 pages, the guide describes countless logo placements, color uses, and supporting designs. And yes, NASA’s space shuttles have their own branding rules.

41. New York City Transit Authority

See the full New York City Transit Authority brand guide.

What I like: Like NASA, the NYCTA has its own Graphics Standards Manual, and it includes some fascinating typography rules for the numbers, arrows, and public transit symbols the average commuter takes for granted every day.

Branding Guidelines Tips

If you want to take your branding style guide to the next level, let HubSpot's Brand Kit Generator do some of the heavy lifting for you.

I'd also recommend following the best practices below, which the HubSpot Creative team has used to disseminate branding information to the rest of the HubSpot Marketing team.

This has not only made my job as a blogger easier, but also makes our branding feel well thought-out and cohesive.

1. Make your guidelines a branded document.

Whether you’re publishing your branding guidelines online or creating an internal presentation, consider making the guidelines themselves a branded document.

Ensure the published document follows your established brand voice, uses the symbols and imagery you’ve created, and employs the colors and typography that makes your brand feel like you.

Insights from HubSpot's Creative Team

When our Creative team rolled out a visual identity refresh for the HubSpot brand, we all received access to a branded playbook that summarized all the changes and described how we should represent HubSpot online moving forward.

Not only was I a huge fan of the refresh, but also of the way it was presented to our team in a branded document.

You can do the same, regardless of your budget. Our Creative team actually used a free tool, Google Slides — so it’s totally doable for a small or freelance brand!

2. Name your brand's colors.

You’ve already chosen your color palette — why not go as far as naming the colors?

Giving your colors unique names (aside from “blue” or “orange”) can help you tie the tactical elements of your branding into an overall theme or ethos.

Not to mention that it’s awesome to be able to refer to company colors by a unique name. Imagine if we called Solaris, HubSpot’s primary brand color, “HubSpot Orange” — that simply doesn’t have the same ring.

Insights from HubSpot's Creative Team

In our visual identity refresh, our Creative team brightened and intensified our color palette, then renamed the individual hues.

They wrote, “Every color, tint, and shade is based on central themes. [...] Whether it’s a subway line in Paris, or a flower-lined street in Japan, the secondary color names are a veritable tour of important cultural and geographical touchstones from HubSpotters all over the world.”

Think about what makes your brand unique, and why you chose the colors that you did. For instance, if you work at a law firm that specializes in car accident cases, you might choose red as one of the brand colors and call it “Stop Light.”

3. Create easy-to-use branded templates.

Alongside your branding guidelines should be templates to empower your team to easily design branded assets, even if they’re not designers.

Insights from HubSpot's Creative Team

At HubSpot, we keep all of our templates in our team’s Canva account. There, anyone (myself included) can edit pre-made designs for any number of use cases.

As a writer on the HubSpot blog, I have to create graphics to supplement the information I’m sharing.

The branded templates made by our Creative team have made my work a great deal easier, and I can imagine that it’s the same for our Social Media team.

Not everyone is a designer, but with templates, you can ensure your brand looks professional no matter who creates an asset.

4. Ensure your branding is optimized for all channels.

Your branding guidelines should include different specifications for different channels.

Or, alternatively, you should have assets and designs that can be adjusted for various channels and mediums. Not only for sizing purposes, but for accessibility purposes, too.

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For instance, if you primarily market your brand over Instagram and on your website, then your branding should have web accessible colors, as well as Instagram-friendly designs and sizes.

However, you don’t want to significantly change your branding from channel to channel. It should work relatively well no matter where you’re marketing your brand.

Build a Memorable Style Guide of Your Own

Once you build your unique brand style guide, customers will recognize your brand and associate it with all the visual cues you want them to.

I hope you were inspired by our list of amazing brand style guides and wish you luck in creating a timeless style of your own.

You want to learn about search engine optimization (SEO), but where do you start? We were all SEO beginners once, so take heart: There’s lots to learn, but I’ve got plenty of expert advice and a step-by-step guide to get you started.

We’ll start with some basic SEO vocabulary, review a step-by-step SEO tutorial to help you get your SEO strategy off the ground, and get tips from HubSpot SEO pro Victor Pan and SEOFOMO newsletter founder (and one of the world’s best-known SEO experts) Aleyda Solís.

Table of Contents

• SEO Basics
• How to Learn SEO
• SEO Step-by-Step Tutorial

SEO Basics

Understanding the foundational SEO vocabulary is important. Let’s dive into a few key terms:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Tactics to optimize your website to provide the high-quality information searchers look for. Good SEO also helps you rank higher in search results for specific keywords so people can find your content.
• On-page SEO: Any website optimizations that improve search rankings, like the keywords used in your content or back-end elements like site structure.
• Off-page SEO: Any actions that improve your search engine rankings outside your website, like backlinks from other websites.
• Link building: Links to your website from other high-quality websites that build authority and credibility.
• SERPs: Search Engine Result Pages are the results page you see when you conduct a search on Google or another search engine.
• White-hat SEO: Optimization tactics that align with accepted and recognized best practices.
• Black-hat SEO: Optimization tactics that manipulate search engine algorithms to rank websites higher in SERPs. These tactics are often unethical.
• E-E-A-T: E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust. It’s part of Google’s search quality rater guidelines and one of the factors Google uses to determine a page's relevance and authority.
• Keyword: Words or phrases users type into a search engine to find content related to their search. As an SEO, you want to include relevant keywords in your content that align with search intent so your site appears in related searches.
• Keyword research: The process of finding keywords people enter into search results related to your business to help you inform the words to use in your website pages and content.
• Organic/organic results: Any results in SERP that are unpaid and that appear because of a page’s relevance to the search query.
• Organic traffic: Organic traffic is traffic that comes from organic results.
• Rank/page ranking: Where your site falls in SERPs for a specific keyword.
• Ranking factor: A ranking factor is an element that impacts where your site may fall in search results, like your page authority.
• Search intent: Search intent is why a user conducts a search.

How to Learn SEO

Learning SEO is a big task, and because SEO best practices change over time, international SEO consultant Aleyda Solís “highly, highly recommends that you don’t go to a single source.” It’s why on her own site, LearningSEO.io, she’s compiled guides and information from many different resources.

Solís offers this pro tip: “See what works for you within your context,” because even if the information is accurate, “it might not be right for your circumstances.”

Here’s a few ways you can accomplish that:

1. Read and watch reliable resources.

There are a lot of educational resources out there to read and watch that will help you build your knowledge of SEO. Here are some of my recommendations.

• The HubSpot Marketing Blog (we cover a variety of topics for different skill levels)
• The HubSpot YouTube Channel
• Bing Webmaster Guidelines
• LearningSEO.io
• Search Engine Journal
• Search Engine Land
• SEMrush

Google still has a little more than 90% of the search market worldwide, so add its Search Central Blog and Search Quality Rater Guidelines to your list.

AI-powered search engines are a fast-growing segment of the search landscape, so if you want to see how AI perceives your website and brand, take HubSpot’s AI Search Grader tool for a spin (it’s pretty cool).

2. Take free courses.

If you benefit from structured and guided learning, an SEO course is another option to build on your SEO skills. A bonus is that many courses offer certificates upon completion. These are some high-quality options:

• HubSpot Academy SEO Training Certification (free): Best for beginners
• Google Analytics Academy (free): Beginner and advanced learning paths
• MOZ Academy (paid): Courses for multiple levels
• Semrush Academy (free): Courses for multiple levels

3. Stay on top of the trends.

Especially with the advent of AI-powered search, SEO changes and evolves on a sometimes daily basis. Algorithms get updated, new trends surface, and consumer behaviors change.

For example, in December 2022, Google added an E for experience to the old E-A-T guidelines. Experience ensures that content is helpful, relevant, and created by someone with experience in the subject at hand.

(And it’s a key differentiator between computers and humans, as AI-generated content scrambles to get a robotic foot in the door.)

One of the most important factors in becoming an SEO expert is staying on top of the trends so you can pivot when major industry shifts happen. We cover changes in the SEO landscape on the HubSpot Blog, and Google also maintains a running list of major updates that can impact your SEO success.

4. Study your competitors.

Learning from your competitors is a great way to understand the keys to their success.

Pan suggests looking at websites that are doing well and seeing what other pages they link to, so that when you’re “thinking about creating content, it’s not just a single piece of content you’re creating, but the whole journey that a user might go through.” Your content should cover a natural progression of topics.

You can conduct a competitor analysis to uncover new keywords, where competitors get backlinks (also called inbound links) from, and other new opportunities to capitalize on.

Featured Resource: Our free Competitive Analysis Templates help you conduct a thorough analysis of competitors in your niche, and this step-by-step guide walks you through how to use the template for an SEO competitive analysis.

5. Learn by doing.

Once you feel confident, you can take a hands-on approach and enact some SEO strategies.

Solís says to adopt “a mindset of being proactive — always testing, always curious, always skeptical, and always thinking from a strategic perspective.”

If you already have a website, you can practice by doing a competitor analysis and updating your current strategy based on your findings. If you don’t have a website, consider building one, implementing your new SEO knowledge, and monitoring metrics.

One of the best things about SEO is that a wide variety of tools are available to help you along every step of the way.

6. Use SEO tools.

Considering the breadth and depth of the internet, it would be a nightmare to do some of the essential SEO functions by hand — this is where SEO tools come in to save the day. They’ve saved me significant time and energy and quickly brought me the results I’m looking for.

Here’s a list of tools I recommend:

• HubSpot’s SEO Marketing Software offers SEO recommendations to improve your site, optimize page content, and measure ROI.
• AI Search Grader, another HubSpot tool, analyzes how visible your brand is to AI search engines.
• Our Website Grader scores your site based on factors like mobile friendliness and SEO optimization.
• Google’s Search Console can help you measure your site traffic and fix SEO performance issues.
• Google Analytics helps you view important metrics to understand your SEO efforts, like the measure of organic vs non-organic traffic.
• Ahrefs is a favorite of HubSpot bloggers. It helps you conduct keyword research and stats their important stats like search volume and CTR.
• Jasper is an AI writing assistant that can help write SEO-optimized blog posts with target keywords.

Once you’re more fluent in the vocabulary of SEO, it’s time to jump in and get hands-on. Since I’ve promised you the shortest SEO tutorial ever, I’ve broken it down into three very broad categories for beginners: content, technical, and sharing.

As you get more familiar and comfortable with SEO, you can build out strategies in each of these categories using the links I’ve provided below.

1. Content SEO: Write great content.

My number one tip for content SEO is simple, if not entirely straightforward: Write really good content.

There are caveats, of course. What Google deems “really good” has changed over the years, sometimes dramatically and sometimes subtly, so this advice still requires at least a passing interest in industry trends.

And no matter how great it is, if your content covers a topic that not many people are asking questions about, you’re not going to see a flood of traffic.

So I’ve got some tools and roadmaps to help you structure your SEO — but even as you incorporate these tips, writing great content should be your north star.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is a cornerstone of good content SEO. It’s a great starting point for SEO beginners, so we’ll spend the most time here.

A dedicated tool like Ahrefs or SemRush can be useful for SEOs whether you’re a newbie or a pro, but you can also begin by simply listing words and phrases relevant to your business.

For instance, if you sell roasted coffee, you might opt for “roasted coffee,” “Colombian coffee,” and “local coffee roaster.”

List these keywords in a spreadsheet or document for you to keep track of.

Then, pick one word or phrase to use on one page of your site. In other words, you don’t want to target different keywords on one page. You want to target one keyword, as well as any keywords it’s semantically related to, so that you’re capturing user intent.

Continuing with the example from above, I might create a page for “local coffee roaster.” That would be my main keyword, but I can also target semantically related terms such as “local coffee,” “coffee roaster near me,” “coffee roaster [city name],” and “locally roasted coffee.”

This begins with keyword research, but Pan says not to stress out about it too much: Start by making a list of what the natural things people would search for. Put some of those keywords into Google and see what else people search for.

I asked Google, “is Jurassic Park real,” and here are some related common search terms, heaven help us:

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You’ll do better as a beginner to try to rank higher on keywords that have a lower search volume — trying to outrank well established sites on keywords with high difficulty is not going to earn you a lot of visitors. But if you’re an expert on a somewhat more niche topic, it’s your time to shine.

Once you’ve got some keywords in hand, here’s a few ways to use them to your advantage:

1. Use the keywords in the page title
2. Use them in your URL
3. Use them in your meta description
4. Use them in your H1
5. Use them in your page content — naturally. If you’re trying to force it, you may have chosen the wrong keywords for your content.

Consider this:

“We have seen some indie publications close because of overreliance on Google traffic. More than ever, this is a good reminder for SEOs to not necessarily rely only on Google. Try to diversify through all the channels and platforms that people are now using to search.” —Aleyda Solís

Search Intent

Why a user types a specific query into Google or another search engine is as important as the term itself.

For instance, if I search for “is Jurassic Park real” because I want a job training velociraptors, I’m expecting very different results from somebody using the same query to find out whether the movies were filmed at real-life nature parks that I could go visit.

Generally speaking, users want to learn something, to investigate a brand or product, to complete an action like buying a certain product, or to find a specific website.

Media Richness

Rich media includes audio, graphics, video, polls, or other interactive features. Think like a user: Do you want to read a 4,000-word block of text, or do you want animations or graphics to help break that up?

By structuring this data in the backend, you can optimize your content to make it more appealing in the SERPs.

Internal Linking

As you build out your content library, it’s important to link to your own content, which can help boost traffic and, over time, build your page authority.

The HubSpot blogs have thousands (and thousands) of posts that predate me, so to find relevant blog content to link to, I type “site:blog.hubspot.com” into Google, followed by the term or phrase I’m looking for.

From there, I can decide what to link to based on recency and relevancy. (And thank goodness for this, because my brain is too full of old song lyrics to remember anything useful.)

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Historical Optimization

If you’re doing SEO for a property that has a large content library, chances are good that some of that content is outdated. But that doesn’t mean it’s useless — far from it.

At a previous job, I reorganized and rewrote event recaps that were no longer serving their original purpose. Because each event centered around a specific topic or theme, it was easy enough to update the titles, headings, and images. I also updated statistics, the content itself, and the publish date.

It didn’t happen overnight, but those pages crept back up in Google’s rankings once they became relevant to our audience again.

Another way to optimize older content is to add more examples and make sure any existing examples are still correct. Double-check links and anything else that may have changed, like step-by-step instructions.

2. Technical SEO: Improve the technical elements of your website.

Even the best content on the internet won’t get any readers if Google can’t find it.

I once worked on a website relaunch that began with an audit of our URL structure. We had to create a logical way of structuring our URLs before we could think about things like redesigning graphics.

Technical SEO can seem complicated if you don’t have a lot of technical experience. Don’t try to do everything at once — the goal here is to set a strong technical foundation so that Google and other search engines can easily find and crawl your website so that it shows up in search results.

Pro tip: Choose a good CMS — like, ahem, HubSpot — that will take care of the more technical aspects so you don’t have to.

Go deeper into technical SEO with our technical SEO guide, which begins with the fundamentals you’ll need to run an audit. It also takes you through crawlability, indexability, renderability, rankability, and clickability.

3. Sharing and Backlinking: Make sure that users can find your website.

Because your content is great, people want to share it. Congratulations! Now let’s talk about how to build those backlinks.

Pan says to ask yourself, “Why do people want to share what you created?”

He identifies three simple answers to that question. “One, you’re super local, so it’s very relevant. You might even be the only person talking about it.”

“Two, you could have data or a perspective that only your site can share, because of access that you have,” like original research or other proprietary data.

And lastly, “your content triggers an emotional response.”

One simple thing I do for HubSpot articles is provide quote cards to the subject matter experts I’ve talked to. It’s an easy way to encourage link sharing beyond your own network, and it doesn’t take much time.

It’s also important to understand the different types of backlinks — for instance, you might be able to write a guest blog on another high-quality website and link back to your own.

We’ve got a complete guide on backlinking when you’re ready to give it a shot.

This SEO Step-by-Step Tutorial is Just the Beginning

Your learning doesn’t have to stop here. With the SEO 101 vocabulary I mentioned above and the step-by-step tutorial, you can easily start creating an effective search engine optimization strategy.

Our starter pack, linked below, will help you ramp up your SEO plans and boost the likelihood of your website ranking on the first page of SERPs.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in March 2013 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

A few months after starting a former job, I attended a workshop in which we discussed our brand promise.

It was a clarifying moment for me — despite having a solid mission and vision statement, it was the brand promise that really defined the heart of the company and what my role was.

A brand promise isn‘t just a tagline — it’s a way to show customers what your brand can offer that no one else can.

Like other kinds of promises, brand promises can get complicated. They set high expectations, offer ambitious commitments, and impact relationships.

Let’s talk about what a brand promise is, how to create a brand promise, and see examples from popular B2B and B2C brands. We’ll also share a brand promise template to help you draft your own.

Keep reading or jump ahead to the section you're looking for:

• What is a brand promise?
• Why Your Brand Promise Is Important
• How to Write a Brand Promise
• What makes a brand promise successful?
• Brand Promise Template
• Brand Promise Examples
• Examples of Brand Promises for B2B

Your brand promise should be central to your company, something that remains constant even as the company grows and evolves.

Not every brand promise is explicit — it could also be more of an internal mantra that's shared with employees, investors, and partners.

But if you’ve built a strong brand identity and clear messaging, your brand promise will be evident to your target audience. (And if you're still working on your brand identity and messaging, we've got a free guide to help.)

Brand Promise vs. Tagline

There‘s often some confusion between a brand promise and a tagline, so let’s break it down.

While it can be just as short as a tagline, a brand promise establishes and nurtures a relationship with consumers by telling them, "Hey, this is what you can expect every single time you interact with our brand."

A brand promise isn’t lofty — it’s grounded in the realities of your business. It can:

• Help internal and external stakeholders know what to expect from you.
• Gain consumer trust.
• Be the foundation for your company’s consumer interactions.

A Quick Brand Promise Definition

Brand promises are short statements. They make a commitment to your customer about what your brand will deliver.

It is a promise, after all. So if you break it, it can affect your reputation and your revenue.

For instance, let‘s say your brand promise is "Innovation at every turn," but your company hasn’t released a new product in five years. That can deter potential consumers who have been promised progress but instead get stagnation.

Here are the most common types of brand promises:

• Emotional: A promise appealing to emotion.
• Action-based: A promise tied to a specific action.
• Social: A promise based on ethical or social responsibility.

Why Your Brand Promise Is Important

This message can have a big impact on customer sentiment, brand reputation, and more. A brand promise is a social contract between your company and the customer or consumer.

You may not have a legally binding document swearing that your company will innovate at every turn, but it’s understood that consumers are giving you something (like their hard-earned money) in exchange for a product or service.

It’s the scaled, commercial version of a pinky promise, with your brand holding up one finger and your target audience holding up the other.

And if you’re not taking your brand promise as seriously as a legally binding document, you’re at risk of losing not just your customers, but your market valuation, employees, and other stakeholders.

Delivering on your brand promise can help your business grow by building trust with your target audiences and boosting sales.

But how can you pack all that power into a single message? Let's talk about how to create your brand promise.

How to Write a Brand Promise

1. Focus on your audience.

Your brand promise outlines your commitment to your audience. So, to figure out what your promise should be, your first step is determining what your audience wants from you.

It goes beyond a specific product or service, it‘s more specific to the experience you’re providing.

For instance, Planet Fitness's brand promise is based on people's reluctance to join the gym for fear of judgment and embarrassment. The Planet Fitness brand promises to create an environment that encourages people at all fitness levels to go to the gym and feel comfortable working out.

Another goal of your brand promise is to set you apart from your competitors. What makes you unique — your customer service, your product, your mission, your values? Build on that to make a promise that's distinctive.

In Planet Fitness' case, the brand did something no one else had done: Address the problem with the gym environment, not its users.

As you learn about what your audience wants, keep asking questions. How much do they know about your industry? What information do they need before making a purchase?

It‘s important to remember that your brand promise isn’t simply a slogan or commitment. It's the first step in building a community with shared values. The better you understand your audience, the more likely you are to engage them.

If you haven't already, develop buyer personas and workshop messages that could resonate with each persona.

Featured Resource: Make My Persona

2. Think about your customer touch points.

Your brand promise is your guarantee to customers.

Whether your customer is in-store, on social media, or buying online, place yourself in their shoes and envision how you want those interactions to go. Is there a specific feeling involved? What do they have to gain?

For example, say a customer spends a lot of time on your website but hasn‘t made a purchase. Do you know why they’re hesitating? If you were speaking to this customer in person, what would you say to help them move to the next step?

Once you put those feelings into words, you'll be able to craft a brand promise that reflects the experience you want to promote.

As an exercise, you may find it useful to draft three or more secondary promises for each touch point. They can help you home in on your main brand promise and narrow your focus to how different touch points impact customer experience.

Your ultimate brand promise should be consistent across every touch point. So, the more time you spend looking at it from every angle, the more likely you are to create a powerful brand promise.

Featured Resource: Customer Journey Map Template

3. Keep it simple, unique, and inspiring.

Your brand promise should be clear and to the point — something you can say in one sentence. It won't necessarily be as fun as a tagline, but it should definitely inspire trust and confidence.

Be thoughtful about which words you choose and who your audience is.

Does your brand promise need industry-specific terms? Is your brand promise about selling an offer or explaining your product? Answering these questions can help you find the right vocabulary for your promise.

Next, introduce some play into your writing. Think about your company culture, awakening the senses, and the details that can paint a picture for your audience.

This process will probably give you more copy than you need, but it can help you find an authentic and empathetic voice.

Then you can edit your brand promise into a single succinct statement that is useful, positive, and hopeful.

If you can‘t articulate your promise in this way, perhaps you haven’t fully fleshed out your brand's purpose.

If that's the case, start by asking yourself these questions:

• What should my customers expect from me?
• What does my company stand for?
• What makes us different from our competitors?

What makes a brand promise successful?

“A brand promise,” brand consultant Cornelis Jacobs tells me, “is basically your identity. If your brand didn’t exist, what would the world miss?”

That world doesn’t have to be at a global scale — the target market for a corner bakery might be a single neighborhood. Whether you’re selling cupcakes or iPads, your brand promise has to create and nurture a relationship.

“It’s creating trust,” says Jacobs. “I give money in exchange for a product or service. There’s trust that the brand will deliver on that promise.” Jacobs sees two components to that trust: reliability and delight.

An inability to deliver on your brand promise — “that’s game over,” says Jacobs.

The long-term effects on brand perception can be devastating if you lose credibility by breaking a promise.

Here are four key elements to consider as you craft your brand promise:

Credibility

Your brand promise should be something that your business or product is qualified to offer, and it should be something that you are able to deliver on with excellence, reliability, and delight.

Volvo’s brand promise, for example, hinges on safety. If it was unable to consistently engineer cars with high safety standards, it would lose all credibility.

This statement can also show your commitment to solving a specific problem for your customers.

Actionable

A brand promise is an offer that a business needs to keep. This means that the promise must be something your company can act on.

As you review your brand promise, ask yourself:

• Is your brand promise also a call-to-action?
• What do your customers get in return if they commit to your brand?
• How can your audience engage or get involved with your brand promise?
• What other questions might someone ask after seeing your brand promise?

To be effective, your brand promise needs to be something your stakeholders can act on or see you taking action on, plus why that action is valuable. If your promise is vague or static, you may need to keep working.

Memorable and Emotional

A brand promise “is emotive,” says Jacobs. “It’s not the mind; it’s the heart.”

To evoke strong emotions, ask yourself what emotions you want your customers or audience to feel when they solve a problem using your product or service.

This act of seeing from your customer's perspective can help you create a "sticky" brand promise.

Business Impact

“Brand strategy is ultimately business strategy,” Jacobs tells me. “In economic terms, your brand is probably the single most important asset of any company.”

Your brand promise doesn’t just support what matters most to your business, it is the business.

That means that your brand promise has to be evident in every single touch point: what vendors you choose, what your website looks like, and even how you answer the phone. Jacobs says your brand promise is to “all stakeholders, not just your consumer.”

And there’s really only two options: “You either deliver on the promise, or you don’t.”

It might convey product excellence, drive sales, or expand brand influence. And as people in your organization make decisions, they should do so as champions of the brand.

Brand Promise Template

There isn‘t an exact formula to create your brand promise. But we’ve mentioned that it’s a blend of a few things that make up your company. So here’s a formula you can use to create your promise:

Positioning + Vision + Value Proposition = Your Brand Promise

Write your answers down and start blending these concepts together into one succinct idea.

Crafting your brand promise should be a top priority when developing your identity. Without this core message, you will likely struggle to develop your brand identity and strong messaging to connect with your target audience.

A pro tip from Jacobs: “A brand isn’t what you, the company, says it is. It’s what your customers say it is.”

Your brand promise should be so strong that “there should be no divergence” — that is, your customers should be able to describe your brand promise exactly as you do.

It may take a few sessions to flesh it out — and that's okay. Because once you have it, it will become ingrained both internally and externally as your company grows.

Brand Promise Examples

Keep in mind that some of these examples of brand promises are assumed and some have been shared by the companies (and a couple are completely fictional). Use them as inspiration when crafting your own.

To help you think about your own brand promise from multiple angles, I’ve also included hypothetical situations of what it might look like if some of these brands failed to deliver on their brand promises.

Build the best products in the world and enrich people’s lives. (Apple)

In a 2022 interview with Popular Mechanics, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that he tries to “carry on the mission that [Steve Jobs] set in place, to build the best products in the world that enrich people‘s lives. And that hasn’t changed. Lots of things change with time. But the reason for our being is the same.”

Well established as a design and product innovator, Apple’s brand promise is centered around innovation, quality, reliability, and user-friendly design.

If it couldn’t deliver on its brand promise, we might see Apple shipping shoddily designed products that don’t solve any problems for its consumers, something that would do swift and irreparable damage to its brand.

To inspire and nurture the human spirit — one person, one cup, one neighborhood at a time. (Starbucks)

Starbucks might even add “one street at time,” so ubiquitous are its stores across America and most corners of the globe.

Starbucks’ core brand promise is customer-focused, establishing its reputation as a customer service company that happens to sell coffee.

Feel empowered and emboldened. (Anima Iris)

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Tennis accessories brand Anima Iris seeks an emotional connection with its target audience by promising that they will feel empowered and emboldened.

Those words also set it apart from competitors and establish some of the expectations its customers should have.

Redefine luxury as accessible and inclusive. (Telfar)

Telfar’s vegan leather shopping bags became a must-have accessory over the last decade or so, thanks to its positioning as an affordable luxury. That’s a tricky sweet spot to maintain, but it’s central to the brand promise.

If it failed to deliver on its brand promise, it could be reflected in prices shooting up beyond what its target consumers could afford, and/or a steep decline in quality.

Inclusion since inception. (Tru Colour)

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Rooted firmly in diversity and inclusion, Tru Colour “believes in the beauty of the individual and exists to provide skin-tone shade bandages and kinesiology tape for everyone.”

Its brand promise indicates that inclusion is a foundational principle, one that will continue to drive the brand as it grows.

Create a safe space for POC to travel and discover new adventures. (Noirbnb)

The stakes are high for Noirbnb, which promises “a safe space for people of color to travel and discover new adventures.”

As such, it’s also a memorable brand promise, particularly for its target audience of people of color who may have felt unsafe on previous travel adventures. This is also a highly actionable brand promise.

Safety for all. (Volvo)

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Volvo’s EVA initiative prioritizes Equal Vehicles for All, “regardless of gender, age, height, weight, or shape.”

If you’ve ever buckled up in a car to find the seat belt at throat height, Volvo’s promise will pique your interest.

This is another highly actionable brand promise, since the burden of proof — and literal life-or-death stakes — rests on Volvo.

Unparalleled luxury and personalized service. (Four Seasons)

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When your name is synonymous with luxury, you’d best be able to deliver on your brand promise.

Customers of Four Seasons properties expect a level of personalized service that sets the brand apart not only from other hotels and resorts, but from other luxury hotel brands. This brand promise is memorable and emotional, appealing to consumers’ desire to be treated like royalty.

Bring stories to life — safely. (Inkheart)

Pretend I’ve been handed the money and the magic needed to build an adventure tour company for fictional places.

My imaginary company is inspired by Cornelia Funke’s 2003 YA book Inkheart, in which a girl learns that her father can bring characters to life simply by reading from them.

Inkheart’s brand promise, “Bring stories to life — safely,” assures its imaginary audience that they can enjoy immersive experiences in their favorite fictional worlds without fear of ogres, vampires, or evil masterminds.

We scare because we care. (Monsters Inc.)

A real brand promise from a fictional brand, Disney Pixar animated classic Monsters Inc. features a company by the same name. Monsters Inc. employs monsters to scare children, whose screams produce clean energy.

Doing double duty as a tagline, “We scare because we care” evokes emotion and establishes the brand’s distinctiveness — while promising legitimate frights.

What‘s common across all these promises is that they never refer to a particular offering or numerical goal. Instead, they are statements that encompass the brand’s broader purpose.

Examples of Brand Promises for B2B

Business-to-business brand promises can be difficult to craft. This is because these relationships are often more about efficiency and ROI than meeting emotional needs.

Check out these B2B brand promise examples to spark your imagination.

Help millions of companies grow better. (HubSpot)

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Here at HubSpot, we offer a complete customer platform that helps businesses connect and grow better. (Psst, that customer platform includes Marketing Hub.)

Our brand promise has broad appeal — “millions of companies” — and demonstrates our commitment to and focus on growth.

See inside any stack, any app, at any scale, anywhere. (Datadog)

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The repeated “any” in Datadog’s brand promise indicates the product’s flexibility, an actionable claim that also differentiates it from its competitors.

Keep a good thing growing. (Recurly)

Recurly, a subscription management service, makes an emotional appeal in its brand promise with the word “growing.” That sense of nurturing is backed up by the actionable claim that it has “a good thing.”

Easy scheduling ahead. (Calendly)

I use Calendly regularly, and I appreciate that it’s simple to use. Calendly’s brand promise focuses on a positive user experience, which directly impact’s the brand’s bottom line.

Unlock the power of gifting at scale. (Reachdesk)

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Reachdesk uses AI to power personalized corporate gifting. Its brand promise hints at the “power” in store for companies that wow and delight their customers.

If it couldn’t deliver on its brand promise: Glitchy AI could lead to gifts that didn’t feel thoughtful or personal, or worse, be embarrassing.

Manage tomorrow’s surprises today. (LogicManager)

LogicManager uses the word “surprises” to indicate that it understands the realities of risk management. That establishes an emotional relationship with its customers — it’s that “hey, you get me” moment.

That emotional plea is backed up by a credible and actionable promise that the enterprise risk management company can predict future risks before they get out of control.

Smarter PR with powerful, easy-to-use software. (Muck Rack)

Muck Rack’s brand promise begins with a superlative, “smarter,” appealing to customers’ desires for growth and improvement. Coupled with “powerful” and “easy-to-use,” Muck Rack sets up an actionable brand promise.

Engineering the extraordinary to alleviate pain, restore health, and extend life. (Medtronic)

Medtronic, a healthcare tech company, has to persuade potential customers that it can improve (and even extend) quality of life with devices like high-tech pacemakers. That’s a high bar to clear, so it goes straight for an emotional appeal with a brand promise that uses strong verbs like “alleviate” and “restore.”

Empowering small businesses and entrepreneurs with financial tools and services that are accessible, innovative, and user-friendly. (Square)

If you’ve interacted with small businesses, like your neighborhood bookstore or a vendor at the local farmers’ market, you’ve likely used Square to make a payment. Square’s brand promise hinges on accessibility and user-friendliness above all — an inability to deliver would make it unusable by the audience it targets.

Build Your Brand Promise for Lasting Results

Some promises last a lifetime. To make sure that you're creating a brand promise for the long haul, don’t rush through the process.

Drafting a quick slogan is tempting when your team is up against a deadline — but this is a promise to your all your stakeholders, so consider it carefully.

Take a look at the tips, templates, and examples above, and let your creativity run wild. Your brand may already have a strong identity, but how are you committing to your customers? Tell them today, with your brand promise.

Even if you’re brand new to brand voice, you already know exactly what it is. I promise.

Think of a few of your favorite brands, and consider why they’re favs. The product or service probably has a lot to do with it, but that’s only part of the story — a brand’s voice or personality is also a major factor in consumer loyalty. 

Think about the overall vibe of your favorite brand — is it friendly? Authoritative? Funny? That’s brand voice at work.

A well-defined brand voice can underscore your authority, play up your playfulness, or simply bring the directness and relatability that consumers look for in brands. A poorly defined voice, or one that changes frequently, undermines your brand and alienates customers or clients.

So let’s talk about how to start from scratch by looking at the elements that form a brand’s voice, plus 10 examples to inspire you.

Table of Contents

• Brand Voice Examples
• What is a brand voice?
• Why Brand Voice is Important
• Creating a Brand Voice
• Brand Voice Template
• Crafting Your Voice

Your company’s voice should resonate with your audience and build trust with them. In the U.S. market, 90% of consumers say it’s important to trust the brands they buy or use.

Your brand voice shows your customers what to expect from your company’s content, services, and even customer service.

Why Brand Voice is Important

Brand voice is a little bit like a brand ambassador.

You’ll make certain assumptions about an unfamiliar brand if its ambassadors are clad in pink cowboy hats or in black three-piece suits. And you’ll know immediately whether you’re the target audience.

A brand’s voice is usually defined by four or so adjectives that immediately convey whether you’re a pink cowboy hat kind of brand (bubbly, playful, youthful, irreverent) or a black three-piece suit kind of brand (somber, formal, authoritative, exclusive).

Every bit of copy that your brand produces, whether it’s the About Us page on your website or the game on the back of a cereal box, should exude your brand’s distinct voice.

Put some thought into those four(ish) adjectives — we’ll show you how — because your brand voice has to translate across multiple platforms, and potentially even across countries and cultures.

It has an important internal function, too. A well-defined brand voice establishes a cohesive set of guidelines for your writers, marketers, content creators, and even graphic designers.

“Well-defined” is key here — you can throw a bunch of adjectives at the wall and hope something sticks, but without a solid explanation of what “clear, helpful, human, and kind” means, you’re in danger of muddied or inconsistent content.

HubSpot’s style guide, for instance, specifies that “we favor clarity above all. The clever and cute should never be at the expense of the clear.” It also gives multiple examples of what “clear,” “helpful,” “human,” and “kind” actually look like in our copy — a godsend for contractors and new hires.

Once you’ve nailed down your brand’s voice, you’ll find it easier to speak directly to your audience, attract new customers or users, and express your brand’s distinctiveness.

Creating a Brand Voice

Bring your customers into the conversation so they feel connected to your brand. If a potential customer feels like you‘re talking directly to them, then you’re doing brand voice right.

1. Start with your company's mission.

Your own values, and your company’s mission, are critical as you embark on your brand voice journey.

It’s how HubSpot’s social media team translated the brand voice to LinkedIn — and got 84% more engagement in just six months.

I asked Emily Kearns, HubSpot’s Senior Manager, Social Media, to tell me more.

“So much of what is good about HubSpot is the culture and how we treat each other — just the overall vibe,” she says. “And there was a huge opportunity to take that into the social space.”

HubSpot’s brand voice is clear, helpful, human, and kind, and Kearns says that the social media team used that as its foundation. “Human and authentic — that’s just table stakes,” she says.

But there are different ways to express clarity, helpfulness, humanness, and kindness. Where our official product descriptions might require a little more gravitas, our Instagram account can translate the HubSpot culture into ~vibes~.

Since it began reinterpreting HubSpot’s corporate voice on social media in 2023, our HubSpot social team has earned a 2024 Webby nomination in the category of Social, B2B.

Lauren Naturale, the social media manager at Tides, a nonprofit that advances social justice, agrees that values are foundational to your brand voice. “You cannot take a values-based approach to marketing if your company is not actually living or enacting those values in any meaningful way.”

Naturale was also the first social media manager at Merriam-Webster, where she developed the dictionary’s social media presence from practically nothing — “they would post the word of the day to all the social channels once a day” — into a must-follow.

She says that Merriam-Webster didn’t have the kind of strategy deck that a big corporation would have sunk a lot of money into. What it did have was “very well articulated, shared values around how interesting language was, how important it was, and the fact that it is always changing.”

She sums those values up: “Words and language are not cultural capital. They're not the property of the elite. You can care about words and language and also be interested in the way that language is changing.”

From those values, she built what is now a well-known brand voice (never mind the 456% increase in Twitter audience she ushered in).

2. Use your buyer persona as inspiration for your brand voice.

Your buyer persona should answer a few vital questions: Who are you trying to reach? What do they need from your brand? What can your brand offer them that no one else can?

Audience research can help you identify other types of content that are reliably appealing to your audience.

Tools like Google Analytics, or even a simple survey of your audience, can help you determine or confirm other sites that your readers frequent.

Ryan Shattuck, a digital media strategist who managed Dictionary.com’s social media for four years, tells me, “Knowing your audience is obvious, but I would take it a step further. Respect your audience.”

Dictionary.com’s buyer persona — or its target users — likely paints a picture of somebody who does the New York Times’ Connections word game as soon as the clock strikes midnight.

“I think it’s safe to assume that the people who follow a dictionary account on Instagram are also people who read books and do crossword puzzles,” as Shattuck puts it.

“And so I can make a joke about the Oxford comma. I can use a meme to share the etymology of a word.”

If your voice doesn't resonate with your audience, keep experimenting.

3. Look at your best-performing content.

If you've already been publishing content for a few months or even years, take a look at your top-performing pieces to find out what’s resonating with your audience.

How would you describe your brand voice in that content? It might be assured and authoritative, with deep topical knowledge backed up by original research. It could be playful and irreverent, using memes and pop-culture references to connect with your audience.

Make a list of adjectives that describe your voice in your top-performing pieces, and highlight the common elements. From there, you can start to make strategic decisions about which elements should be replicated across your brand.

It’s also helpful to research the content formats that perform the best in your industry and geographic location. (Pro tip: It’s probably short-form video.)

4. Make a list of do‘s and don’ts.

If you get stuck trying to define your brand voice, try defining what you don’t want it to be.

For instance, perhaps your team brainstorms the following statements:

Our brand voice is not pretentious.

Our brand voice is not too serious.

Our brand voice is not grandiose.

Our brand voice is not unfriendly.

Once you've taken a look at these statements, you can begin forming the antithesis. For example, the above list might yield a brand voice that’s down to earth, funny, informal, and humble.

5. If necessary, use a third-party agency to determine brand voice.

Forbes' BrandVoice is a media partnership program that helps brands reach and resonate with their audiences through expert consultancy and direct access to Forbes audiences.

Take a look at how Cole Haan worked with Forbes to create content related to style, arts, travel, social impact, and more. Each piece uses a unique voice to target the intended audience for that category.

If you're struggling to create a unique brand voice or you don’t know how to adapt your vision to the different areas of your business, consider using a program like BrandVoice or a third-party content marketing agency. This will help you take your brand’s game to the next level.

6. Create a communications document so all of your content is aligned.

Once you‘ve created your brand voice, you’ll want to ensure your entire company can use that voice in all marketing materials.

If your company only uses internal writers, consider creating a training course for new staff so they can learn how to write for your brand. If you work with external guest contributors, you'll want to make public-facing guidelines to ensure all your writing captures the appropriate voice.

7. Fill out a brand voice template with 3 - 5 core voice characteristics.

Use a table to formalize your process. Write down three to five core characteristics you‘ve determined are important for your brand’s voice and how your writers can use these traits in their writing.

This step is important for translating ideas into action — how can your writers create a “humble, authentic voice” in their writing?

Give some examples or tactical advice to make it easy for your brand voice to come through in all of your content, regardless of byline.

To explore what a template could look like in practice, take a look at the brand voice template below.

Top Tips from the Pros

Although social media is just one component of a brand’s voice, it’s often the most public and the most prolific. So I asked the social media pros I talked to for this article for their top tips on crafting a brand voice.

1. Be human.

Kearns says to ask yourself, “Would a real person say this? Is there something in here that is relatable, and that someone can connect to?”

“It’s not a dictionary sitting at a computer,” Shattuck tells me. “It’s a real person.”

Image Source.

2. Respect your audience.

It bears repeating: Don’t just know your audience. Respect them.

3. Reflect your brand’s product and culture.

You won’t win authenticity points if you’re trying to mimic another brand’s culture. Conversely, if you have a great company culture — channel it and celebrate it in your social accounts.

4. Be culturally relevant, but not at the expense of your brand identity.

This doesn’t mean you should meme-ify everything — but it does mean that memes are fair game if you stay on-brand.

Shattuck said that at Dictionary.com, he always asked himself, “Is this post educational? Is it entertaining?” If he couldn’t answer “yes” to both,, he knew the post wouldn’t do well because it wasn’t adding any value.

Brand Voice Examples

Before you start crafting your unique voice, turn to role models who have perfected their tone. Here are 10 examples to get you started.

You can see other distinct brand voices in the video below.

1. HubSpot

A year ago, you’d be more likely to find a product description on HubSpot’s social media than a meme about brat summer.

But then the social team began experimenting with a more Gen Z and millennial tone of voice.

It’s still a work in progress, Kearns tells me, and every month the team takes a close look at what performs well and what doesn’t. “We’re figuring out how we talk about the HubSpot product in a way that is interesting and adds value and is culturally relevant.”

Cultural relevance and timeliness are major considerations for the social team. Kearns says she’s always asking herself how they can connect the HubSpot product to “something hyper relevant, or something that managers are going through right now.”

“If we just talk about our product in a vacuum, even with our fun brand voice layered on top of it, it might fall flat.”

Kearns says that although your brand voice should be identifiable and consistent, “it should have a little bit of flexibility” so you can adapt it to different platforms.

2. Duolingo

Duo the owl is the face that launched a thousand memes.

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The feathery embodiment of the Duolingo brand voice, Duo is “expressive, playful, embracing, and worldly.” That’s according to Duolingo’s brand guide, which also notes that Duo is both “persistent” and “slightly awkward.”

Duolingo’s defined brand voice includes a “brand personality” section that describes who Duolingo would be as a celebrity (Trevor Noah), a vehicle (a Vespa), and a song (Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now”).

Duolingo’s Senior Global Social Media Manager, Zaria Parvez, told Contagious in a 2023 interview, “Dream big, but iterate small.”

If you’ve spent any time on the clock app, you’re familiar with Duo’s occasionally unhinged antics — which all started with Parvez asking to take over Duolingo’s then-dormant TikTok account.

3. Title Nine

A woman-owned and women-focused athleticwear company, Title Nine combines a friendly “aww shucks” vibe with a triumphant fist pump.

Freelance copywriter Robyn Gunn writes on her website that T9 brought her in to write copy that “reinforce[s] the brand's badass, ballsy DNA that differentiates it from ‘softer’ competitors in the category.”

Title Nine’s “Who We Are” page encapsulates this voice perfectly: It’s written in clear, simple language that underscores the brand’s love of the outdoors and its enduring support of women.

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This graphic from its online store brings out a more playful side of Title Nine’s brand voice, evident in the bright colors and patterns, the casual typeface that “Trail Shop” uses, and the invitation to “track in some dirt.”

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Title Nine doesn’t have a publicly accessible brand guide, but I’d describe its voice as friendly, powerful, playful, and direct.

4. Who Gives a Crap

True story: A customer service rep at Capital One once had to read me a list of recent credit card charges so I could confirm whether they were mine or a fraud.

Poor dude was clearly mortified at having to read “Who Gives a Crap” out loud, saying, “This is the company name, I am just reading this off a list, it is not me saying this.”

So he’s maybe not WGaC’s target audience, which is considerably more relaxed on the topic of toilet paper.

WGaC’s “About Us” page tells a tale of toilet jokes and changing the world. Successfully combining something so ridiculous with a very real and very serious global problem is no easy task, but the ability to walk that line nicely sums up the brand’s voice.

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“Making a difference in the world” can be a hard value to channel in a brand voice, since the brand (and the people behind it) have to demonstrably live up to the promise of effecting change.

Who Gives a Crap gives a lot of specific details that indicate that lack of access to a toilet is an issue that the founders genuinely care about. The product descriptions do the same. Take this one for a special poetry edition TP (I am not making this up):

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“Create an ode in the commode” is pretty hard to beat for terrible poetry. The product description ends with, “And since we donate 50% of profits, you’re not just building ballads, you’re doing good, too!” — a reminder of the brand’s promise in a goofy, casual tone.

WGaC’s brand voice might be described as cheeky (pun absolutely intended), lighthearted but rooted in a cause that’s deeply serious, informal, and conversational.

5. Poppi

Poppi soda blares its voice from the moment you land on its eye-searing bright pink and yellow website. Known for having a Gen Z-friendly voice, DrinkPoppi.com looks more like a neon Instagram feed than a website for flavored sparkling water.

Its “About Us” page brags about “new besties” like Billie Eilish and Post Malone, and even its newsletter sign-up says, “Let’s be friends.”

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The creative agency responsible for Poppi’s branding describes “the world of Poppi” as “quirky, nostalgic, and vibrant.” I’d add to that “informal” or “casual.”

6. Spotify

Whether you‘re watching a TV ad, driving past a billboard, or scrolling Spotify’s social accounts, you'll see a consistent voice. The brand’s tone is consistently funny, edgy, direct, and concise.

For instance, take a look at this video, which is part of a Spotify advertisement campaign from 2019, “Let the Song Play.”

As you can see, Spotify doesn‘t take itself too seriously. The ad makes fun of people who get so emotionally invested in a song that they won’t resume their plans until the song ends.

You‘ll see a similar brand voice play out on Spotify’s social channels. On its Twitter account, for instance, the brand often posts tweets related to new music in a casual, friendly manner.

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If Spotify‘s brand were a person, she would be witty, sarcastic, and up-to-date on today’s pop culture references. You‘ll see that personality play out across all of Spotify’s communication channels.

7. Mailchimp

When exploring Mailchimp's brand voice, turn to the company’s Content Style Guide.

In the Style Guide, Mailchimp writes, “We want to educate people without patronizing or confusing them. Using offbeat humor and a conversational voice, we play with language to bring joy to their work.… We don't take ourselves too seriously.”

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Even in the Style Guide, you can hear Mailchimp's brand voice shine through. The company consistently achieves a conversational, direct, playful voice in all its content.

For instance, in this blog post, the brand writes about various “highly unscientific personas”, including the fainting goat. The email service provider describes this persona by saying, "when startled, its muscles stiffen up and it falls right over.”

They then link out to this hilarious video.

As you can see from this example, you can evoke brand voice in subtle yet effective ways. If the blogger had instead written, “If a goat is scared, it becomes nervous. The animal's muscles contract and it faints as a result”, the writer would've evoked a voice more aligned with a scientific journal than Mailchimp.

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8. Fenty Beauty

The About Us page for Rihanna's beauty company reads, "Before she was BadGalRiRi: music, fashion and beauty icon, Robyn Rihanna Fenty was a little girl in Barbados transfixed by her mother’s lipstick.

The first time she experienced makeup for herself, she never looked back. Makeup became her weapon of choice for self-expression."

It‘s clear, even just through this short snippet, that Fenty Beauty’s voice is bold, direct, and poetic. Language like “transfixed by her mother's lipstick” and “her weapon of choice for self-expression” reinforce this voice. However, the tone is also undeniably casual — the way you might talk to your best friend.

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You'll see this voice play out across all Fenty social channels, including this YouTube video description:

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The first statement, “The blur is REAL!” — along with phrases like “No-makeup makeup look”, and the shortening of the word “combination” — all evoke a sense of friendliness.

The brand voice matches its target audience perfectly: youthful millennials and Gen-Zers who care about makeup as an opportunity for authentic expression.

9. Clare Paint

Clare, an online paint site, has created a mature, spirited, and cheerful brand voice to evoke a breezy, girl-next-door feel to their branded content.

For instance, consider the title of one of their recent blog posts, “6 Stylish Rooms on Instagram That Make a Strong Case For Pink Walls.”

The post uses phrases like “millennial pink”, “pink walls have obvious staying power”, and “designers and DIY enthusiasts alike have embraced the playful shade with open arms.”

The brand’s language is friendly, chic, and professional, relating to its readers while simultaneously demonstrating the brand's home decor expertise.

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This voice is clear across channels. Take a look at this Instagram post, for instance.

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“When baby's first bedroom is on your grown-up vision board” makes the brand feel like a good-natured older (and more fashionable) sister. The reference to the COO‘s baby boy is another opportunity to make authentic connections with Clare’s followers.

10. Skittles

Skittles often posts hilarious social media posts that strip away any promotional, phony language so you're left with something much more real.

Take this tweet, which reads: “Vote Skittles for Best Brand on Twitter so we can keep our jobs!”

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The brand voice, which is clever and original, does a good job of making prospects and customers feel like they‘re chatting with a mischievous employee behind-the-scenes. The “I can’t believe they just posted that” factor keeps the content fresh and exciting.

Plus, the brand does a good job making pop culture references, like this Mean Girls reference, to highlight the brand's youthfulness.

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Skittles’ use of absurdity and humor plays into their iconic commercials. In one 2022 ad, the company pokes fun at targeted ads.

While two people watch a youtube video, they comment that their ads are so targeted that it feels as if Skittles is listening in on their conversation. Then, a man with a boom mike drops through the floor.

 

Skittles expertly keeps the same tone across media, showing their brand’s commitment to their voice.

Brand Voice Template

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Looking to make a template for your own brand voice? HubSpot is here to help! You can fill out this blank Google Sheet template with your own brand voice characteristics.

Fill out the remaining cells, and send them along to your team.

It‘s important to note, you’ll be prompted to make a Google Drive copy of the template, which isn't possible without a Google account.

Crafting Your Voice

And there you have it! You're well on your way toward building a strong, compelling brand voice for your own business.

Logo, color palette, and font are all important aspects of branding. But beyond that, a good brand starts with good content. And good content can’t exist without a strong voice.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in April 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

It often surprises people to learn just how unfunny making comedy can be. I worked with this week’s master of marketing some years ago out of The Onion’s HQ, so we’ve both been behind the scenes. A business is still a business, and marketing is still marketing.

Which isn’t to say it can’t be a helluva lot of fun.

I talked to Hassan S. Ali, the creative director of brand at Hootsuite, where he describes his job as “leading a team of creatives to ruffle B2B marketing feathers for an equally feather-ruffling product.”

Case in point: His team recently produced a (mostly) SFW commercial that promises to “uncover social media insights” by repositioning a local green space as a nudist park.

Lesson 1: Comedy begins with empathy.

Since I last saw him, Ali’s had stints as the brand creative director for Potbelly’s and now Hootsuite. At both places, he’s brought his sometimes wry, sometimes absurdist humor into play.

I ask him to spill his secrets. What can I tell our readers that will make them funnier marketers?

His answer is no joke: If you want to successfully use humor in marketing, start by building trust and practicing empathy. He gives me this example:

Say you’ve got an idea for a hilarious new ad campaign, but you keep hearing that the stakeholders “don’t want to have fun.” (Cyndi Lauper weeps.)

Ali asks, “Is it that, or is it that they’re kind of worried that they’re going to spend money on this,” and if it flops, they’ll be reprimanded — or worse?

“That’s a very human emotion. So if we go into these conversations with, ‘Listen, I hear this might be a little outside of your norm,’” you’re immediately showing empathy, even if the person hasn’t voiced their fears.

Lesson 2: Data can make you funnier.

“Data helps inform and persuade and build that trust,” Ali says. He’s “definitely gotten a CEO who’s shifted in their chair a little bit” during a pitch, so he knows something about persuading the risk-averse.

When you’re asking stakeholders to work outside their comfort zones, you “oftentimes need the data to show to them that this is actually what surveyed people want.” Ali points me to Hootsuite’s 2024 social media consumer report: 55% of the 6000+ respondents enjoy brand content that “makes me laugh.”

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A practical tip ties this all together: Ali will sometimes shoot a funny version and a straighter version of an ad, and test both. Building trust means showing “that you’re able to communicate the needs of the business in a way your audience cares about.”

Lesson 3: Use the peanut butter method.

“Everyone hates advertising, but they're okay being sold to,” Ali says.

It’s like using peanut butter to sneak your dog a pill. “If people are willing to be sold to, pitch the pill in something yummy. People will watch it.” (Let’s ignore for a moment that we are all the hapless dogs in this analogy.)

“I often think that the best ads are ones we can't measure, because they're shared in a group chat with friends.” I sincerely hope nobody is working on a pixel that can track my group chats, but it’s true that if somebody shares an ad, it’s because it’s both funny and emotionally resonant.

Maybe you see a funny ad for diapers. Your sister’s just had a baby, and you share the ad in the family group chat. “All of a sudden, there’s a bond formed through this piece of advertising.” And it goes beyond “here, buy this thing,” Ali says.

Without that (hopefully imaginary) group-chat tracking pixel, traditional marketing metrics won’t necessarily be of much use.

“But what did you solve for the customer?” Ali asks. “Those are the real results.” The more we can focus on that, “the better we’ll be as marketers.”

Lingering Questions

Each person we interview gives us a question for our next master of marketing. Last week, Wistia CEO Chris Savage asked:

What’s something you’re doing that’s working so well, you’re afraid to tell others about it?

Ali: I have to say that the creative brand team at Hootsuite is working so well that it‘s like a secret. Just to watch the collaboration and the teamwork that occurs here — it’s something I’ve never experienced before.

And Ali’s question for our next master in marketing:

What advice would you give yourself when you were first starting out?

Come back next Monday for the answer!