If AI now answers a user’s questions before they even reach your website, can your brand still do its job? This second article in the series looks at how people come to recognise, trust and choose your business when fewer of them ever visit your site, and how to hold on to an audience of your own.
In part one we talked about ensuring the machines could find, read and understand your website. But being read is not the same as being remembered. In the first article we imagined a user, Betty. She asked her question, an AI handed her the answer, and she moved on – quite possibly without ever landing on your site. Somewhere in that exchange, though, she still formed an impression of you; from the snippet that got quoted, the tone that came through, the name that did (or didn’t) stick. So the question is no longer just ‘can the machines read us?’ but ‘when our business turns up inside someone else’s answer, is it recognisably us?’. That is what a brand is for.
Brand voice is paramount
If the majority of searches are ending without someone looking at your site, does your brand still work?
Author and marketing strategist Seth Godin wrote ‘A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another’ (Seth Godin). Your brand is a person’s feeling about your company that is built from every experience they have with it. It might be a reaction to an advertisement, an interaction with your website, and it will be how your chat bot speaks, and how an AI talks about you.
In this new world, your brand voice is key. It pays to have a personality. It pays to be consistent. It pays to have something to say. You must be sure of your strategy, your positioning, and your messaging, then work this into all your content.
To speak consistently and recognisably you must have a strong idea of these brand elements:
Strategy
This is the over-arching big plan – the aims and goals and how to go about getting them.
Tone of voice
This is how you talk – the style and flavour of your communication. This is how your personality comes across.
Messaging
These are the key phrases, values and talking points that you find it is helpful to push.
Positioning
This is where you sit in the market and the distinct space a consumer places you in their mind.
During our re-branding work for Childnet, we found that they had many authors writing for them across their website pages, online guides, and classroom materials. In order to build a shared authoritative yet approachable voice, we produced a set of brand-coherent guides to help define a consistent writing style and tone of voice, as well as helping them make their content work better online.
Getting good at chatting
In Everybody Writes Ann Handley asked if you took away all the visual elements from your brand and “lined up your words alongside a competitor’s, would you recognize yourself? Would you stand out?”. More than ever, Ann’s question is important.
A cohesive set of experiences works to define your brand in the user’s mind – developing a personal relationship and building loyalty. A distinct voice will keep your brand recognisable in an AI snippet as well as also being programmed into your website chatbot. This will create user experiences that continue your values even in the spaces being handed to the machines.
Get your details consistent
It helps to keep your brand harmonious across all instances and appearances. A consistent brand presence on your website and away from it will allow your users and the machines to piece together who you are. That is about voice and style but also a very practical need for identification. You must ensure the brand’s name, address, and phone number are written identically across every platform, directory, Google Business Profile, and Apple Maps pin. You need to make sure AI is connecting all the dots.
Hold your own audience
The possibilities of AI are exciting for a business owner but a fear of missing out or getting sidelined by the advancing technology is fair. You can act to ensure your websites and your content work for AI today but we don’t know what is coming next. How can you ensure you maintain contact with your audiences?
The safest way to keep contact is to build your own audience. If you can get people to subscribe to an email or listen to your podcast – you will maintain a control when algorithms change and platforms evolve.
Email newsletters
A list of people interested in your services will prove invaluable. Keep them interested, reward them, and don’t give them reason to unsubscribe.
Euromoney is a great example of the value of producing quality expert content. Their output is consistently impressive and well informed. Their weekly newsletter keeps you up-to-date.
Post widely
Posting regular engaging content on your website is a great start, but extending your reach means meeting audiences where they already are. Share tailored content across the social channels relevant to your audience, but choose those platforms wisely – your brand alignment matters, and many clients prefer to steer clear of platforms with controversial governance or political baggage.
Lush are an exceptional example of expressing their brand when they post. They had been worried about the ill effects of social media algorithms, so they asked us to design and build them their own platform. They now create posts which they mix with their website content or connect to links on their packaging.
Podcast and video
Creating a regular podcast or video series is a wonderful way to create a trusting, authoritative relationship with your audiences. It will be a lot of work, but we are impressed when we see our clients doing it.
IBA maintain a regular series of podcasts aiming to provide insight into a number of complex areas, and react quickly to changing events in the aviation world.
In conclusion
If part one was about being found, this has been about being chosen. The machines can carry your words to Betty, but it’s your brand — your voice, your consistency, your relationship with an audience of your own — that turns a quoted answer into a business she remembers and comes back to. Creating content of value, in a voice that is unmistakably yours, will be the deciding factor in your future success online.
At Eight Arms we care as much about how a website sounds as how it works — brand experience, website experience and content, all pulling in the same direction. The desire for quality across all three should be taken as a call to improve your game. We’d love to chat to you about how we could help support your organisation.
