Have You Got The Voice?

Have you got the voice? 

For us when we’re building a client story, a brand pyramid or helping them along the conversation mastery path that is ultimately the way to TepFu, the state of marketing bliss, we know that voice matters. 

Voice is huge actually. 

It’s very understated and most people often don’t even detect its presence. 

But one of the things we try and do as a rule, and we don’t stick to it absolutely, as nothing is absolute. But as a rule, one thing we try and do through the story is we try and follow four phases of voice; 

START WITH I 

In the first phase, we start with I, because everything starts with I. 

Because people buy from people. 

So before we even get into the story the initial preamble will be I. 

When we’re in the story, there are three parts to our stories that we work through; 

There is before, during and after, because like every good story there has to be a beginning, a middle and an end. 

But in marketing, in conversation mastery terms, we call it that the before, the during, the after. 

THE BEFORE 

With the before, we have to try, and we always try to start from a voice perspective, with they.

We want to signal to our audience who we’re talking about. 

So we refer to they, so as not to say you, because it’s a bit presumptuous early in the relationship to say you.

We say they as if we’re talking about an abstract possible client, in the full knowledge that our client watching, who isn’t yet a client, just a prospective client, will look at that and think ‘that may affect them, but that affects me too’. 

That’s what we want to happen, we want them to opt in and say;
‘Hey that’s also relevant to me’. 

So we go from I to they. 

THE DURING 

In the during phase; 

Before is about pain, during is about process. 

So we want to talk about what we’re gonna do together, so we try and focus on us, because the during phase, the process phase is where we’re going to do something together.

We’re gonna make the pain go away together. 

And so we really try to focus on us. 

THE AFTER 

Finally we come to the after phase. 

This is where we take people to paradise. 

Take them away from the pain through our process to a happier place. 

Here we’re going to talk about you. 

This is the most comfortable space. 

We believe at this point in the story, if they’re still reading, we have established a basis for a relationship. 

Now we feel like we’ve earned the right;

We’ve won the first mile and we can talk to you directly. 

• So when it comes to your story, how does voice matter? 
• With the voice, does it get muddled up? 

It happens a lot and you’ll know when you’re winning because you’ll feel the warmth of your customers coming towards you. 

If you want to find out more, please join the TepFu Free Marketing Help Group on Facebook or LinkedIn

We’d love to help, and we could certainly help, see you there.