Standing Out to Get Hired: The Biggest Advantage is an Authentic Brand Voice (Yes, Really)

Enquiries down? Sales getting harder to close? You’re not alone. 

As an agency owner and business mentor for the last 14 years, I’ve seen plenty of ups and downs in our industry – but this latest “down” feels different, doesn’t it? 

There are more web designers than ever before. Anyone with a ChatGPT subscription and a laptop can bang out a website for next-to-nothing. Competition is fierce. Companies are stripping marketing budgets back to nothing. 

And as if that isn’t enough to contend with, we then have to consider just how much noise online we’re having to shout over to get clients to hear us. 

You’ve probably already read the latest stats showing the internet is slowly sinking under the weight of AI-generated mush. There’s AI slop everywhere. Pages and pages of content that might technically hit the brief, but has all the flavor of plain toast.

Meanwhile, people are craving something real. Something they can trust more than the 54,753 articles regurgitating the same 10 Tips for Making More Sales Online. They want human connection. 

People buy from people they like and who bring them real value. To become that in the eyes of our customers, we need to create true connections. 

How can we do that? By leaning into what makes us uniquely us.

Building authentic brand messaging and authority is something AI can’t fake. And that’s where sales are made (and legacies are built). Not in chasing trends. Not in pumping out more generic content as fast as you can just for the sake of it.

Content that converts now (and in the future) is intentional, insightful, and genuinely helpful.

Let’s take a look at how you can start creating it. 

How to find your brand voice

I’ve been running brand voice and strategy workshops for years, and I can confidently say making definitive decisions about what you stand for, who you want to help, and how you want to communicate all that is the most difficult task for every company owner I’ve helped. Surprisingly, this includes brand strategists too! Working on our own stuff can be just too close to home for many to be able to look critically at their current position and where they can realistically go. 

When sales are getting tough, it may feel counterintuitive to try and target a specific type of business or client – but in the long term, it helps to speak directly to your ideal clients’ problems, needs, and expectations. It helps you get known (and stand up) for what matters most to you and the people you help. 

Whether this is your first time trying to figure out your brand identity or you’re ready to reposition your services, knowing where to even start can be so overwhelming you just avoid the entire thing. 

So, to get over that initial hurdle, here are some questions to get you thinking:

• What do you do/What does your agency do? This can literally be ‘web design’ ‘website maintenance’ for the moment. This is your ease-into-the-deep-thinking stage.
• Why do you do what you do? We’re looking for a deeper reason than ‘to pay off my mortgage’ – it may be technically correct, but what made you start your business? What makes you keep going?
• What matters to you? Personally and professionally. Family? High standards? Making the world a better place? Thrill seeking and adventure?
• What work do you love? What makes you jump out of bed in the morning? What do you genuinely look forward to doing?
• What do you refuse to do? The ‘nope, not happening, not even for a rush fee’ stuff
• Who do you love to work with? Picture your favorite client – what makes them great? What would you change about them? What parts of them would you clone into your next ten clients? General things to think about:
  • Generation
  • Motivation
  • Attitude
  • Approach to work/life balance
  • Political views (if that’s your thing!)
  • Goals (professionally or personally, or both!)
  • Hobbies
  • Lifestyle
  • Financial factors
• What are three things you don’t like about your industry? Three too hard? Go for 2 instead. 
• What core belief about your industry do you want to change?  The myth, misconception, or straight-up nonsense you wish would retire.
• Is there a hill you’re willing to die on (regarding your work/your competitors’ approach?)
• What’s the thing you wish more people understood? The one message you’d share if you only had five minutes.
• What do you want to be known for? The core ideas, themes, and beliefs you want your audience to associate you with every time you show up online.
• What are your brand’s personality traits? Are you warm? Direct? Playful? Opinionated? Calm? Loud? This is the brand tone your content needs to carry.
• How do you naturally speak to clients? What phrases do you use all the time to communicate?
• What’s your contribution to making things better? The difference you genuinely care about making through your work.

Well, now you’ve got the answers to all those questions, it’s time to distil the answers into four main statements:

1. The one thing you commit to doing

2. The one thing you refuse to do

3. The one lie you will silence

4. The message you will share

Here’s an obligatory example because brand identity work is hard (no copying and pasting, it defeats the point!):

1. I commit to helping entrepreneurs grow as their authentic selves
2. I refuse to preach the “hustle harder” rhetoric
3. The lie I’ll silence: “If it’s not perfect, don’t share it” – an imperfect, but ‘good enough’ piece of work will do a thousand times more than an unpublished, unfinished ‘masterpiece’
4. My message to share: Unconventional thinking is at the heart of all innovation, embrace it

My usual workshops and brand identity creation processes tend to last between a week and three (hey, we’ve got a lot of deep thinking to go through!) – but getting started with the questions above is a great first step. You can then build out your brand messaging and writing guidelines.

So, now you have a clearer idea of what you want to say and why, let’s get started on sharing your ideas with the world (and getting some new clients as a result).

Making intentional content: Strong brand voices matter

Let’s start with something I see companies do a lot – posting random bits of content here and there and convincing themselves it counts as a marketing strategy.

Although it might *feel* productive to post 4 reels a day and keep your LinkedIn updated 7 days a week by sharing random articles you’ve read, update quantity doesn’t guarantee results. Random acts of marketing are not an effective strategy.

And look, no judgement here – we’ve all done it. Tossing something up on Instagram because it’s been two weeks since your last post, or firing off a quick LinkedIn thought because that’s what everyone else seems to be doing sure does feel like ticking the ‘must-do’ box.

But that’s marketing activity, not marketing strategy. 

Activity is noise. 

Strategy is intention.

When content has purpose, it tells good-fit prospects exactly what you do and what you stand for…and gently encourages the wrong-fit clients to go find someone else.

Intentional content that’s recognizable as uniquely you helps your target audience connect with your:

• Beliefs: What matters to you and how it shapes your work (and how it aligns with their approach to business)
• Expertise: The unrivaled depth of your knowledge (not just the shiny surface-level bits everyone knows)
• Interests: Whether you have the same motivations and end goals as them

When those three line up? You stop chasing bad-fit prospects and start working with the people who make you love what you do even more.

From your list of pet peeves, inspiration, and things you just need to change about your industry, pick out a couple of things.

These core themes and topics can be revisited again and again, with unlimited opportunities to be shared on multiple platforms, like:

• Blogs
• Podcast episodes
• Short form videos
• Social media posts
• Carousels
• Quotes
• Email newsletters

Legacy content = compounding brand awareness

Your voice and opinions matter more than ever for grabbing the attention (and loyalty) of potential clients. 

People are getting a lot better at spotting generic AI copy – the tone, the phrasing, the ‘I’ve definitely read this exact sentence in someone else’s post’ feeling – and they’re growing increasingly tired of it.

When your content is intentional, genuine, and authentic, it keeps working long after you hit publish.

At the heart of legacy content is a simple framework – CAP:

• Create – A single cornerstone piece
• Amplify – Repurpose it into multiple formats
• Preserve – Make sure it’s discoverable to the right folks

What does that look like in action? 

Let’s say you have a great idea for a podcast episode. You create the episode. Then you amplify it. That episode turns into 10 short clips. Those clips become a week’s worth of LinkedIn posts. One of those posts becomes a quote someone shares.

And finally, you preserve it by:

• Turning that podcast into a blog that lives on your website
• Optimizing it so it’s easy to find through SEO/AEO best practice
• It’s so thought-provoking/genuinely helpful that people link to it

From that one idea, you get dozens of opportunities to connect to the right people.

Why human-written content still beats AI (every single time)

An authentic brand voice is honestly the best thing brands have going for them right now. Sure, AI models can clean up a sentence or write a pretty average paragraph, but it can’t think like you. It doesn’t know your lived experience, your creativity, your original thoughts. 

Human copy will always cut through spam content. And that’s where legacy starts – with content that sounds like a real person and communicates your brand messaging to attract and help the people you’re built to work with.

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