What is Sonic Branding? How to Create an Audio Branding Strategy for Your Business in 7 Easy Steps
Jourdan Aldredge
Aug 7, 2024
Whether you’re building a company from scratch or simply giving your already established brand a relaunch, there’s a lot of branding research and decisions to be made. However, while assets such as logo, color palette, and brand guidelines remain important, one area that many designers, creative directors, and other marketing professionals often overlook is their brand sound.
If you’re looking to give your company, agency, or organization a full rebrand, you’ll also want to look at the best sonic branding strategy for your institution. If you’re unsure about what this term means and how the process of sonic branding works, have no worries—we have you covered.
Check out our full guide on how to sonic brand your business with the seven easy steps which we’ve outlined below.
What is sonic branding?
First and foremost, let’s take a step back to take a look at what “sonic branding” is and explain a bit more about what it means and how it works. As we’ve covered on the Soundstripe blog before, here’s why sonic branding matters now more than ever. It’s also not as difficult or complicated of a process as you might think.
Sonic branding can be anything from a short audio clip that instantly connects a listener with a brand to a more loose assembly of songs, sound effects, and other audio elements that together create a cohesive brand that sounds and feels a certain way.
In short, sonic branding simply refers to how sound can be used to connect a listener with a particular brand or company. You hear sonic branding examples all the time from the likes of McDonald's, Windows, Disney, and countless others.
Regardless of how you plan to use your sonic brand, let’s give you the steps you’ll need to follow to create a sonic brand for your business on your own.
1. Look at your brand
The first step to developing your sonic brand is to take a bit of time to reflect on your brand as it currently stands. Even if you’re launching your first brand, it's important to define what you want your brand to stand for, and the overall tone, look, feel and ultimately sound that you would like it to convey.
Should you already have some ideas or branding elements in place, brainstorm what sounds or audio elements would best complement or optimize your existing assets. What feelings or emotions are you looking to evoke? It's important to take a holistic approach when developing your brand, ensuring your brand's sound is cohesive with your visuals, and just as impactful.
2. Research the competition
It’s also always helpful to research your competition and see (and, in this case, hear) what other companies in your industry are doing with their audio branding strategies.For sonic branding in particular, you can hear how your competitors use music in their videos and ads and what choices they’ve made regarding the sound integrated in marketing efforts.
3. Review different musical styles and genres
When you start looking into sonic branding options for your own business, there are many different styles and genres of music to consider.
If you look at our music library at Soundstripe you’ll find hundreds of different categories of music that can be broken down into diverse themes, including:
- Mood
- Characteristic
- Genre
- Energy
- Instrument
- Key
- Artist
- Vocals or Instrumental
- Duration
- BPM
- And many more
4. Find the right royalty free songs for your brand
Once you’ve reviewed the different styles and genres of music available to you, you can move on to picking the right royalty free songs for your brand. Now, while we should mention that you can attempt to look for non-copyright music on the internet, we’d recommend using royalty free music as the best and safest way to find high-quality music that you can actually use for all of your different marketing needs.
For sonic branding in particular, here are some great royalty free music playlists hand-picked and recommended by our team.
Description: Compilation of lyric-driven tracks that inspire and uplift.
Description: Corporate jingles and electronic music curated for advertising within the tech sphere.
Description: Snaps, claps, and upbeat vibes that'll make you a true believer in Company XYZ.
Description: Rebellious rock tunes are trending among our corporate clients and advertisers.
Description: Quirky tracks trending among our corporate clients and advertisers.
5. Find the right royalty free sound effects for your brand
Similarly, if you want to fully develop your sonic brand, you’ll probably want to pick out music and sound effects. Sound effects can often be a forgotten part of any video or marketing project, yet they’re almost just as important as the music.
And, similar to music for sonic branding, royalty free sound effects is your best bet for safe distribution of all your marketing materials regardless of which channel or medium they're shared through.
Here are some royalty free sound effects playlists we recommend:
Description: Relax. Unwind. Take your content to a peaceful place with these calming SFX.
Description: Human sounds like humming, cheering, coughing, etc. Welcome to the human condition.
Description: Is it deja vu, or is it a glitch? Definitely a glitch.
Description: Digital alerts and pings that would make R2 beep with joy.
Description: Alerts from tech devices of multiple makes and models.
6. Build your sonic brand
Once you’ve selected the best royalty free music tracks and sound effects for your company, you can build your sonic brand. Choosing a signature sound for your brand promotes instant connection with your audience, and helps listeners have a distinct auditory association with your product or service.
However, suppose you’d like a richer and more complex sonic brand. In that case, you can pick a library of music tracks and sound effects that you can share with your marketing team and any outside contractors or creators to help keep all of your marketing efforts consistent and within the same sonic brand.
7. Share your sonic brand with the world
Once your sonic brand is built, developed, and finalized, you can share it with the world. And honestly, if you’ve never worked with sonic branding in the past, it can truly be one of the most fun branding exercises you’ve ever done. While it might seem subtle to some, the results will speak for themselves as your branding improves sonically (and significantly).
If you have any more questions about sonic branding or how to use royalty free music for your brand video creation, be sure to check out the rest of the Soundstripe blog for additional tips and tricks.