5 things you need to know when defining your brand tone of voice
Tone of voice forms a huge part of your brand’s personality - it’s how your business communicates with its audience. The way you speak, interact, and explain your services has a big impact on your potential customer's impression of you. This impression will determine whether people will buy from you, or come back for more.
It also helps you stand out from your competitors. Sounding different makes you memorable, engaging, and a joy to do business with. Think about some of your favourite brands - do you like them because of the way they engage and speak with you?
Your brand's voice needs to be consistent across all customer touchpoints - yes it can adapt slightly depending on the platform and situation, but it always needs to sound like YOU. As soon as it loses consistency, it comes across as jarring to your audience, they lose trust and it makes them think twice about purchasing.
So, how do we go about defining our tone of voice? What do we need to consider?
1. Know your business values & reason for being.
Before you can define your tone of voice, you need to get personal with your business. What is the reason for your business existing? Write down your business story: the why, the who, the what. Then, think about what your brand values are - for example, mine are: ethical, courageous, trusting, and nurturing. These are guiding principles to base your brand and marketing strategy on.
2. Define your target audience, & how they want to be spoken to.
Now you have the reason for your business, and what you value - you need to nail down your idea of your target audience. Different audiences need different approaches to their tone of voice - if you have an academic audience, you will speak entirely differently to them than you would if your audience were young adults, about to leave school.
Understand your audience demographics, needs, likes, dislikes, hobbies, and where they digest information. You need to understand who you are wanting to appeal to, and what will engage them.
3. Avoid sounding like your competitors - in fact, avoid sounding like anyone.
The whole point of your tone of voice is to be different, authentic, and memorable - but sounding just like Old Spice, or Oatly won’t do that. It’s great to get some inspiration, but you need to identify who YOU are, and sound like yourself - don’t ask for a tone of voice like anyone else.
4. Think about the emotions that you want to evoke with your language.
Buying is all about emotions. Think about the feelings that you want to create within your audience through your brand personality. A great starting point for this is the Emotive Feels visual tool - identify which emotions stand out to you and think about how you can reflect these across your messaging, content, and language.
5. Create a tone of voice guide to ensure you remain consistent.
A guide to your tone of voice means that you can easily brief any copywriters, marketers, or your customer service team about how they need to speak to your audience. Tone of voice has to ooze out of every pore of your business - it’s something that comes across from that first touchpoint in marketing, all the way through to the delivery of your product and the aftercare. Always sound like yourself, make the most of your tone of voice, and ensure that everyone understands it, and knows how to roll it out.
The guide needs to introduce your tone of voice, and the values that it stands for - how this is communicated in your language. It needs to give practical advice about how to implement the tone of voice, with examples and templates.
