Building Your Brand’s Tone of Voice

by Rahimah Sultan

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What is tone of voice in marketing?

Tone of voice is the personality a business creates to communicate with its target audience. If done well, it should build brand recognition and promote a connection with your audience.

Tone includes the language used, sentence structure, and how your words are delivered. It takes into consideration gender, cultural aspects, and the pace at which the language is delivered.

Think of it as one person communicating with another. When you want someone to do something, how do you ask them?

Your tone of voice depends on the audience, how you want them to perceive you, and what communication will best achieve the outcome.

Building your brand’s tone of voice is all about the words you use to appeal to the right people.



What are the benefits of a great tone of voice?


1. Brand Recognition

A great tone of voice builds a brand’s recognition. Your audience will always know it’s you when you use a specific, distinctive tone of voice that’s consistent throughout all your marketing channels.


2. Trust and Credibility

In business, credibility is everything, and your tone establishes trust and credibility. Customers instantly turn their backs on brands that they perceive as insincere or untrustworthy. Over 80% of consumers need to be able to trust a brand before they will even consider purchasing from it.

A well-defined, consistent brand tone of voice comes across as more genuine, which can help you build trust with customers.


3. Differentiation

Your brand tone of voice can be what, sometimes, differentiates you from competitors who sell the same products and services.

It’s easier for customers to connect with you on an emotional level when your brand has a distinct personality. Thus, building trust and loyalty, upping the odds that they choose you over the competition.

A unique tone of voice also makes your brand more unforgettable. This helps your company stick in people’s minds, which can lead to inquiries, leads, and sales.


4. Customer Relationships

When your brand has a distinct tone, it’s easier to enhance customer relationships. Customers want a personal connection with the brands they buy from. They want to know that you understand their needs, values, and concerns. And, they also want to know that the brand will be around for them if something goes wrong.

You can create stronger customer bonds by speaking to customers on their terms and level, which makes you authentic and relatable.

Customers who feel seen and heard are more likely to stay around for the long term.


5. Brand Values

Your tone of voice reinforces brand values. For example,

Your brand tone of voice should always reflect your values. For example, if you pride yourself on being a compassionate business, your tone of voice should be warm, friendly, and approachable.



So, how do you develop your brand’s tone of voice?


1. Understand Your Audience

You really need to get to know your target audience before creating your brand’s tone of voice. It needs to resonate with people who are most likely to buy your product or service.

You can start by researching your target audience’s preferences. Think about their age, where they live, what they do for a living, and their hobbies and interests.

You can develop a customer persona, if you don’t already have one, by using tools like Google Analytics.


2. Competitors

Analyze and research your competitors for the tone of voice they use. This will help you come up with a tone of voice that’s distinctive and unique.

Who is your competitor and what language, words, and phrases do they use? Who is your competitor’s biggest customer and what are their pain points? How does your content solve their problems? And how can you best speak to them?


3. Analyze Your Communication

Next, look at your current marketing materials to see if you have a brand tone of voice in place. It might be that you already favor a specific tone or your use of brand voice and tone is inconsistent across your content.

Consistency is imperative when establishing your tone of voice. A consistent tone branding can get you more growth overall.

Review everything from existing content, customer personas, brand tone of voice guidelines, and messaging to help you identify what’s working and what you need to change.


4. Clarify Values

To ensure consistency and help your tone of voice resonate with the right people, clarify your brand values.

If you already have a values page or a mission statement on your website, that’s a good start.

If you don’t have brand values in place, think about the characteristics that shape your brand identity, like:

What purpose does your business have?

What problems does your business solve?

What characteristics do the people who work for you share?

What are your long-term goals?

What qualities do your existing customers say define you? Check out previous reviews for valuable insight.

You need to reflect your values in your brand tone of voice.


5. Define Your Tone

Now, use the data you gathered from the previous stages, and choose four or five adjectives that best describe how you want your brand to sound.

Examples:

Authoritative
Optimistic
Informative
Conversational

If you’re stuck, you can use.


6. Create Brand Tone of Voice Guidelines


Brand tone of voice guidelines help with consistency. That way, everyone knows how your brand speaks across different scenarios and platforms. If you work with a third party like a digital marketing agency, guidelines are very useful. This helps anyone who creates content on your behalf use the right tone of voice.

Your guidelines should include specific examples of your brand tone in action, as well as how you don’t want to sound. Here’s an example. Your brand tone of voice guidelines can be a stand-alone document or a part of your company style guide.


7. Test and Repeat

When you’ve decided on your brand tone of voice and revised your content, make sure it drives the right results.

Start with your engagement rates.

Are you getting more likes, shares, and comments than before on social media?

Are you seeing more website traffic or longer viewing times on your pages?

Are there more click-through rates on your email newsletters?

If so it’s a sign that your new content aligns with audience expectations.

Ask your customers what they think of your content—you can do this through a short feedback form. They can advise if your new brand tone of voice clicks with them and offer advice on how to make it even better.

Remember to audit and update your tone of voice annually. If your target audience changes or your local rival updates its brand tone of voice, you need to change to stay relevant.

The most effective result of having a strong tone of voice is that it fosters trust and builds relationships with customers. They interact with your brand in the same way people would with a friend or trusted person.

More and more, people want to interact with brands online rather than call customer service, and they are more inclined to do so if the tone of voice is strong. As already stated in this article, building your brand’s tone of voice is critical to your marketing success.


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