Your brand’s tone of voice is very important and can make a huge difference in how people perceive your brand. In this blog, we’ll explain how to build your brand’s tone of voice.
What is a brand?
A brand is used to distinguish companies selling products or services. Brands should be unique and have their own name, design, symbols and additional features. Many brands can exist and even produce the same products, which is why it’s crucial that you have unique branding.
Your brand is an important part of your business, and it helps create and maintain positive perceptions from your consumers.
You might come across many branding terms, including brand value, perception, experience, equity, and protection.
When developing your brand, take your time. It’s much harder to amend a brand than to get it perfect the first time. It’s important not to make too many changes to your brand, as this can damage your reputation.
Your brand should convey your value, quality and even your brand missions.
What is tone of voice?
There are so many aspects to a brand’s tone of voice, and you need to ensure that it’s consistent across all platforms. You might find it helpful to think about the distinct personality traits that your brand would have. This can help you develop a story around your brand.
Your tone of voice comprises your word choices, writing style and emotional tone. Having a strong tone of voice helps you to ensure consistency. Your tone of voice should be outlined in your brand guidelines. Clear brand guidelines can be shared with new employees to ensure that everyone knows how to portray your brand.
You need to consider your target audience and identify the best ways to reach them online.
Why your brand’s tone of voice is important
Build brand recognition
It can be tricky to get your brand out there and ensure that people recognise it, but by developing a unique tone of voice, you can ensure that your audience will remember you.
You have to make sure that your brand stands out from the crowd, and there are so many great ways to do this. Consider making your brand funny or caring. Make sure that it meets the expectations of your target audience; otherwise, you might miss the mark!
Build trust
You’re more likely to have a trusted brand if you have a consistent tone of voice. So many people decide whether or not they should trust a brand based on what they can see about it online. If your brand comes across as untrustworthy, you will end up losing clients very quickly.
Develop customer relationships
It’s good to build relationships with your customers online, as many consumers are now choosing brands that offer the most personal experience. With a strong and unique brand voice, you can show users what you stand for and the quality you can provide.
Build a unique brand identity
There will undoubtedly be other brands that sell the same or similar products to you, which is why you must stand out. Your tone of voice is a fantastic way to achieve this.
Having a great tone of voice helps to build relationships and loyalty with customers. It can also make your brand easier to remember as you’re not just offering the same as everyone else.
Share your values
It’s becoming increasingly important that brands stand up for what they believe in, and your tone of voice can reflect this. You can also share the steps you’re taking to build on these missions and outline how they help make the world a better place.
How to develop your brand’s tone of voice
Now that you know what your tone of voice is and how important it can be, it’s time to learn how to develop your communication style. Remember that your tone of voice needs to be completely unique to your business. So, while you can use other brands as examples, make sure yours stands out for the best results.
Understand your audience
Before you start thinking about how to create your tone of voice, you need to consider who your audience is. Think about who is most likely to buy your products, what they spend their time doing, and how you can reach them.
Now is a great time to build audience personas, and you can use various tools to help with this.
Assess your current voice
Have you been posting on social media platforms with no consistency? Then it’s time to change that by developing a style guide and ensuring you have a well-crafted voice at all times. Look at which posts have gained the most engagement from your ideal customers. This can help you build your strategy and see what tone of voice style really engages your audience.
Check out your competitors
Have a look at what other brands are doing. Having this understanding means that you can alter your own strategy and brand personality so that it’s unique and makes you stand out from your competitors.
Determine your core values
Every brand has core values, and even simply listing them can help you establish your tone of voice. Think about the purpose of your brand and how it helps people. Write down any goals you have for your brand to help you stay focused and consistent.
Decide on a compelling brand voice
Once you have all of the knowledge you need to get started, you can decide how you want to communicate with your target audience. Here are the general tone of voice styles you may adopt.
- Funny tone or serious
- Formal tone or casual tone
- Irreverent tone or respectful
- Matter of fact or enthusiastic
The good news is that your brand voice doesn’t need to encapsulate only one style. It can actually combine a few, and this is what some of the best brands do! Having a few styles means they can adapt based on the content they share.
Develop consistent brand voice guidelines and test
We already mentioned your brand guidelines, and now’s the time to create them. In addition to tone of voice guidelines, you should continue testing and monitoring how your audience reacts to your tone of voice. You’ll know fairly soon if you’ve missed the mark, so keep an eye out.
We hope this blog has been helpful regarding your brand’s tone of voice. We can support you with all aspects of your brand strategy, so feel free to get in touch with us!