Five-step strategy: Crafting your brand’s tone of voice

0.05 seconds. That’s how long it takes for someone to form an opinion of your brand online. And that first impression isn’t just defined by your business’ logos and visual identity. 

In fact, how you speak to your customers (aka your tone of voice) can have an even bigger affect on whether your business remains top-of-mind with potential customers or not.

While many businesses focus their time, effort and marketing budget on digital advertising to drive sales, tone of voice is a much more cost-effective solution to building brand awareness, fostering trust and driving audiences from brand discovery to conversion.

Ready to turn your copywriting into your business’ most powerful salesperson? Keep reading to find out how tone of voice can become your brand’s biggest conversion-driving asset.

What is tone of voice (and why does it matter)?

Every piece of copy you read has a unique tone of voice. In fact, even two different brands sharing the exact same information can communicate the same message in totally different ways. 

In a nutshell, tone of voice is how your brand speaks to your audience. It’s not just about what you say, but the language and tonality you use to communicate that message. 

The way you speak to your audience should capture the essence of your brand’s personality and values. For example, if your brand is bubbly, casual and approachable, your tone of voice would harness conversational language, relatable anecdotes and friendly humor to get your key message across.

On the flip side, if your brand personality is polished, professional and premium, you’d opt for formal language, matter-of-fact phrasing and a serious tone to build credibility and authority. 

Tone of voice is what builds a connection with your ideal customers, even before they’ve seen your logo or company name. It’s what humanises your brand, gives your content a memorable personality and ultimately builds trust with potential customers.

With 81% of customers saying they prioritise purchasing from brands that reflect their values, a bespoke tone of voice is what will capture, convince and convert high-value customers (without relying on expensive advertising channels). 

Why you should prioritise defining your tone of voice

1. It clarifies your market position

   A clearly defined tone of voice serves to solidify your business’ place in the market with copy that attracts your ideal customers on auto-pilot. That means you’ll capture high-quality leads and set expectations around your brand’s offering and pricing right from the start.

2. It distinguishes you from the competition

   If you’re operating in a competitive market, a memorable tone of voice is what will keep your brand top-of-mind with potential customers. In fact, 65% of customers say they are more invested in brands that they have an emotional connection with (which is what a compelling tone of voice can help you achieve).

3. It’s your hardest working salesperson

   A distinctive tone of voice (when applied consistently) can boost sales by moving your audience from brand discovery to conversion with ease. The stats back this up: studies show that the average revenue of companies increased by 23% when their brand is presented consistently.

How to bring your brand’s tone of voice to life

Ready to tap into the power of tone of voice and design bespoke messaging guidelines for your business? Let’s walk you through five practical steps you can take to craft a compelling brand voice.

Step 1: Clarify your audience personas

Who is your business trying to reach and attract? This is what audience personas are all about. 

Audience personas represent your key customer segments, and in many cases you’ll have a bunch of different personas to represent different types of customers or clients that spend with your business.

These personas are designed to embody the characteristics of your target audience, and allow you to drill down into their needs, aspirations and challenges. By defining your audience personas, you’ll be able to craft a bespoke tone of voice that speaks their language and builds trust with your most valuable potential customers.

To map out your audience personas, you’ll need to:

1. Segment your audience into a handful (up to three) groups that will form your key audience personas. Build out each persona as if they are a real person by defining:
   • Where they live
   • Where they work
   • Whether they’re married, single, divorced etc.
   • What they’re interested in
   • Their spending power and behaviours 
2. Clarify their pain points or challenges and understand what’s holding them back from reaching their goals.  
3. Identify what aspirations they have, what they want to achieve and what will motivate them to take action.  
4. Map out how your business can help each audience persona overcome their challenges and pain points and reach their goals. 

The key to nailing audience personas is to be specific and flesh out each audience group in as much detail as possible. The better you understand your ideal customers, the more effectively you’ll be able to communicate with them using a bespoke tone of voice.

Step 2: Articulate your brand values and unique selling points

What does your brand stand for? These core values are what will act as the foundation of your business’ tone of voice and ensure the way you communicate as a brand reflects what’s most important to you.

To get you started, here are a few helpful questions to define your brand values:

• Why did you launch your company? What motivated you to get into business in the first place and what was the initial inspiration for your business?
• What problems are you solving or gaps are you filling in the market? Consider what makes your company innovative or disruptive in your industry.
• What makes your brand unique? Think about your unique selling points or points of difference that set you apart from the competition.

Another helpful exercise to map out the values of your business is to craft a mission statement. This punchy one to two sentence proposition should explain who you are, what you care about and what purpose your business serves to your industry, your customers or the world.

Step 3: Develop your message architecture

With your brand’s values clearly mapped out, it’s time to clarify your communication goals with a message architecture. 

This concept was first introduced by brand and strategy consultant Margot Bloomstein, and is designed to help brands clarify ‘what’ they want to communicate with their customers.

Think of your message architecture as the first impression you want to convey to potential customers or clients. 

To map this out, use these three questions to create banks of adjectives that best describe:

• Who your brand is: this is how your brand is currently perceived by your customers and acts as a starting point for building your ideal brand voice;
• Who your brand wants to be: this represents how you wish your brand were perceived by your ideal customers; and
• Who your brand is not: this outlines what impression you do not want to give to potential customers about your brand. 

The key to crafting a clear message architecture is to focus on what first impression you want to give to potential customers through your copywriting and create clear messaging goals you can use to inform your practical tone of voice guidelines (which we’ll get to next). 

Step 4: Craft your brand voice chart

Using the Nielsen Norman Group’s Four Dimensions of tone of voice, take some time to analyse and assess where your brand sits on this scale:

• Formal (builds authority and professionalism) vs Casual (boosts feelings of personal connection and friendliness);
• Funny (boost rapport and relatability) vs Serious (builds credibility and trust);
• Irreverent (boosts sense of superiority and leadership) vs Respectful (builds authenticity); or
• Enthusiastic (boosts engagement and sense of optimism) vs Matter-of-Fact (builds thought leadership).

Next up, it’s time to get more specific about what characteristics (aka adjectives) best describe your desired tone of voice. Refer back to your audience personas, brand values and message architecture to select the most appropriate tone descriptors.

Now, let’s bring it all together to craft your brand’s bespoke voice chart. This practical chart maps out your four most important voice characteristics, offers a description of each characteristic, and explains how to achieve your desired tone of voice with tangible writer’s rules (copywriting do’s and don’ts). 

Brand voice chart example. Source: supplied

With this practical roadmap in place, every member of your team will be able to apply your desired tone of voice consistently across every marketing touchpoint for maximum effectiveness.

Step 5: Create on-brand voice word banks and examples

Last, but not least, it’s time to put your desired tone of voice into action. 

By crafting practical examples of how your tone of voice should be applied in a range of scenarios, you’ll ensure every piece of copy your team creates is aligned with brand voice. 

Adding a word bank of phrases and keywords to your tone of voice guidelines can help to get the creative juices flowing for your team. Make sure to include a clear list of both on-brand and off-brand phrases to set defined parameters of what phrasing to use when writing in your brand’s voice. 

It’s also worth crafting a range of copywriting examples that show how your tone of voice should be applied across your communication channels, including:

• Website copywriting;
• Email marketing;
• Social media copywriting;
• Customer service inquiries and more.

The more prescriptive you are with your tone of voice guidelines, the more consistently it will be applied across your marketing and communications channels. 

So there you have it. With a bespoke tone of voice in place, your copywriting will do the heavy lifting for your brand and capture, convince and convert your ideal customers on auto-pilot. Plus, a distinctive tone of voice will help your brand stand out, remain top-of-mind with potential customers (even if in a competitive market) and allow your business to grow and scale with ease.