Copywriting: Creating a Tone of Voice for Your Brand

Tone of voice – it’s an essential part of your brand’s identity. Your brand identity is integral to building a relationship with your audience – if your audience doesn’t feel a connection to your brand and what your brand represents, it can affect your sales, conversion rate, and the retention of your customers.

In this blog, we take a dive into tone of voice – why it’s important, how to get it right, and which brand has got it absolutely spot on.

If you would like help with creating your brand’s tone of voice, why not talk to us? We’re hot on the subject, and will help you to create a brand tone of voice your audience can connect with in no time. Give the friendly team at b4b a call on 01202 684400.

Why is tone of voice important?

We’ve all experienced it – receiving what seemed like a moody message from a friend only for them to later confirm that they didn’t mean for it to sound moody at all. That’s why getting your tone of voice across is so important – it can be the difference between someone thinking you’re blunt and boring or fun and engaging.

That’s where perception comes into play. When you’re creating your brand’s tone of voice, you need to think about how you want your audience to perceive you. What’s right for one brand isn’t necessarily right for the other. For example, a pharmaceutical company generally wouldn’t have the tongue-in-cheek tone of voice that a trendy drinks brand could get away with.

Tone of voice allows you to play around with language to stop someone from perceiving your brand in the wrong way. It allows you to create a personality and an identity that makes your business inherently different from someone else’s. It gives people a reason to choose your business over your competitors and allows you to build a unique relationship that keeps your customers coming back.

But how do you get it right?

How to get tone of voice right

As we’ve already briefly mentioned, a tone of voice that’s right for one brand isn’t necessarily right for another. The best thing to do when coming up with a tone of voice is to think about your target market – who are you trying to sell to?

Do you think the best way to connect to your business owner audience is through an authoritative, straight speaking tone? Or perhaps you want to appeal to the younger generation? Maybe you need a young, hip tone of voice that makes them feel like they’re part of a community?

Once you’ve identified the best tone of voice to appeal to your audience, it’s important that you utilise that tone of voice through all of your communication mediums. A consistent tone of voice throughout your website, emails, and social media is integral to keeping that relationship going.

Let’s take Innocent Drinks as an example. See how they use the same cheeky tone of voice across their website, social media, and emails:

But of course, writing in a specific tone of voice isn’t easy. Using the message example from earlier – it’s common for someone to send a message intending it to come across one way, when to the reader it comes across in another.

It’s the same with brand tone of voice, which is why the utilisation of punctuation and sentence structure becomes really important. Take a look at how the sentence below can be read in three different ways depending on how it’s structured.

1. The cakes from our bakery are freshly made every day with love from our passionate team
2. The cakes from our bakery are freshly made – every day – with love from our passionate team
3. The cakes from our bakery are freshly made every day – with love – from our passionate team

Just by using hyphens to put emphasis on parts of the sentence, you create a whole different meaning each time. While the first sentence does the job, it doesn’t really tell your audience anything about you. It’s a ‘yeah, we get it’ kind of sentence.

The second sentence puts emphasis on the ‘every day’. And that in itself tells potential customers so much more about your business. Your customers really take note of the fact that your cakes are fresh. No slightly stale leftovers from the previous day on your counter.

The third sentence puts emphasis on the ‘with love’. Bringing attention to the ‘with love’ really highlights the passion of your team. It makes a potential customer want to buy from you because they like to feel that the cake they’re buying is special.

Talk to us about your brand’s tone of voice

As you can see, tone of voice is a lot more than thinking a sentence in your head and typing it out on the screen. And it can be hard to get into the habit of remembering to use your brand’s tone of voice across all of your communication mediums.

Our brand and marketing teams are experts in creating and implementing different tones of voice, so we’ll work with you to find one that works for your business and your customers. If you need help, get in touch with us on 01202 684400. We look forward to hearing from you!