Find Your Voice & Mind Your Tone: How Tone of Voice Makes an Impact

How your company presents itself in the market can make or break your brand, and tone of voice is an important factor in this. When it comes to branding, how you say something is equally as important as what you say. This creative voice helps you connect with your audience and differentiates you from the competition.

Creating a distinct tone of voice is about creating memorable messages for your audience. In order to achieve this, you need to tailor your content to your target audience, connecting with them on a personable level. This can be attained through the creation of customer personas to really understand who you are talking to and how to reach them.

Personas are based on the analysis and research into real customers and helps marketers build a detailed picture of who your customers are. This includes information on their personal motivations and expectations, what kind of communication they prefer and what they value in a brand. For example, selling a teenager a pair of jeans compared to trying to sell a mortgage to a teaching assistant.

Once you’ve created your customer personas, you can work on defining your business’s tone of voice. Think: if your business was a person, what would they say? How would they say it? What type of language would they use? Having clear guidelines of the stance your business takes with language used is key in defining a brand.

Illustrates your values

A tone of voice embodies a brand’s personality and set of values.

Define your tone of voice by thinking about what makes your company unique. Doing so shapes your audiences’ expectations of how your brand will interact with them in the future.

Think: What does your brand want to tell the world? What would you like people to know about your business? Why was the company set up in the first place? These are the factors that will help you set the tone of voice of your business.

Illustrates your differences

The tone of voice your business uses should be distinctive and unique. In spoken language every day, people have different accents and dialects. Some individuals have unique inflections, favourite expressions and different paces. These clear differences in language often portray unique characteristics of a person the same way your company’s tone of voice reflects yours.

Language and tone are significant factors in portraying your businesses unique features. To many consumers, most professional services and products offer the same promises, so making your business stand out is key. By focusing on emotional connection and showing personality to your target audience, you distinguish yourself and make an impact.

Think: How is the way you work different? What’s unique about you?

Builds trust

Certain brands stand above the competition in today’s ever-evolving market. This is down to branding creativity and business consistency.

Think of big brands with clear creativity throughout their marketing. A great example of this is Innocent Smoothies.

One of the most recognisable features about their brand is that the tone of voice is relatively informal and friendly. It doesn’t feel like they’re talking to a customer, but a friend. They stray from grammatical conventions, often avoiding capital letters and keeping their tone childlike and innocent with colloquial terms such as ‘stuff’ and ‘things’ used throughout their marketing materials.

This creativity makes them stand out, but the consistency in their messages creates trust.

There is a strong link between familiarity and trust. When consumers feel your tone of voice is familiar, it requires less effort to process mentally and so they are likely to feel more at ease around it. Creating a specific tone of voice plays a crucial part in this.

Think: How do you want to be recognised? What do you want to be known for?

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In order to create this sense of consistency, all marketing materials and even the way you are represented by your staff needs to embody the same tone of voice. Creating tone of voice guidelines will ensure you have something to give employees to help them understand exactly what they need to convey when they represent your brand.

Ultimately, tone of voice is a fundamental feature to your branding strategy. At EDGE Creative, our content creators work to ensure all aspects of your marketing materials embody your business’s unique tone of voice. If you don’t have one, we can help you to create it. We have extensive experience in brand building and creating compelling stories for clients such as Busy Bees Benefits, Christopher Trigg and KLO Financial Services.

Find out more about how EDGE Creative can support you and your brand by calling 0121 355 8092 or emailing jessica@edge-creative.com.

Jessica Greaney

Content Creator