A strong content strategy with regular blogs, social, top and middle-funnel content drops is great for getting people familiar with your brand, but what really builds a relationship between you and your intended buyer is your unique Tone of Voice. It’s the way you speak to your customers across every interaction you might have with them, from your website, content, social media, to even direct conversations between them and your sales team.

In my experience, your brand’s Tone of Voice is one of your most compelling weapons in your sales arsenal. But establishing a distinctive and authentic voice for your company in a crowded digital landscape is challenging. Getting it wrong or failing to document it properly can lead to inconsistencies in your content and across your marketing channels.

Below is an outline of how I approach establishing a brand’s Tone of Voice, turning it into a valuable internal document for use across your business functions, and how I apply Tone of Voice in content production and promotion.

Why do you need to define a Tone of Voice for your company?

I’ve touched on some of the reasons why an established and agreed Tone of Voice is important, but there are more reasons to take this aspect of your brand development seriously:

• Cementing brand identity: Your tone of voice is an integral part of your brand identity. It helps to humanise your business, making it relatable and memorable
• Creating consistency across all channels: A well-defined Tone of Voice ensures consistency in your messaging across all platforms and content types
• Creating a connection with your audience: It helps create a strong emotional connection with your audience, building trust and loyalty. Harvard Business Review outlines that when companies connect with customers’ emotions, the payoff can be huge
• Unlocking competitive advantage: In a market saturated with similar products or services, a unique Tone of Voice can set you apart from your competition

How I unearth a company’s Tone of Voice

In many instances, a company’s Tone of Voice is already there, it’s just not defined in an official document or part of your brand guidelines. It can be found in the way your teams already speak, in the way your customers position their challenges, and in the values of your business.

My process for formalising an existing but undefined Tone of Voice is similar to how I would approach a company who was rebranding or had conflicting brand messaging. I follow the same seven-step process detailed below.

Step 1: Understand who we are, values, mission and culture

I think understanding the ideal Tone of Voice of your company starts with considering the existing brand statements you already have, evaluating strengths and weaknesses and identifying any gaps that may exist.

I also believe that your unique Tone of Voice should be a reflection of your existing company culture and capture the word tracks of your employees. Your employees engage with your target audience in hundreds of different ways and have their ear to the ground in terms of what resonates with your customers (especially sales, C-suite executives, product marketing, etc.).

To capture what makes you you, I conduct workshops with key stakeholders and compile all of your other brand documents, including:

• Brand guidelines
• Mission statement
• Vision statement
• Core values
• Unique selling propositions
• Company culture or EVP documents

And bring them all together to understand what Tone of Voice already exists, even in an informal way.

Step 2: Outline an audience overview

With an understanding of what informal Tone of Voice already exists, I compare it against the needs and pain points of your target customers. This is a really important stage as it ensures that the Tone of Voice I develop resonates with their existing behaviours.

To do this, I consider:

• What pain points would lead our customers to your company and services/products
• What types of media they like to consume to answer their queries
• Their role, seniority, overarching responsibilities
• Demographics
• Industry, market factors and recent developments or trends

Step 3: Conduct competitor research

I assess your competitors’ Tone of Voice and how it operates across their online channels. I do this because your competitor’s website is the next port of call if you can’t meet your intended audience’s needs. It’s important to understand how your competitors might be getting it right or communicating differently.

With an understanding of their Tone of Voice, the main tropes and themes they use in their communications, I can plot out what works well and how I need to differentiate your brand’s Tone of Voice.

Step 4: Establish a message architecture

With a solid foundation of what makes your company unique from within, what resources and attributes your personas are drawn to, and how your competitors communicate, I build out a message architecture that distinctly captures and elevates your voice.

This is a defining document that establishes:

• Who we are
• Who we would like to be in the future
• Who we don’t want to be like
• What emotions we want clients to associate with us

This process allows me to draw out the defining adjectives and traits that will make your Tone of Voice representative of your brand. I select a few key adjectives that encapsulate your brand’s tone, like “friendly,” “professional,” “innovative,” or “trustworthy”, etc.

Step 5: Create Tone of Voice do’s and don’ts

This message architecture is the core of your Tone of Voice, but for people outside of marketing it can feel a bit impenetrable and difficult to understand how to apply it. That’s why I create a rundown of examples of Tone of Voice do’s and don’ts for easy reference.

To do this I outline the key defining adjectives of the Tone of Voice, establish why they reflect our brand and resonate with our audience, then show them off in action, and give a bad example so they what not to do.

For example, if you’re a professional services firm with a formal approach to all client engagements, and your clients are C-suite execs looking for a SaaS solution to streamline processes, a defining keyword could be:

“Precise”

Why precise? Our clients are very busy and have a lot of options available to them, we need to demonstrate that we are the right choice to solve their challenges in the most efficient way possible.

Do: Do be clear and concise in your descriptions and communications, do use good UK English grammar.

Don’t: Do not abbreviate words and do not use emojis in emails as these could be misconstrued.

Step 6: Incorporate your Tone of Voice into your brand guidelines

I incorporate your Tone of Voice message architecture into your brand guidelines so that it becomes an established part of your brand strategy. This would also include the dos and don’ts so if someone new joined your company and was reviewing your brand guidelines as a way to get to know you, then this exercise is part of their onboarding.

Step 7: Distribute your new brand guidelines to your team

There’s no point in creating a representative Tone of Voice if no one knows it exists, where it is or what they should do with it!

To distribute it throughout your teams I create an internal communications announcement outlining an ‘espresso’ (small and impactful) overview of the Tone of Voice, where they can find the document, and an invitation to come and talk to me if they have any questions at all.

Regular follow up and reminders also helps keep the document top of mind amongst your teams.

How I apply your Tone of Voice to my content marketing efforts

Now you’ve got a fully realised Tone of Voice, it’s time to apply it across your different channels. This means reviewing what you already have out there, adjusting it to reflect your Tone of Voice, and then proceeding with your content strategy in a consistent way.

To do this I will look at your:

• Web content (yup, the whole thing!)
• Blog posts to date
• Thought leadership, reports, whitepapers
• Social media profile pages and posts
• Email marketing, boilerplates, any templated content
• Video content, storytelling, subtitles and captions
• Sales collateral, pamphlets, leaflets, brochures

Once I have these elements aligned with your formalised Tone of Voice, I can start creating new content that is consistent and impactful.

From there, nothing can stop us from making your Tone of Voice stand out from the crowd and synonymous among your target audiences with value-add services and products. I turn your unique communication style into a powerful tool for building a deeper connection with your audience, setting you apart from the competition, and ultimately driving brand loyalty and business success.

Because it’s not just what you are saying, how you say it is just as important.

If you’re interested in working together, shoot me an email: gracewrites892@gmail.com