**While beautiful logos, colour palettes and design set out an image and feel for your brand, it is the tone of voice that really speaks to your customers and lets them know what you’re about.**
Developing a consistent voice for your brand gives an impression of trustworthiness and honesty, whilst regular changes in tone come across as contradictory. Getting your tone of voice right is a brilliant investment: making communication with your customers clear, interesting and informative.
Your copy should display your brand’s values consistently across all mediums; sales literature, social media, packaging and press releases. This is for everything both internally and externally, and online and offline. Before you get started it’s vital to establish your tone of voice by considering a number of points:
**How to define your brand’s tone of voice**
The right tone of voice for your brand really depends on the values you hold and want to portray to your customers. Think about three or four qualities that best summarise you brand as a starting point – for instance a boutique shoe brand might be fashionable, exclusive and luxurious, whilst a baby’s clothing company is fun, practical and durable.
Once you have these values in place, you have to decide whether a friendly, professional, detached or formal tone will be more appropriate. Whatever approach you take, you must make sure your communications are coherent and clear to the target market.
It is best to decide on your tone of voice with the launch of a brand, or a re-brand, rather than out of the blue(link: http://www.rlyl.com/the-secret-to-nailing-tone-of-voice/ text: . LV= underwent a re-brand in 2007), and since then have kept their fun and vibrant image and tone of voice consistent. Instead of changing their tone with each new campaign they have remained the same, giving them a chance to develop and define their voice.
**Consider your audience**
You need to consider your customer’s demographic to speak in the tone of voice which appeals to them. Think about how old they are, their values and principles, what they read and what they do in their leisure time.
You might have a varied audience, so will have to consider how to adapt your copy accordingly. For example: you might be a toy company that aims some content to children and some to their parents. Or you might be a department store stocking a range of brands that appeal to a wide span of ages and both sexes. You need to find a way to encapsulate all of this, and appeal to everyone.
**How original do you want to be? **
Whilst bucking the trend of your brand’s field may work in some cases, often the consumer will find this a little try-hard and unnecessary. It will probably work best to express yourself as effectively as you can within the constraints of your field.
There are examples of bucking the trend that worked however. For instance O2 avoid using financial or technical jargon, as they like to simplify these topics for the customer and retain their fun image. (link: http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/news/o2-enters-4g-fray-by-encouraging-uk-to-be-more-dog/4007241.article text: Take a look at the ‘Be More Dog’ campaign), taking a playful and silly approach ahead of the launch of the company’s 4G network. This aims to keep customers excited and embracing the possibility of yet more technological advances, rather than jaded and confused by them.
**Keep it appropriate**
The (link: http://www.charitycomms.org.uk/articles/five-tone-of-voice-lessons-from-innocent text: Innocent brand) is one of the most successful examples of great branding through tone of voice, and many others have followed suit. However, just because they captured their audience with a sweet and friendly approach doesn’t mean this will work for you. If you’re an IT support company for instance you will only succeed in sounding ridiculous.
You might choose to vary your tone of voice depending on the context. (link: http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/trends/whats-the-language-of-your-brand/4007277.article text: Virgin media) for example is known for using a cheeky touch of humour, but while this works well for the company’s TV ads it isn’t appropriate for all content it produces.
Opting for an informal and friendly stance is the current trend within marketing; we have seen insurance advertising take a completely new direction when you compare the stuffy and formal Scottish Widow ads of the 1990s with the silly and fun ‘Compare the Market’ or ‘GO Compare’ ones of recent years. Whatever your industry, you should be able to find a way of coming across a little more personable, even if this is only through social media.
**Social Media**
It is worth remembering that anything you say via social media can be shared on any platform. This is beyond your control. For this reason you should be extremely careful about what is said, and consider whether words need to be written in full or acronyms can be used.
Social media can pose a tricky issue for very corporate brands, but is also a great opportunity to make them seem a little more human and relatable.
Some brands will see coming across as friendly and human as a disadvantage. High fashion brands aim to retain their air of mystery and exclusivity. For this reason they avoid chatty conversations with their fans via Facebook, as this is more befitting of a high street store.
Chanel and Burberry for instance use social media to share images of products, advertising campaigns and catwalk shows, but avoid responding to comments and opinions. It isn’t to their advantage to come across as ‘accessible’ to the average Facebook user as they wish to retain their exclusive image.
**B2B marketing**
In the past, the style of voice for B2B businesses was often cautious and subordinate. However, with B2B shifting to digital channels it has become necessary to change approach. B2B consumers now research their purchases online, so wise marketers adopt a conversational, convincing style instead of the sales talk that used to be effective.
You want to come across as expert and confident in B2B marketing, but it can be hard to master this without sounding cocky or using over-complicated or dull language. There is no reason why using jargon should be a problem if these are the words your target audience knows, just make sure you get your message across as clearly as possible. Whatever your field, in B2B marketing you generally want to aim for a tone of voice that is honest, authoritative and passionate about your product
With audience engagement becoming increasingly important a growing number of businesses are thinking more carefully about their marketing voice, and adapting accordingly.
Once your tone of voice is decided upon you need to ensure it is adopted throughout your company; create a guide to give to all employees that write content, and make sure staff adhere to it. You will now have created and implemented the right tone of voice for your brand.