First impressions are everything. In life, relationships, and how people perceive your brand's messaging. With the inordinate amount of messaging consumers come across daily, the ability to grab their attention with a relatable and distinct voice has never been more necessary.
We all understand that messaging is important (hopefully), but what exactly does tone of voice mean? Tone of voice is how you communicate with your audience and is created by the words and phrases you use. It describes how you want your messaging to sound and not only what the message is. Basically, it's how your brand's personality and values will shine through.
A clearly defined and successfully implemented tone of voice builds connection and trust and leaves a lasting memory in your audience's mind. But how exactly can you establish this essential component of your brand? Whether you're a new company or looking to define your marketing strategies, we've compiled our top tips to test (and find) your brand's tone of voice.
1. Learn about your audience
The first step towards building your tone of voice is understanding your audience. If you are a new brand, you'll need to determine your target audience. If you are established, you can research your website visitors and customers through Google Analytics, Facebook, and Instagram. With these metrics, you can learn simple data like gender, age, and location or go even more in-depth to find out interests and estimated income.
Go even deeper and learn how your audience talks to one another, what channels they prefer to use, and where they go to consume content. Doing this will give you inspiration and a better understanding of what will resonate with your target market.
2. Build a persona
After learning as much as you can about your audience, the next step is to build a persona. A persona is a fictional character profile that represents a person in your target audience. Putting a 'face' to the unknown can be very helpful to hone in on communication and build empathy.
Many times, brick-and-mortar businesses have a better understanding of who their customer is because they interact with them in person every day. But if your business is mainly e-commerce, developing a persona for your marketing strategy will be essential to creating the most effective tone of voice.
3. Look at your top-performing content
Companies that have been in business for at least a year can look at their past content to see what has resonated with their audience. Simply pull your top-performing emails, blogs, and social media posts and evaluate how your voice comes across. What words and phrases were used? How did this content make you feel?
Don't forget to check out your trusty Google Analytics, where you can see where people are spending the longest time on your website. The pages where people scroll to the bottom and spend the most time on may already have great examples of your brand's effective tone of voice.
4. Identify your brand's values
Now that you better understand your audience and what they'd like to hear, it's time to look at your brand's values. Expressing what matters to your company enables you to connect with your audience on a deeper level. It helps build common ground and create a deeper meaning behind your business.
If you're unsure where to start, look at why you started your company. Did something happen in you or the founder's life to inspire this new business? Every brand has a story and a key differentiator that helps them stand apart from its competition.
Once you've established your values and purpose, put them concisely into a mission statement. This statement should live where everyone, both audience and employees, can easily view it.
5. Determine What, How, and Why you want to communicate
Now that you've got the basics down about who your brand and audience are, it's time to get a bit more granular. For this aspect of developing your tone of voice, it's best to get everyone on the team together and include a copywriter to help you make the decisions that will impact your messaging.
First off, what type of content will you be communicating, and what will be the goals of that content? Are you looking to be an expert in your niche or more of a friend? What kind of emotions are you looking to evoke? Maybe you are an interior design firm looking to inspire home renovation. Or possibly you are a science-backed skincare line wanting to educate your audience on the latest ingredients. Blog posts are excellent for education and tips, whereas inspiration is well received over social media.
As we mentioned before, the how in your message is the key to connection. A great place to start is seeing if your brand resonates with these adjectives: friendly, formal, casual, witty, funny, respectful, enthusiastic, or serious.
6. Create an internal document for reference
Next, every little thing in step five needs to be documented in a tone of voice guide. This is so your internal team and any contractors who work with you will have a solid understanding of your brand's voice.
This document should include an easy-to-follow chart with the adjectives that describe your voice and what you want it to sound like. You'll also need some do's and don'ts for vocabulary and a set of grammar rules. Plenty of examples are always welcome and encouraged in your guide.
Lastly, you'll want to include any technical language that pertains to your brand and its specific industry and any legalities to keep in mind, like claims on effectiveness.
7. Use A/B testing
Put your tone of voice to the test with A/B testing. Try using different styles and phrases in your email subject lines, headlines, and calls to action and see which perform better. You can also do the same thing with Facebook ads. Try two different headlines and compare the results to help refine and confirm your brand's tone of voice.
A well-established and consistent tone of voice will allow your brand to be recognized by content alone, whether or not they see your logo. Building this critical step into your company's structure takes time and expertise. Ready to get started? Get in touch today. We'd be happy to be your guide during the process.
