How to Find Your Brand’s Tone of Voice in 3 Steps

Two words: Innocent. Smoothies.

Remember when finding something funny on the back of a drinks carton felt like a revelation?

Innocent made a name for itself by doing something rather unusual. It talked to customers like actual human beings. The witty little messages on its packaging felt like a private joke between the brand and whoever happened to be having a smoothie.

And people loved it.

Of course, these days every other brand seems to fancy itself as a bit of a comedian. But finding your own voice isn’t about being quirky for the sake of it. It’s about sounding like the business you actually are.

We’ve already had a good old deep dive into why your brand voice matters. But knowing it’s important and actually finding the right words are two different things.

So how do you find your brand’s tone of voice?

Start with your story, get to know the people you’re talking to and turn what you discover into a set of practical writing guidelines.

Here’s how we’d go about it.

1. Story: Have a good old natter

Tell your truth.

Your business has a story, and buried somewhere in there are the words, opinions and little quirks that make it different.

The trick is getting them out.

We’ve got a bank of probing questions to get to the bottom of things, but sometimes the best approach is simply sitting down for a proper conversation. Preferably involving biscuits and brews.

Ask your team what gets them out of bed, what they love about their work and what really gets on their nerves about the industry.

And pay attention to how they answer.

Do they explain complicated things with wonderful analogies? Are they naturally reassuring? Do they have a cheeky sense of humour?

We like to record these conversations (with permission), freeing everyone up to chat naturally before going back to pan the gold.

Give it a go: Record a conversation with your team and highlight five expressions, opinions or phrases that feel unmistakably yours.

That’s a much better starting point than deciding your brand should be ‘professional, friendly and innovative’. You and approximately every other business on the planet.

2. Audience: Walk in their shoes

Another thing we’re rather fond of harping on about is knowing your audience. And we mean properly knowing them, beyond their age, job title and whether they enjoy a weekend walk.

What worries them? What gets them excited? What questions keep cropping up in sales conversations?

Customer reviews, emails and even the occasional online comments section can be absolute goldmines for understanding how people describe their problems.

Have a nose around.

But here’s an important distinction: understanding your customers doesn’t mean copying how they talk.

Your brand still needs its own personality. The aim is to find language that feels natural to you and makes sense to them.

Give it a go: Collect five real customer questions or comments. Compare their wording with your website. Are you speaking the same language, or making people work unnecessarily hard to understand you?

3. Brand language: Turn personality into something useful

You’ve had a good rummage through your story, listened to your customers and collected all those lovely little details that make your business different.

Now it’s time to turn them into something useful.

Start with three or four characteristics that genuinely describe your personality, then work out what those should actually sound like when someone puts pen to paper.

It’s the sort of thing we explore in our brand strategy workshops, helping businesses turn a collection of ideas and opinions into something the whole team can use.

For example:

Confident, not arrogant. We share opinions and explain things clearly. We don’t make grand promises or hide behind jargon.

Friendly, not overfamiliar. We sound like people, not instruction manuals. But we don’t force jokes into conversations where they don’t belong.

And give your team some actual examples.

Instead of:

‘We deliver bespoke, customer-centric solutions tailored to your individual requirements.’

Try:

‘We’ll get to know your business, work out what you need and make a proper plan.’

See? Much more human.

One final thing worth remembering: your brand voice is your personality, while your tone changes depending on the conversation.

You wouldn’t speak to someone making a complaint in quite the same way as someone celebrating a big win. Your brand shouldn’t either.

Test your guidelines across website pages, emails and social posts.

Read the words aloud. If they sound nothing like the people behind your business, go back, shuffle a few things around and see if you can get that personality coming through.

Your voice is probably closer than you think

You don’t need to invent a personality from scratch to find your brand’s voice. It’s probably hiding in plain sight.

In the stories your team tells, the expressions they use and those moments when someone explains what you do so brilliantly you wish you’d recorded it.

That’s the sort of thing you want to bottle up. Find a way to bring it into your writing and suddenly your brand starts sounding a lot more like the people behind it.

And if you’d like a hand uncovering it, give us a shout. We do love getting under the skin of a business.