Why Your Brand Voice Matters

Do you know how to talk to your customers? Is it right for your business to tell the odd joke or communicate with emojis?

If you’re not sure how to talk to your customers then you probably need to start working on your brand voice.

Your brand voice is the personality behind every piece of content you create. How you sound when chatting with customers on social media, writing product descriptions, or in email updates matters.

When a brand has a strong & consistent tone of voice, it becomes easy to recognise. This can boost engagement & turn casual browsers into loyal customers. Get it wrong & you’ll confuse your audiences, appear inauthentic & potentially put your ideal customers off.

Let’s dive into why your brand voice deserves more attention & what you can do to get it spot on.

A brand voice is your business’s personality. It’s not just what you say, but also how you say it. Your voice encompasses tone, choice of words, rhythm & whether or not to use emojis, exclamation marks or a simple full stop.

Your brand voice should feel like a natural extension of your company’s values & mission. If you’re a luxury skincare brand, your voice might be sophisticated & calming. If you’re a fitness start-up targeting millennials, you might be energetic & motivational.

The key is consistency. Your voice should be the same when customers read your website, scroll through your Instagram, or open your newsletter.

But here’s where many brands trip up: they confuse voice with tone.
Your brand voice is your consistent personality, while your tone might shift slightly depending on the situation. You might use a more formal tone when addressing customer complaints, but keep a playful tone for social media posts. Think of it like this: your voice is who you are, your tone is how you adapt to different rooms.

You’re not just selling products or services, you’re building trust, providing value & showing your expertise. This is especially crucial now that generative search is changing how people search online.

Search engines are becoming more adept at understanding conversational, helpful content that genuinely serves customers. This means your content needs to be rich, informational & written in a way that feels natural & engaging. A strong brand voice helps you achieve this because it ensures your content feels cohesive & authentic across all touchpoints.

When your voice is consistent, your content becomes more memorable. Customers start recognising your style, even without seeing your logo.

They’ll start trusting your expertise because you sound confident & knowledgeable. Most importantly, they feel like they are building a relationship with a real brand. They are not just consuming random bits of information.

A good way to start is think of which celebrity your brand reminds you of. How about Keke Palmer? Young, the life of the party, quick witted & playful?

Or maybe David Attenborough? Wise, experienced, calm & thought-provoking?

Write 5 – 7 personality traits that captures your brand’s essence.

Don’t just think about what sounds good. Consider what is true to your business. Most importantly, think about what meets the expectations of your target customers.

Do you know your target market? Who are they, what problems do they have & what information do they need?

If you’re targeting busy business owners they probably prefer concise, professional language. But if you’re speaking to creative freelancers, you could go for a more casual & collaborative tone.

Look at how your customers communicate on social media, in reviews & in direct messages. What language do they use? What tone do they respond to best? Your voice should feel familiar & comfortable to them, not like you’re speaking a language they don’t understand.

Once you define your brand personality & understand your target markets, you can then create guidelines for your team. This will keep your tone of voice consistent, no matter who creates the content.

The more specific you can be & the more examples you can provide, the easier it will be for your marketing team to maintain.

Include:

• examples of words & phrases you do & do not use.
• The formality of your tone, are you speaking to a professional or a best friend?
• A summary of your personality in 4 or 5 words

As your business grows & your customers evolve, your voice might need subtle adjustments. Pay attention to how your audiences respond to different styles & tones. Are they engaging more with certain types of content? Do they respond better to specific language choices?

Use this feedback to refine your voice guidelines. The goal is to sound authentic & connect with your customers, so let their responses guide your evolution.

You can’t please everyone & trying to do so will dilute your voice until it becomes meaningless. A strong, consistent voice that resonates deeply with your target customers is better than a bland voice that appeals to no one.

Just because your competitor’s cheeky tone works for them doesn’t mean it’ll work for you. Your voice should reflect your unique brand personality & values, not someone else’s successful formula.

Your voice should be recognisable whether customers encounter you on LinkedIn, Instagram, or your website. While you might adjust your tone slightly for different platforms, your core personality should remain consistent.

Your voice isn’t about impressing other businesses or following industry trends. Connecting with your specific customers in a way that feels natural & trustworthy to them is essential.

A lot of AI tools on the market now help you write content with a consistent brand voice.

Google & other search engines won’t penalise your content if you write it with an AI tool. However, it should still be written for humans, be unique, original & you should have a real person check the quality. This ensures that it provides real value to your customers.

• Create your brand personality & voice as a team first.
• Understand your target audiences & how your business can help them. Write around 4 content topics that relate both to your business & your customers.
• Use AI to support with content calendar & content ideas based on your topics.
• Use AI to support create content frameworks, identify where to research certain topics & to support with writers block.
• Proofread & edit your content a few times. This ensures it is written for people & offers useful information to your customers.
• As a triple check, before publishing, you can also run your content through an authenticity checker. Semrush has a great SEO writing assistant that checks your content readability, SEO performance, tone of voice consistency & originality.

Your voice becomes your competitive advantage because it can’t be easily copied. Anyone can use the same emojis, follow the same content marketing tactics, or jump on the same trending hashtags.

Your true voice shows your brand’s personality. It connects with your customers in a special way. This voice is uniquely yours.

Before you worry about using that laughing emoji in your next marketing campaign, ask yourself: do you know how to talk to your customers? Have you developed a voice that builds trust & drives engagement? Are you appearing consistently across all your marketing efforts?

If you need help with your brand voice, market research, or content marketing, contact us today.