Guidelines for a Strong tone – Brand Voice Template 2022

Many brands struggle to create compelling brand awareness campaigns. But, through brand voice and tone, they can quickly achieve this. A clear voice nurtures a great personality. Thus, helping companies communicate their core values and mission more precisely. So, it is why we have created this guide on building a solid tone and brand voice template for your business.

It would help if you started communicating in a way that leaves an everlasting impression. It’s not all about promoting your products and services. But more of connecting and communicating what people want, in a way they want to hear it. That is through the voice you choose for your brand.

This brand voice template discusses the guidelines for creating a firm tone and voice for your company. In other words, how do you choose an effective tone and brand voice? Also, we will see some of the best examples of tones and brand voices customers love. Finally, we will describe the steps for creating an effective brand voice template. But let’s first understand what brand voice and tone mean.

What is a brand voice and template?

• Brand voice: Style of communication directed towards a specific audience. Therefore, it must impress and, at the same time, express a brand’s values and personality.
• Brand voice template: Guidelines that specify the voice, tone, language, messaging style, and brand personality. Extract this template from the core values and mission statement of your company.

Brands build their voices to be heard and differentiated from the crowd. So, while you develop your brand voice, don’t try to sound like everyone else. Instead, create a consistent brand voice to present you uniquely to the world.

In general, a brand is like a child. Please give it a name, and then work on its personality or nature. As a result, you will understand its characteristics and find a suitable voice. It can have an authoritative, proud, joyful, emotional, kind, or fun voice.

Whatever you choose, make sure it’s unique, conversational, clever, and impressive. Build it around sincerity and competence. Additionally, endeavour to evoke emotions.

Brand voice VS Tone?

What is the difference between Brand voice and tone?

• Brand voice: The brand’s traits, personality, and characteristics. The voice that creates a dialogue and builds relationships. And one that helps you to be impressive, expressive, and functional. 
• Brand tone: The attitude or style of voice you speak in a given situation. Particularly the way you speak and the language you use. It could be a soft, authoritative, or calm tone of voice.

When you combine the brand voice and tone, you build a cohesive communication unit. One that is unique and reinforces your messaging ability. A brand voice should never change regardless of the situation. At the same time, your brand’s tone may vary to suit a particular case as we will later in this brand voice template.

Why is the brand voice template important?

You must communicate effectively for your message to sink. That means you need a robust communication style. One that customers can recognize and easily relate with. That is what a brand voice template will do for your company.

But apart from that, here are other importance for building a brand voice template for your company. 

1. Builds effective brand awareness campaigns

Brand awareness, for starters, is what a business does to promote its message. In other words, how recognizable is your brand before its customers? 

Creating brand awareness is critical in getting your brand closer to its customer. It’s a hectic process, but a clear brand voice template will simplify it for you.

Nothing is interesting like customers recognizing brands just by the way they speak. That means such brands will use less effort in convincing people to buy their products.

2. Shapes Your Buyer Persona

A buyer persona is a detailed description of your target audience. Marketers usually create a fictional person to represent their target audience.

So, a buyer persona can be a customer, audience, or marketing persona. In other words, the personality of your potential buyers. It includes demographics, Personality Profile, and target customer’s pain points.

Compelling brand voices are those that mimic the audiences they are targeting. Therefore, by all means, your brand voice template should depict your target audience. As a result, you can as well use it to understand who your target audience is.

3. Differentiates you from the crowd 

Brands create unique voices and tones such that they can stand out from the crowd. Also, they want to foster a first impression in the faces of their prospecting customers.

Nothing sticks to a customer’s mind more than humourous and inspiring brand voices. As a result, people will know it’s really you whenever they see your posts.

4. Creates Consistency

Your brand voice should be consistent throughout your online presence. It is like a guideline or set of rules shaping how you communicate to your audiences. 

Thus, a tone and brand voice will help you stay consistent in communicating. That is through blogs, email, SMS, or social media marketing.

5. Establishes an everlasting relationship with customers 

Every brand is yearning to get closer to customers. The closer you are, the more sales and user engagements you get.

But one of the best ways to win loyal customers is by creating a strong brand voice. It helps to establish an emotional connection with your audience.

So, it is an essential part of your brand style. Your brand should speak in a voice and language your customers understand best. It will attract loyal followers who look forward to interacting with your content.

Categories/Types of brand voices to adopt

There are many kinds of voices different companies use to craft a brand voice template. But here are some of the categories we found very easy to create your brand voice around. The first thing you should do is to create a tagline or slogan in line with one of the following categories:

1. Approachable

Like an approachable person, this brand voice is friendly, cordial, and pleasant. Using this voice communicates to people that your brand is simple and welcoming. Therefore, they will quickly understand you without being judgmental.

You may use this voice alongside a positive and inclusive tone. Such a tone reflects your audience’s moods. For that case, write naturally and use contractions to draw your message most simply. This helps you to write so that everyone can understand rather than just feel out of place.

2. Knowledgeable

This brand voice reflects you as an expert in one niche or another. So, behave like an industry leader by writing from the point of expertise. 

Use trustworthy, inspiring, educating, and motivating language that expresses technical knowledge. Always use data to back up your claims. Develop quotes and thoughtful points. As a result, users will perceive you as knowledgeable and authentic. 

3. Passionate

Passion makes even the most challenging things seem manageable. Use a passionate voice to attract people that are hard to please by writing about the topics you love most.

All you have to do is to write passionately. Make it clear that you are in love with what you do. Then, just say, do things a footballer would do for football.

So if you are passionate about changing something about your customers, use strong verbs. Be enthusiastic. And encourage them to do what you want them to do.

4. Authentic

To have an authentic brand voice means remaining consistent. Be genuine and transparent through all your communication. In other words, you need to be honest in your writing. 

Create a compelling brand story. And avail of the essential information and solutions your audience is most interested in. Remain true to your values and mission. With that, your brand voice will resonate, and people will agree with you.

5. Witty

Clients with a sense of humour want to connect with brands with the same characteristics. Using mild sarcasm and unexpected examples or comparisons will help you establish a humorous brand voice. 

To achieve this, keep a casual tone in your content and use jokes only after testing which one works in real life.

Five practical examples of brand voices 

Here are some of the best slogans companies use to reflect their brand values. You may use these as an inspiration to craft your tagline:

1. Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC)

Slogan: Finger-licking good

KFC uses an intriguing, motivating, and persuading catchphrase to build its brand voice. 

• Passionate voice: Expresses their pride and love for what they do and how they do it differently. 
• Knowledgeable: Show expertise in what they do. This tagline inspires and attracts audiences to have a taste of what they do.

2. Nike

Slogan: Just do it

Nike uses an inspiring and positive voice that suits its target audience (athletes). Such phrases can motivate different individuals in this niche.

Nike expresses leadership, friendship, and determination, which motivate many of its consumers. These include health and sports clubs.

3. Ford

Slogan: We put our name on it

Ford uses a brand voice that expresses its pride and leadership in its industry. Such a slogan, however, is appropriate for established brands. Hence, the so-called “BIG” brands! 

4. Always

Slogan: What it means to do things like a girl

This tagline might definitely not be the most emotional thing you have read. But it’s intensely moving and rated one of the most inspiring. 

Being a female product brand, Always chooses an expressive voice that resonates with its target audience. This tagline has helped their audience to understand and cherish the brand. That explains why Always is the global leader in feminine care.

5. DIGting Agency Limited

Slogan: Your brand, our concern

Being a marketing agency, we want to sound like we are part of our client’s staff. Therefore, we use an approachable, helpful, and committed voice that expresses us as a reliable partner. Furthermore, the slogan tells our clients how important they are to us. And that we care about the things that matter the most to them.

How to create a brand voice template for your company

Here are the five steps you can follow to create a brand voice and template that will leave a thoughtful vibe in your audience. And one that instills positivity in a customer’s day-to-day life.

1. Create Company mission and values

Company mission and values are the core reasons for your organization’s existence. They describe the things you consider essential. The core values you stand for. Plus, the purpose or intentions for starting your organization.

All these explain some key points and characteristics of your company. So, they act as the vision that directs your brand voice and tone. 

2. Develop a buyer persona

As we explained earlier, a buyer persona describes your target audience’s characteristics. The problems they are facing and how you can solve them. What languages do they speak? Do they understand industry jargon or slang? Are they corporate or non-corporate? You can learn more about how to create a target audience profile for your business in this article.

All the above will help you understand the language that best suits them. Hence, creating a simple brand voice, which is easily relatable and understandable.

3. Find inspirations

Consider checking out some of the best brand voices other companies use. Feel free to go back to the examples we provided earlier. See how these brand have created their voices. And the characteristic that nurtured them. It might as well inspire your brand voice.

4. Build your brand voice template

Now that you have identified some or all of your company’s characteristics, choose 3-5 and fill them into your brand voice template. 

A brand voice template is a table with rows and columns, as illustrated in the image below. You can use any tools you prefer while building your brand voice template. However, we recommend Google sheets since it’s easy to use. 

It also allows collaborations; many users can edit and format files in real-time. Additionally, you can easily track changes made to the spreadsheet.

5. Create a communication document

Finally, you should create a communication document with your brand voice template available. This document describes how to communicate the right messages to the right people at the right time. 

It works as a guide that directs your content writers and marketing teams on the right way to build content. Besides, it sets out the communications goals for your campaigns.

Final Remarks

Finally, try as much as possible; use an optimistic tone for whatever brand voice you choose. But on the other hand, remain genuine and welcoming to create trust in your audience. These tips will help you craft a distinctive and memorable brand voice and tone for your company.

We hope these guidelines have helped you create a compelling brand voice template and tone for your business. We recommend using a third-party agency to determine your brand voice if necessary. Perhaps we can help you get started!

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