What is tone of voice and why does it matter? 

The importance of tone of voice cannot be overstated, but unfortunately not all businesses give it the time, attention and focus it deserves. It’s all well and good having fantastic messaging and wonderful products to sell, but that can all fall flat if you don’t communicate them in the right way. 

If you think of messaging as what you want to say, tone of voice is how you choose to say it. It can transform a snooze-worthy sentence into something exciting, eye-catching, emotive, and even memorable. Mastering tone of voice can genuinely revolutionise a brand. 

Take Oatly, for example. The Swedish oat drink brand has been around for a long while, but it’s only in recent years that it has really made a name for itself globally. Why the change? Well, among other things, they radically adapted their tone of voice. Dripping in sarcasm and wit, their new brand identity is one that pokes fun at themselves, their CEO, the industry, stereotypical sales jargon, and even the EU. 

Why is being funny, quirky and unconventional so effective? It’s memorable, it’s likeable, and it encourages an emotive response. That is the key with tone of voice; you want your customers to read your copy and be triggered (emotively, of course) - which, if it’s all gone well, encourages them to like you, remember you, stay loyal to you, and ultimately recommend you. 

Now, being funny isn’t the only way to do this. It totally depends on your audience and your industry whether you should play around with humour; often it may be safer to avoid, because there is nothing more uncomfortable than a joke that falls flat. 

But the key lesson to learn is the importance of generating that emotive response. 

Emotion is often thought of as one of three key considerations when building successful online interactions. Failing to build emotion-inspiring moments into your website, for example, can negatively impact your user experience, conversion rate and customer retention. Failing to build them through your social media presence can reduce your following, discourage engagement and stifle clicks. Tone creates emotional responses in your reader, and that’s a great thing.

How do I decide on the right tone of voice for my business?

First of all, there is no one-size-fits-all solution here. We’ve seen a number of examples of businesses ‘breaking the mould’ of their industry’s conventional patter to enormous success - think Aldi, for example. Tone of voice, like with many aspects of marketing, is something to develop and nurture as you go; it’s a hard thing to explicitly measure the success of, but you may get a sense from keeping an eye on competitors that your tone of voice is a little off. Ultimately, working with a copywriter can help. Copywriters, especially those from agencies, or freelancers, will almost definitely have worked with a business in your industry in the past, meaning they will have an insight into the best tone of voice for you.

When developing your tone of voice, you might want to consider these three objectives:

1. What value or values do your customers desire? Is it entertainment? Is it reliability? Is it professionalism? You need to enact these values in your copy. 
2. Even if your business is in a highly regulated and professional industry such as finance, your copy doesn’t have to be boring. You should always aim to engage your visitors by making your copy enjoyable and easy to read - don’t make it hard work. 
3. Then the emotive response. To really cement that brand loyalty, you need to stimulate positive feelings that then become associated with your brand. 

These three objectives can help you ensure that your messaging and your tone of voice are working together to paint your brand, services, products and business in the best light possible, making you a competitor to reckon with. Better reputation, better loyalty, better sales. 

If you are interested in working with a copywriter to refine your brand’s tone of voice, get in touch with us today.