Find your brand voice: A practical guide
What is brand voice
Brand voice is the way your business communicates with the world — through words, phrasing, the choice of topics, and what it omits to say. It's more than just a slogan or logo. It represents the brand's overall personality, ensuring it's consistent whether a customer encounters you in an advertisement, on your website, through support, or on an invoice.
A well-defined brand voice achieves three goals:
Distinguishes you from the competition — in a sea of similar offerings, the tone is often the only thing a customer remembers.
Builds trust — consistent communication appears professional and reliable.
Strengthens customer relationships — when a brand speaks in a way that resonates with your audience, it creates a feeling of mutual understanding.
Why brand voice matters
Today, people receive hundreds of marketing messages daily. Product or price is often not enough to determine why a customer chooses you. The difference becomes the way you communicate. Brand voice is closely linked with emotional storytelling and authenticity — some of the most effective ways to differentiate from the competition. Learn more about authentic storytelling and brand building in marketing from the article Innovative marketing tactics for acquiring new customers.
A consistent brand voice also saves time. When you have a clear definition of how your brand speaks, everyone — writers, support, marketing — knows what to write and how. This reduces the number of consultations, approvals, and misunderstandings. For brands operating in multiple markets, a defined voice is the cornerstone of every successful localisation — without it, translations can easily become sterile texts without personality.
Voice vs. tone: what's the difference
These terms are often interchanged in practice, but distinguishing them makes sense:
Voice = the brand's personality. It's stable and doesn't change. If your brand is "friendly and open," it remains so under all circumstances.
Tone = the current mood of a specific message. It changes based on the situation, channel, and audience.
Example: A brand with a friendly voice writes with ease and humour in an Instagram post but shifts to an empathetic and serious tone when responding to a customer complaint. The voice remains the same; the tone adapts to the context.
How to define your brand voice step by step
Defining a brand voice is not a one-off task for marketing. It's a vital decision about who you are as a company. Here's a practical approach.
1. Clarify your values and mission
Before you start thinking about words, clarify what your company stands for. What is important to you? Why do you do what you do? How do you want to be different? Values are the foundation from which your brand voice grows. If you emphasise transparency, your voice will be direct and open. If it's innovation, it will be dynamic and confident.
2. Know your audience
Your brand voice must resonate with the people you speak to. A younger audience on social media reacts to a different style than the CFO of a large company. Find out:
Who are your ideal customers?
What language do they themselves use?
What values and concerns do they address?
What annoys them about competitor communication?
3. Define your brand's personality
Personify your brand. If it were a person, what would it be like? Use 3-5 adjectives to simply define it — for example: expert, transparent, direct, human, optimistic. Avoid generic words like "professional" or "quality" — they say nothing specific.
Instead of abstract adjectives, try comparisons.
4. Choose on a tone spectrum
A proven framework from Nielsen Norman Group defines four dimensions of tone that a brand navigates:
Formal × informal — do you use formal language, or conversational English?
Serious × humorous — is there room for humour in the communication, or do you keep a factual tone?
Respectful × bold — do you appear polite and cautious, or provocative and confident?
Enthusiastic × factual — do you communicate with energy and passion, or soberly and factually?
For each axis, choose where your brand fits. Some companies prefer a clear position, others move in between.
5. Create specific rules
An overall declaration "we are a friendly brand" is insufficient. The team needs concrete guidelines — what to do and what to avoid. Define:
Vocabulary — what words do we use, which do we avoid (e.g., "user" vs. "customer")
Sentence length and structure — short and punchy, or longer and explanatory?
Address — do we use first names?
Professional term usage — do we explain, or assume knowledge?
Taboos — phrases, clichés, or topics we avoid
Example:
Team rule: Avoid legal and bureaucratic terms. Instead of 'the entity is required to submit a document', we write 'just send us the document'.
How to keep brand voice consistent
Definition is just the beginning. The real challenge is maintaining consistency across all touchpoints — website, social media, emails, support, invoices, and job ads.
Create brand voice guidelines
Compile the rules into a document accessible to everyone communicating for the brand. Good guidelines include:
A brief description of brand personality (3-5 adjectives)
Position on tone axes
A concrete list of "we say × we don't say"
Examples of "good × bad" in real situations (email, post, push notification)
Rules for different channels (different tones in support versus advertising)
DON'T write guidelines as a theoretical manifesto. Rules that are actually used are concise, full of specific examples, and you can find answers in 30 seconds.
Train the team and partners
Brand voice is not just for marketing. Equally important are support, sales, HR, and external suppliers (copywriters, translators, agencies). Invest time in familiarising them with the brand — workshops, examples, first text reviews.
Regularly review
The market evolves, as does your brand. Every 6-12 months, review real communication and compare it to the defined rules. What matches? What's changed? Is there a need to update the guidelines? Brand voice evolves with the brand, but changes should be thoughtful, not random.
Common mistakes when setting brand voice
Definitions too broad — terms like "professional, friendly, modern" apply to 90% of brands. Be more specific.
Copying competitors — what works for competitors won't differentiate you from them. Brand voice should be yours.
Consistency across channels — when a brand speaks formally on its website but like a teenager on Instagram, customers get confused.
Rules without examples — abstract guidelines won't be used by the team. Rules without "good × bad" examples are just literature.
Forgetting customer support and invoices — brand voice doesn't stop at advertising. It belongs wherever a customer encounters your brand.
A practical example of linking a brand with a specific document can be found in the article Invoice design: brand and professionalism — demonstrating how the brand voice works even where you might not expect it.