Tone of voice is the golden rule of copywriting. You need to write for your audience as if you know your audience.
Half the battle of marketing your product is knowing its USP. The other half is ensuring that those USPs are demonstrated to the right audience in the right way.
An emotional connection
Consumers love to emotionally connect with brands, taking their interaction past the point of end-of-sale. Why should they follow your brand’s Instagram? Why should they join your mailing list?
Maybe they love your brand’s ethos or they find your copy entertaining? Ideally, they just love your products so much that they want to re-buy them later.
Define yourself
The key to getting this kind of interaction with consumers all comes down to how am I marketing my brand; and what tone do I want to set when others engage with me?
The first step we would recommend to find your tone of voice is to boil down your brand to 3 adjectives…
- Is your start-up brand…innovative, fresh and proactive?
- Is your recruitment team…knowledgeable, professional and dedicated?
- Is your childrens’ toy company…fun, lively and approachable?
Whatever your brand’s descriptors may be, reflect this in your tone of voice!
Setting tone of voice guidelines
Once you have a hint of the tone you want your brand to give off, it is worth solidifying this.
We would recommend creating your brand’s tone of voice guidelines to ensure that your team and external partners understand the brand.
In your brand guidelines, you can identify your colour palettes, logo use, tone of voice, slogans, and more. This gives a quick and easy reference to who the brand is and how the team should communicate.
Examples of great tone of voice
One of our favourite brands’ copywriting is Innocent Drinks, the smoothie company. They are able to draw people in, not only with their unique flavour range, but also with their hilarious and down-to-earth copy.
Their tone of voice shines through in everything they share, whether it is promotional or simply a joke to get customers interacting with them.
Specsavers possess excellent wit when it comes to keeping up with the latest trends.
They often go that extra mile too, not only commenting on viral threads but creating dynamic and highly specific visuals to take their ideas to the next level.
Tone of voice is everything. That is not to say that Specsavers wouldn’t sell affordable and designer glasses to the masses otherwise.
However, the reason they’re our first port-of-call is because of their copywriting skills. It makes them memorable and it makes them funny, taking a brand and setting them apart.
Dabble, the online writer’s tool offers character through personality and relatability by using wit and alliteration to add fun to their sales copy.
Wordplay is a great tool, especially when your audience is a group of readers and writers!
The key is to offer character and trustability to your brand. This will lead customers back to you again and again.
Keep the content fresh and relevant.
Our last tip for ensuring your content is personal and engaging is to share it regularly and broadly. The more frequently you post, the better others will learn your brand’s energy.
Creating content that is regular and relevant is important in order to get people to engage with you. Read our blog on the 5 R’s of social media use.
Colour code your content by topic or theme, ensuring that you are varying what you post, mixing promotional and personal content to really get to know your customers.
Any further questions?
If you would like any help with your content creation, digital marketing, strategy or wider product launch, please get in touch with us at BrandRefinery.
