The Importance of a Distinctive Tone of Voice

Tone of voice - Show who you are as the sender

It is, among other things, through your tone of voice that your brand’s personality and values are expressed. If done correctly and resonates with your customers in the right way, your tone of voice can make your content more human and authentic, add more dimensions to your corporate expression, and significantly help show who you are as the sender. For this reason, your tone of voice can provide the same feeling as a good face-to-face interaction with customers. This can be very important in an era where customers have much less physical contact with company employees and where the only contact often occurs in written form. This means that written communication is more crucial than ever—and especially the manner in which it is carried out. Therefore, a tone of voice has never been more important.

What is a tone of voice?

At its most fundamental level, a tone of voice is less about what you say and more about how you say it. To understand tone of voice, it can be helpful to distinguish between “voice” and “tone.”

Your ‘voice’ represents your brand’s character and values, which are more implicit than explicit and relate more to how the company acts rather than how it expresses itself externally. Here, you need to define how your communication should be.

In contrast, your ‘tone’ is the external expression of your brand’s character, principles, and values. However, your tone is dependent on the context in which it is used. You likely do not use the same language in all aspects of life, and you tailor your language according to the recipient you are communicating with, both in writing and verbally.

It is instinctive not to speak to your children in the same way you speak to your colleagues. In marketing contexts, you should also be aware of expressing yourself differently depending on the context and the audience you are trying to communicate with.

How to develop a tone of voice

Where do you start when you want to develop a tone of voice that makes an impact? A sensible place to begin is by defining your company’s values, as it is these values that should be subtly, refinedly, and intelligently expressed in your tone of voice. Therefore, your values define what you should say. The values can help you uncover your brand’s personality, which in turn dictates how you should express yourself. In this way, working on your tone of voice involves thorough groundwork and ideas, as well as creating guidelines on how to practice your communication.

Important differentiation from other brands

The personal touch that a tone of voice can provide means that the content can differentiate itself from other brands’ content. As a result, the brand as a whole also stands out. It is crucial that your tone of voice is distinctive and recognizable to customers. Recognizability and consistency are important because they have a strong connection to trust. Customer recognition affects whether they trust what your brand says. Trust helps build a brand’s authority. Let’s consider it from another angle: Would you expect something positive from a person you don’t trust? Probably not. In fact, you’d likely prefer to rely on someone you trust. This is generally how it works for understandable reasons. It wouldn’t hurt if you also view that person as an authority in their field. The same applies to a tone of voice. A welcoming and trust-building tone of voice can more easily convince the recipient of your content and, for example, guide them through various conversions on the website.

World-famous marketing platform with a world-famous tone of voice

Let’s take an example and focus on the popular and world-renowned email service platform MailChimp, which masters its tone of voice as one of the best in the market—perhaps the best.

How? Among other things, through a perfect combination of formal and informal communication, where humor and creativity play a significant role in the company’s communication. MailChimp’s tone of voice is multifaceted and includes many other aspects that they have documented in a content style guide. Their voice doesn’t vary much, but their tone is always adapted to the recipient’s emotions. MailChimp has both defined what their voice and tone are and what they are not. This is achieved by setting out a range of do’s and don’ts that are relatively easy to adopt, allowing their employees to navigate safely and consistently in their communicative actions.

Through the right use of humor and creativity, MailChimp humanizes its communication and shows that there is a human sender behind a message—not just a robot. For example, see this tweet where they use fresh language and an entertaining metaphor to make the statement more digestible:

This is not something you see every day when clicking around various websites. Not all companies experiment with their communicative practices. Unfortunately. By consciously doing this, you can achieve what MailChimp does: differentiation and personality that clearly shine through their textual practices. Through MailChimp’s tone of voice, they manage to create an image of a company with a strong, coherent concept.

This also comes through in other aspects of their external communication. For instance, MailChimp uses humorous hand gestures in an attempt to resonate with and evoke positive emotions that customers might experience after interacting with the site.

MailChimp is a good example of how a consistent tone of voice can help give companies an advantage, regardless of whether they are large or small, Danish or international.

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