How to Develop a Brand Voice

If you've read what a brand voice is and why it matters, the next question is how to actually define one. You don't need a marketing department. A single page is enough.

How to define your voice

Start with how you already talk. Read through a few emails you've sent customers that went well, or think about how you explain your work on the phone. Your natural voice is usually the right starting point, because it's the one you can keep up.

Pick three to five words that describe it, and write down what each one doesn't mean. "Friendly, but not goofy." "Confident, but not pushy." "Plain-spoken, but not blunt." The second half is what keeps the voice from drifting.

Write down words you'll never use. Most industries have phrases everyone leans on until they mean nothing, like "quality you can trust," "second to none" or "your one-stop shop." Banning them forces you to say something specific instead.

Decide how the voice flexes. Your voice should stay recognizable everywhere, but its volume can change. A social media caption can be quicker and more playful than a quote or a contract. An apology should be warmer and plainer than a promotion.

Show examples. A few before-and-after lines, rewriting generic copy in your voice, will teach anyone who writes for you more than a list of adjectives.

A small example from our own studio

The headline on Way Out's About page reads "Designer by day, mostly a designer by night." It isn't trendy, and it isn't trying to sound like a big agency. It's dry and a little self-aware, because that's how Jackson actually talks, and because Way Out is a one-person studio that would rather say so plainly than pretend to have a team of specialists behind a front desk.

That same voice carries into everything else we write. Client emails open with a real name, sentences explain design terms in plain language the first time they come up, and we try to invite feedback rather than announce decisions. None of it is complicated. What makes it work is doing it the same way every time.

What it means to own it boldly

Being bold doesn't mean being loud. You don't need exclamation points, shock value or a gimmick. Owning your voice boldly means three things.

Commit to it. Use it everywhere, from your homepage to your invoices to the sign on your door. A voice you only use in half your materials isn't really a voice yet.

Don't sand it down. The pull is always toward safer, more neutral language, because it's easier to approve and harder to criticize. That's exactly how brands end up blending together. If a line sounds like you and it's true, keep it.

Stay with it through the trends. When a new style takes over and your competitors all make the same move, you don't have to follow. Bentzion Goldman of Mother Design argued in Creative Boom that the brands worth remembering make choices tied to who they really are, even when those choices seem unusual at first.

Putting it all together

A strong small-business brand comes down to a few things working together: a clear position that says what's true about you, a visual identity that fits that position rather than the trend of the moment, and a voice that sounds like you every time a customer hears from you. Use all three the same way everywhere, and your brand will keep working long after today's trends have been replaced by the next ones.