How to define your start-up’s tone of voice

by Startacus Admin

You might have a fantastic business idea, the right staff, the right products and the right services. But you need to be able to talk about and promote yourself properly, which is why your businesses tone of voice is absolutely crucial.
Digital marketing agency every1 explains how you should look to define the tone of voice you use across your business’s communications and marketing.
Why is a tone of voice so important?
Your tone of voice helps to define your brand. Branding is a great start from a visual standpoint, but the way you talk about yourself, your skills, products and services can help to reinforce what your business is all about.
It provides a sense of personality and helps your business to appeal to the right people and position your services in the right way.
Defining that tone of voice requires a deep level of understanding, not only of your brand, but also your customers and wider business sector.
Understand your brand
The first step in defining your tone of voice is thinking about how you want your brand to be perceived by your customers, staff and competitors.
This can be influenced by a number of things, including:
- Your product
- Demographic
- Age of your team
- Branding
For example, if you’re a business focussing on selling a high-end luxury product your tone of voice needs to exude a sense of quality. Whereas a business with a relatively young staff, catering to a younger demographic needs to find a way of talking that appeals to a younger market and reflects the age of the brand.
This comes down to a choice of language and terminology that reflects what you want the perception of your brand to be. Do you opt for a lot of hyperbole and adjectives to really get across the sense of luxury associated with a product? Or do you focus on quicker, snappier sentences and language to align your brand with a younger audience?
An effective tone of voice will fit with your brand and make sense. Getting it wrong can be jarring and off putting to an audience.
Understand your audience
Understanding your audience is crucial. Not just in terms of who they are, but also demonstrating a knowledge of their pain points, role and their level of assumed knowledge when it comes to your products and services.
For instance, if your business sells a manufacturing or engineering solution directly to the people who need it you might be able to use a lot more technical terminology and industry jargon than you might be able to if your audience is looking for simple solutions to problems.
This understanding can help you to adjust the level you pitch your brand and content at, which in turn has a huge bearing on your tone of voice. For example, writing something for an audience with a higher level of assumed knowledge is going to sound vastly different to a piece of content for someone looking for a simple answer to a question.
Your tone of voice should appeal to your intended audience, speak to them at their level and be something they’re comfortable with.
Understand your business sector
Lastly you should be aware of what’s going on within your business sector. Look at how your competitors talk about themselves, their products and their services.
There might be specific ways that businesses in your sector talk. You might be able to amend your tone of voice to act as a point of difference and stand out. However, it’s important to first assess how this might be received and how effective it might be.
You might work in a sector that has a lot of specific jargon and terminology that needs to be accommodated and worked into the way you talk about relevant issues, products and services.
Much like with understanding your brand understanding your sector can influence the language you use. This can then in turn can have a major impact on the way you communicate as a brand. You can adjust your tone of voice to either fall in-line with industry terminology, or soften that approach to create a more approachable tone of voice.
Putting your understanding to use
Understanding your brand, audience and sector give you a strong foundation to build your tone of voice from. It isn’t informed by knee-jerk reaction but by a deeper understanding of who will be interacting with your business and services.
This helps to give form and shape to your content and create a consistent way of talking about yourself.
For a start-up getting this tone of voice right is important, it can help inform a lot of your communications, marketing and content. This often helps a business to start on the right foot, with everything working in tandem to help you launch and promote a brand to the right people in the right way.
Chris Worthington is a content strategist at every1, a Digital Marketing Agency based in the North West.
Subscribe to our newsletter
If you would like to receive our startup themed newsletter, full of the latest startup opportunities, events, news, stories, tips and advice, then sign up here.
Artificial intelligence platform Ricochet is on an AI mission to find new business leads that fit the needs of your company.

From understanding more about how a business can invoice effectively to avoid late payments, to what debt recovery means, to how to take legal action against overdue debt.

The challenges of working with a business partner or another co-founder, as told by 12 of the UK’s top startup co-founders

This February 12th & 13th, global pre-accelerator program Startup Boost, will host a virtual demo day from their 'Fall programs' in Detroit, Dublin, Los Angeles, and New York.

Minute is an app that allows you to watch quality short films, tailored to the time that you have available. We took a look at this early-stage startup with a big vision.

Migrants are gonna surround us, With ideas! We take a look at Startup Weekend Dublin immigration...

Five reasons why every business could consider investing in coaching for their sales team.

The FinTech and PropTech startup which rewards tenants with improved credit for on-time rent payments...

SportTech Belfast startup Pitchbooking, secures £250k investment to help become the market leader in sports facility management.

From understanding more about supplier and business customer negotiations, to contracts, understanding heads of terms, to what should be included in a terms of contract.
Published on: 30th April 2018
If you would like to enable commenting via your Startacus account, please enable Disqus functionality in your Account Settings.







- Startup Weekend Dublin immigration aims to builds ideas not borders 7th Feb 2019 Migrants are gonna surround us, With ideas! We take a look at Startup Weekend Dublin immigration...
- Sports facility management platform Pitchbooking nets £250k investment 6th Feb 2019 SportTech Belfast startup Pitchbooking, secures £250k investment to help become the market leader in sports facility management.
- Too Good To Go raises further €6m to keep fighting food waste everywhere 6th Feb 2019 Fast growing tech for good app Too Good To Go raises a further €6 million to accelerate its mission to eliminate food waste globally, taking its total investment to €16m.
- Google+ for consumers shuts down 2nd April 1st Feb 2019 Goodbye Google+. The end date for Google+ for consumers (personal) has been announced as the 2nd April 2019. So what....now?