What Is Brand Voice?
Your company’s brand voice consists of a uniform tone and writing style that communicates your brand’s personality and values. Brand voice shapes how your customers perceive you and how they connect to your brand, just as your logo and visual identity do. Brand voice can be distinguished from tone: The latter has room for flexibility depending on the topic and format, whereas voice should remain consistent.
Corporate branding guidelines and editorial style guides will typically contain an entry on voice and tone, defining it clearly so that all written communication—from webpages and product UIs to blog posts and ebooks—reflects a consistent style and tone. Guidelines often distill the essence of the company’s voice down to a handful of adjectives. For example, Salesforce describes its brand voice as Honest, Clear, Fun, and Inspiring. Companies can also distinguish their voice through clarity and sentence length, jargon avoidance, and the infusion of core company values into prose.
Why It Matters in B2B Marketing
Establishing a consistent, recognizable voice is imperative for B2B companies that want to differentiate themselves from their competitors. The best voices help companies develop a more genuine connection with customers, who today prize authenticity and transparency more than in the past. Voice is also an important consideration for content operations and strategy, since large companies that use multiple teams, freelancers, and agencies to create their content must pay close attention to ensuring that voice is consistent.