Tone of voice (or, more accurately, "voice and tone") is the way your brand's unique personality comes through in your writing. Or at least, it should be. In practice, far too many B2B tech brands sound exactly the same...
If you want to differentiate your brand, the way you use language is every bit as important as professional graphics and design. Should you seem formal, or relaxed and friendly? Intellectual, or practical and hands-on?
This essential character is your brand’s voice. It’s a powerful tool to build rapport with your customer. To create a point of difference. To show what you’re like to work with.
And it’s one many B2B brands neglect almost completely.
As a result, everyone sounds the same. And the world is full of B2B content that, if you covered up the logo, could have been written by, well, anyone.
In our voice and tone workshop, we’ll run a series of activities and exercises, designed to tease the contexts where you communicate, what your customers expect from you, and ultimately how your brand should sound. (These include some tools we’ve created ourselves, to provoke just the right conversation, and shake you out of the usual compromises most B2B brands make.)
It’s ideal for companies where a number of writers have led to a confused and inconsistent style – or where you’re looking to create a bigger impact with your content, or to make a clear break with an existing brand.
In around two hours, we’ll begin to arrive at a consensus about the most appropriate writing style.
“ Radix Communications understood our brief and created a simple, effective framework of writing guidelines. This will help colleagues across the business use a consistent voice and style when communicating with our customers. ”
- Tracy Carr, Corporate Communications Officer, Western Power Distribution
We’ve seen tone of voice guides that run to hundreds of pages. Usually, they’re in the hands of marketers who wonder why people still don’t follow the guidelines.
We take a different approach.
We’ll write you a short, engaging reference guide, that gives anyone who writes on your brand’s behalf the tools to strike the right tone, but without going into so much detail that the document never gets used.
Depending on your needs, we can include:
But one thing is non-negotiable. The guide document itself will always be written using your new voice – giving you an instant, practical example to work from.
We prefer “voice and tone”, for one simple reason: the way you write should always be appropriate to your audience, and their context.
Marketers used to enforcing brand compliance can find themselves insisting on consistency, when actually you need more than one tone of voice. An assertive tone that works brilliantly for an eBook or SlideShare deck might be infuriating if you’re communicating a problem.
Some aspects of your character remain constant; that’s your voice. But the way you express that character should suit the way your reader is feeling, and that flexibility is called tone.
If you’d like to discuss voice and tone guidance for your B2B brand, get in touch. You can reach us at info@radix-communications.com, or +44(0)1326 373592.
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