Businesses and organisations, like individuals, each have their own personality.

From large multi-national corporations, through to small boutique enterprises, from privately owned-businesses to the public sector, all will leave an impression with their own staff, customers, potential clients and other stakeholders through their internal and external communications.

Why does it matter?

Developing, and maintaining, your tone helps to connect with your target audiences. While it portrays an image as to the sort of business you are, it also helps set you apart from your competitors.

Remember, it’s not just exclusive to written communications. Tone comes across in all marketing activity, starting with the name of your business, logos, colour schemes, advertising, public relations and social media activity.

Where to start?

If you are starting your own business then you have an advantage of deciding how you want your company to be seen.

From the outset, standing out from the competition in a particular way could make all the difference between success and failure or how people perceive your brand.

Alternatively, people working in long-established business will have a clear set of messaging guidelines to adhere to. While they have the benefit of already being recognised, they are restricted in what they can say and how they can behave as they have already set a precedent for themselves in all their previous communications.

Things to consider

Your tone will clearly depend on the sector you are in.

For instance, you wouldn’t expect a funeral parlour to be light-hearted and frivolous in its communications. It needs to portray an image of credibility and sincerity.

Likewise, if you’ve just opened a joke shop, then you probably wouldn’t want to bore your customers with an overload of predictable factual information, but instead consider interjecting a few puns and quips to entice them in to discover more.

After all, the tone you set and follow should be the one that your audience is the most comfortable with.

Unified messaging

As mentioned earlier, company tone touches nearly every aspect of a business, even down to how staff interact with customers.

The good news is that most aspects can be controlled, and with this in mind, should be used to portray a consistent tone across all communication channels, whether that’s text on a website, a social media post or a press release, to name but a few.

The benefit is that when you control the tone you can influence the perception of your brand. Without control it becomes vague and unclear.

Should you need any help finding your voice, then please send an email to hello@redmarlin.co.uk and we’ll be in touch.