How to Define Your Brand Voice (With Examples)

To define your brand voice, pick three or four adjectives for how your business sounds, give each one a “this, not that” line, and test them on a brand voice example of your own: one real sentence, rewritten until it sounds like you. Your voice stays consistent across every channel, while your tone adapts to each situation, so a useful guide covers voice and tone on a single page.

My guide to writing a brand messaging framework covers voice in one short step, so if you have ever watched every writer interpret “friendly and professional” differently, here is the complete version.

What is brand voice?

Brand voice is the personality that comes through in everything your business writes, and it is what lets a client recognize your writing with the logo removed. When your vocabulary and level of formality stay familiar from one piece to the next, clients hear the same business in every message, and that consistency helps you build trust.

Every business already has a voice in its emails and proposals, even if nobody deliberately chose it. Since I started my firm in 2018, I have worked with founders in food, construction, logistics, gaming, and technology, and a logistics company’s vocabulary would sound strange coming from a food brand.

Brand voice vs tone: What stays the same and what changes

Voice is your business’s personality on the page, and tone is the mood of one specific piece of writing. Mailchimp’s public content style guide summarizes the difference in one line, “You have the same voice all the time, but your tone changes.” Second Rise, a neighborhood bakery I made up, keeps a playful voice while its tone adapts to the situation:

• On Instagram the tone is light, so a post might read, “Cinnamon rolls are warm from the oven, and they would like to meet you.”
• In an email about a late order the tone becomes serious, and the apology reads, “Your order was late this morning, and that was our mistake. We have refunded the delivery fee, and your next cake is on us.”

Both messages clearly belong to Second Rise, and the apology simply omits the jokes, which would feel insensitive that morning. That is why voice belongs in a short list of permanent rules, while tone belongs in a map of your everyday writing situations.

Step 1: Collect writing that already sounds like you

Start with evidence, because adjectives chosen at a desk tend to describe the business you wish you ran. Gather 10 to 15 examples of your own writing that clients have praised, such as emails, proposals, and marketing materials, and add a few from the competitors your prospective clients compare you with.

Read each example aloud and sort it into two piles, one that sounds like your business and one that does not. A recent brand audit gives you much of this material, and its client interviews are the most valuable part, since clients describe your personality in words you would never use yourself.

The patterns you can identify in the first pile define your voice, including your typical sentence length, whether you write as “I” or “we,” and how often you use humor.

Step 2: Choose three or four brand voice adjectives

Three or four adjectives is enough, because a writer can remember that many, and a list of eight starts to blur. Pull candidate adjectives from your first pile and your client interviews, then test each one by asking whether a competitor in your industry would choose the same word.

Professional, friendly, and innovative usually fail that test, because nearly every business claims them. Look for the more precise word underneath. Friendly might mean neighborly or upbeat, professional might mean precise or unhurried, and innovative often means curious or direct.

If you are stuck, try the four dimensions of tone from Nielsen Norman Group, a UX research firm, which are formal vs casual, serious vs funny, respectful vs irreverent, and matter-of-fact vs enthusiastic. When you place your typical writing on each scale, the right adjectives often become obvious, and a firm near casual and matter-of-fact might describe itself as plainspoken.

Step 3: Give each adjective a “this, not that” line

Because one writer’s confident is another writer’s arrogant, define each adjective by its limits, with the trait done well beside its exaggerated version. Ledger Lane, a bookkeeping firm I made up, has a plainspoken, calm, and precise voice:

• Plainspoken sounds like “Your quarterly tax payment is due next week,” and it avoids “Kindly be advised of an upcoming obligation.”
• Calm sounds like “Here is what happens next,” and it avoids “Do not panic!”
• Precise sounds like “We reconcile your accounts every Friday,” and it avoids “We stay on top of everything.”

For Second Rise, the neighborhood bakery, the voice is playful, generous, and local:

• Playful sounds like “This cake has strong opinions about frosting,” and it avoids “OMG best cake EVER!!!”
• Generous sounds like “Bring the kids, because we always have extra sprinkles,” and it avoids “Limit one sample per customer.”
• Local sounds like “Baked two blocks from the farmers’ market,” and it avoids “Artisanal, globally inspired creations.”

For the “avoids” half of each line, imagine the trait at its worst, because most voices go wrong when playful slides into silly or calm into cold.

Step 4: Map your tone to the situations you write in

List the four to six situations you write in most frequently, such as sales emails, social media posts, proposals, invoices, and replies to complaints. Label each one lighter, standard, or more serious, and add one sentence of guidance, such as “In complaints, skip the jokes and open with what we will do about it.”

Anything involving money or bad news moves toward serious, because that reader wants evidence that you are paying attention. A conference bio also belongs near the formal end, and my guide on how to write a professional bio explains when to use first or third person.

Step 5: Test your voice on real sentences

Before you share the guide, rewrite five website sentences using only your adjectives and “this, not that” lines, then ask someone familiar with your business to choose the versions that sound like you. If they prefer the originals, your adjectives probably describe the business you hope to become, so revisit them.

Begin with your about page, where personality matters most, as I explain in how to write an about page.

Brand voice examples: One sentence in three voices

Here is a generic sentence I see on many service websites, rewritten for three businesses I made up:

“We offer a wide range of services tailored to the unique needs of each client.”

• Ledger Lane, the bookkeeping firm, might write, “Each month we reconcile your accounts, run payroll, and send one short email that tells you where your money went.”
• Second Rise, the bakery, might write, “Birthday, retirement, or a Tuesday that needs cake? Tell us who it is for, and we will bake something that feels like them.”
• Ashby Family Law, a family law practice with a steady and respectful voice, might write, “Every family arrives with a different situation, so our first meeting is for listening to yours.”

None of these rewrites would fit on another business’s website, and that is the clearest sign a voice is working.

A brand voice guide template you can copy

Most brand voice guides for small businesses fit on one page, which is the length your team will actually read, so copy this brand voice guide template and complete each bracket:

• We sound [adjective one], [adjective two], and [adjective three].
• For each adjective, we write like “[a real sentence]” and never like “[its overdone version].”
• Our target audience is [one specific reader], and we call them [you, clients, members, or another term].
• We write as [I or we], in [short, medium, or long] sentences.
• Our tone gets lighter in [situations] and more serious in [situations].
• We never [a habit to avoid, such as exclamation marks in proposals].
• Clients have described us as “[a phrase a real client used].”
• In our voice, “[one bland sentence]” becomes “[the same sentence rewritten].”

Make each rule specific enough to verify, the way the UK government’s writing standards for GOV.UK ask writers to split any sentence over 25 words and to use “buy” in place of “purchase.”

How to keep your voice consistent when other people write

Share the guide with everyone who writes for you, and place the examples at the top, because people imitate examples faster than they follow rules. If you draft with an AI assistant, include the guide in your prompt and compare the output with your “this, not that” lines, since these tools tend toward generic phrasing.

My Substack post on brand consistency explains how to sound like yourself on every channel. A voice guide is also one of the standard documents from a brand strategy project, and I explain the remaining work in what a brand strategist does.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between brand voice and tone?

Brand voice is the personality that stays consistent in everything your business writes, while tone is the mood of one piece and adapts to the situation. One business can be playful in a social media post and serious in an apology and still sound recognizably like itself.

What is the difference between brand voice and brand personality?

Brand personality is the set of human traits people associate with your business, such as curious or dependable. Brand voice is how those traits appear in writing and conversation, and a voice guide translates them into rules a writer can follow.

How can I define a consistent brand voice for my startup?

Begin with your existing writing, such as founder emails and early sales messages, and choose three or four adjectives that describe it at its best. Give each adjective a “this, not that” line, and share a one-page guide while the company is still small.

How do I audit my existing brand voice?

Gather 10 to 15 recent examples from different channels, read them aloud, and sort them by whether they sound like your business. The second pile reveals where your voice has drifted, and the first pile supplies your adjectives.

How do I define a unique brand voice for a small business?

Ask whether a competitor could use each of your adjectives, and replace any word they could, such as friendly or professional, with a more specific alternative. Then borrow vocabulary from the way your clients describe you, since competitors rarely use it.