When you hire an outside marketing agency, you're trusting people who don't work inside your organization every day to create content as if they do. They need to understand what you'd say, what you'd never say, when you can be fun, when you need to be serious, and why that one perfectly normal word makes your CEO cringe every time it appears in a draft.
Skimming your website and doing our best impression of you won’t cut it. It’s important for us to understand how your organization communicates and turn that understanding into practical direction our team can use. The goal is simple: Your marketing should sound like your team on its best day.
What you’ll learn in this article:
- What actually makes up your brand voice.
- How an agency can learn and document the way you communicate.
- How your voice stays consistent without sounding identical everywhere.
What Goes Into a Brand Voice?
Brand voice is the recognizable personality behind how your organization communicates. It's far more specific than “professional, but approachable.”
We love approachable (who doesn’t?)—but if ten organizations describe their voice as “professional, friendly, and conversational,” we still haven't learned why any of them should sound different. Useful brand voice guidelines go deeper.
→ Personality: Who Are We Hearing?
If your brand walked into a room, what would it sound like? More importantly, what wouldn't it sound like? Those distinctions help turn vague adjectives into something a writer can actually use
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→ Vocabulary: What Do You Actually Say?
From what you call your audience to the phrases and industry terms you use or avoid, every organization has its own language.
Sometimes small choices make a big difference. “We help clients” and “We partner with organizations” may mean the same thing, but they don't sound like the same company. Learning your voice means knowing which words sound like you and which don't.
→ Values: What Matters Enough to Shape the Message?
Brand voice isn't only about how you say something; it's influenced by what your organization believes is important.
What does your company prioritize? For example:
- Simplicity > Technical detail
- Education > Selling
- Encouraging messaging > Urgent messaging
Those choices and priorities affect everything from a headline to a sales email. Your values help us understand not just what sounds like you, but why it sounds like you.
→ Audience: Who Are We Talking To?
You can't understand brand voice without understanding the people who will be hearing it. A financial organization speaking to CFOs will communicate differently than a church welcoming first-time visitors.
Your voice doesn't need to change completely, but it should connect with the people you're trying to reach. It’s important to sound like yourself in a language your audience actually speaks.
How Do We Learn Your Brand Voice?
We don't expect a new client to hand us a jam-packed brand voice manual on day one. Actually, we really prefer that you don’t.
While some organizations already have detailed tone and voice guidelines, it’s incredibly common for others to only have a few brand details. Some even have years of emails, social media posts, and website copy, but no formal documentation explaining any of it.
Our job is to turn what your team already knows, consciously or subconsciously, into something our team can understand and repeat.
1. We Start by Listening
Before we try to sound like you, we need to hear you. Conversations with your team can tell us things a brand document can't:
- How do you explain your organization to a potential customer?
- What phrases come naturally?
- What gets you excited or more serious?
- What do you tend to simplify?
We also want to understand your preferences:
- Do you like short, direct writing or more explanation?
- How playful can we be?
- How do you feel about industry jargon?
- Do you want marketing to sound polished or more conversational?
A client brand voice questionnaire can help organize those questions; however, a questionnaire is a starting point, not the voice itself. The conversation around the answers is often where the useful stuff shows up.
2. We Review What Already Exists
It’s likely that your organization has been leaving brand voice clues everywhere. We can review things like:
- Website and blog content.
- Emails and social media.
- Sales and print materials.
- Videos, presentations, and campaigns.
We're looking for patterns:
- What sounds natural or dated?
- What does your team consistently like?
- What gets rewritten every time?
- Which phrases are truly part of your brand, and which are just old habits?
Existing content gives us a place to start, but it’s not where we’re meant to stay forever.
3. We Look for the Best Examples
Not every piece of your marketing captures your voice equally well. Whether it’s a social post, sales pitch, or email, we look for the examples that make your team say, “Yes. That's us.”
Examples you dislike matter, too. Knowing what is too salesy, corporate, or casual helps us define the boundaries. Knowing what you aren't can be just as useful as knowing what you are.
4. We Turn Preferences Into Brand Voice Guidelines
Eventually, we need to make all of this usable. That's where brand voice guidelines help. Brand voice guidelines might document:
- Personality and tone.
- Preferred terms and phrases to avoid.
- Writing and formatting preferences.
- Audience considerations.
- Examples of what works and what doesn’t.
A brand voice guideline shouldn’t feel like a giant rulebook that removes personality from your writing; it should give everyone the same guardrails.
How Do We Make Sure the Content Actually Sounds Like You?
Here's the inconvenient truth about learning a brand voice: We probably won't learn everything from one kickoff meeting. You can give an agency a questionnaire, brand guide, website, five examples, and a two-hour conversation. That's a great start; but when theory meets reality, stuff hits the fan.
→ Early Feedback Is Part of the Process
Early in a partnership, feedback is especially valuable. Maybe we write: “Take your business to the next level,” and you respond with: “Please never say ‘next level’ again.” Excellent. Noted.
Every specific piece of feedback teaches us something. Fixing the sentence is not the end of the road—we need to learn the principle behind the fix. That way, we can improve the next 100 sentences.
→ We Ask Why
“This doesn't sound like us” is useful feedback, but we want to understand why.
- Is it too formal or too casual?
- Is it too clever or too sales-focused?
- Is it too wordy or too vague?
- Did we use terminology your team wouldn't use?
- Did we misunderstand the audience?
The more specific we are, the more useful the feedback becomes. Instead of “Client didn't like headline #3,” we learn, “This brand prefers direct headlines over clever wordplay.” Now we have something we can use again.
→ We Document What We Learn
Brand voice shouldn't live entirely inside one copywriter's head. As we get feedback and learn more about your preferences, we can refine the guidelines and examples our team uses.
That helps create consistency across writers, projects, and channels so that we aren't starting from zero every time you request a new email or landing page. Over time, we stop having to ask, “Does this sound like them?” We just know.
→ Consistency Doesn't Mean Copy-and-Paste
We don't want to learn your brand voice so literally that every piece of content sounds the same. You still need variety. Different topics, audiences, and stages of the customer journey require different approaches. Consistency means your organization stays recognizable across those differences.
You don't speak the exact same way during a sales presentation, at lunch with a coworker, and while helping someone solve a problem—but you're still you. Your brand should work the same way.
Does Your Brand Voice Change Across Marketing Channels?
Yes and no. The voice stays. The tone adjusts.
Your organization shouldn't suddenly develop a completely different personality because someone opened Instagram instead of your website… but expecting every channel to sound identical isn't much better.
→ Website: Clarity Comes First
Website visitors are often trying to understand a few things:
- What do you do?
- Is it for me?
- How does this work?
- Why should I trust you?
- What should I do next?
Your brand voice still matters, but clarity has to win. A witty headline isn't doing its job if nobody understands the service underneath it.
→ Social Media: More Room to Be, Well, Social
Your social channels may allow more personality, brevity, humor, behind-the-scenes content, or timely conversation. No, we’re not saying to abandon your brand guidelines every time there's a trending audio; but you can and should adapt your voice in a place where people expect a more immediate, human interaction.
→ Email: Depends on the Email
A welcome email and a promotional email shouldn't necessarily have the same tone; neither should an event reminder and an executive update. The voice stays recognizable, but the urgency, warmth, detail, and call to action can change depending on why you're emailing someone.
→ Paid Ads: Get to the Point
Paid advertising has less wiggle room. You may have a headline, a few lines of copy, and half a second of someone's attention. We need to communicate quickly without turning you into “Generic Advertiser #38.”
That's why brand voice guidelines matter. If your voice only works with 1,000 words, it's going to struggle in a 30-character headline.
→ Search Content: Still Needs to Sound Human
Search-focused content creates another balancing act. We want search engines and AI platforms to understand what the page is about, but the actual reader is still a person.
That means useful headings, clear answers, and enough detail to answer the question without stuffing the copy full of phrases nobody would naturally say. Search strategy should help the right people find you, and brand voice should make them recognize you once they do.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are brand voice guidelines?
Brand voice guidelines document how your organization should sound. They can include personality traits, preferred language, tone, terminology, writing preferences, and examples. Think guardrails, not a script.
What's the difference between brand voice and tone?
Voice is your consistent personality. Tone changes with the situation. Same person, different room. A promotional ad and a sensitive customer email can sound different without feeling like completely different brands.
How does an agency capture a client's brand voice?
By listening, reviewing existing content, documenting patterns and gathering feedback. There's no magic questionnaire that does all the work.
Do we need brand voice guidelines before working with an agency?
No. Existing guidelines are helpful, but an agency can learn from your feedback and the content you already have. Sometimes the voice exists before anyone has written down the rules—we just have to uncover it.
How long does it take an agency to learn our brand voice?
A strong discovery process gives us a solid starting point, but your voice gets sharper through actual writing and feedback. Each revision should teach us something so there are fewer revisions next time.
Should our brand voice be the same on every marketing channel?
Recognizable? Yes. Identical? No. Your core personality should stay consistent while the tone adapts to the audience, message, and channel. Your Instagram post shouldn't read like your annual report.
Can a brand voice change over time?
Absolutely. Organizations grow, audiences change, and old language stops fitting. Brand voice guidelines should create consistency without trapping your organization in the year they were written.
It Should Sound Like You. That's the Point.
You shouldn't have to choose between getting marketing help and sounding like yourself. At TwoTone, we learn your voice by listening, understanding your audience, and getting smarter with every round of feedback. We want every website page, email, social post, or ad to sound recognizably like you.
If you're looking for a marketing partner who can learn your voice and use it consistently, let's talk.
