How Many Tones of Voice Should Your Company Adopt?

A few years ago, the manager of a small-town branch of a major bank wrote to a customer who was overdrawn without permission. After a serious telling-off, complete with the threat of legal action, the said manager then finished by asking how well his yacht had been performing during the sailing season. Certainly a confusing tone of voice!

There used to be a theory that a company should have a single tone of voice, express itself in a consistent way, become engrained in the public psyche. In more modern times, with the advent of the internet, social media, and such a variety of information sources, this may well no longer hold true. However, the earlier story does surely emphasise the importance of using one voice at a time.

Your company is likely to be speaking to different generations and social groups, about a similar or totally diverse range of products and services. Therefore, it stands to reason that it’s time to adopt a series of voices, each one skilfully tailored to the way that any specific audience wishes to be spoken to.

This is an important reason why landing pages play a major part when people visit your website. Not only can these be created to match a specific product, service or offer, they can also speak in the expected voice.

A quick trawl around some Facebook sites or Twitter messages can soon emphasise the point. How many companies use a formal voice in such informal settings? Or continue to talk in their own business speak to an audience who use a completely different language in their daily lives?

If we are looking for a term to describe the course of action to follow, you might want to call it shattered marketing. You start with a whole, which is the idea or offer. It can then be shattered into as many different parts as are relevant to complete the promotional exercise. A piece is directed to each location or activity, yet it still contains the key elements of the original whole.

In this way, a wide canvas of different ages, sexes, and lifestyles can be effectively targeted. It’s similar to how the BBC has many different channels that reach out to different and very specific groups of people. This means that your business may have a variety of faces, but each will be relevant to its audience, and can gain the desired response from them.

How Many Tones of Voice Should Your Company Adopt?