How to improve brand tone of voice
Refining a fashion brand's tone of voice doesn't have to be a complex process. Follow these practical steps to elevate your communications with ease.
TL;DR— A fashion brand's tone of voice can be improved by reexamining the ideal customer persona and ensuring it aligns with all communications. Looking at competitors' content as well as other sources of inspiration can be useful to see where you can enhance or differentiate your copy. Once a new tone has been created, compiling a new set of editorial guidelines and a copy checklist will help your team put the updated tone of voice into practice.
Tone of voice informs how a fashion brand communicates with its customers. A distinctive language style can help a brand build its identity, position itself on the market and stand out from competitors, which is particularly useful in the highly competitive fashion industry. Tone touches all elements of business, from e-commerce websites and social media to care labels and swing tags and is a fundamental marketing tool. A tone of voice is usually established before a brand is launched; however, as retail businesses grow, product offerings can change, customer bases expand, and new markets are entered, meaning a fashion brand's tone of voice may need to be refined and improved over time to remain effective.
7 STEPS TO REDEFINE A FASHION BRAND'S TONE OF VOICE
1. IDENTIFY YOUR SHORTFALLS
If you've decided your fashion brand needs a tone of voice refresh, first consider what's currently not working and why. Examine all your communications and write down a list of areas where you feel a disconnect. What exactly is it about the current tone that's missing the mark? Do you feel like your tone of voice is perhaps slightly immature now that your brand has grown? Or maybe it needs to shift to be more inclusive of fashion's upcoming consumers, Gen Alpha? Get clear on your tone of voice failings so you can be sure to correct them, and not make similar mistakes again in future.
2. REALIGN WITH YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMER
The next step is to take a look at your ideal customer persona and see if your tone aligns. Are you still speaking in a way that appeals to your target audience or have you veered off track somewhere? If you started a brand for millennials 10-15 years ago, chances are their desires and fashion needs are different now, so it's only right that you'll need to adjust the way you speak to them about your brand. Or perhaps you launched a fashion label targeted at Gen-Z, but in the five years you've been in business, your tone has strayed wildly off course in your pursuit of being trendy, and now it's noticeably different from how your ideal customer likes to be spoken to. Think about any changes that need to be made to ensure you are still connecting with these ideal customers and how you can improve communication with them.
3. LEARN FROM YOUR COMPETITORS
Once you've fixed any glaringly obvious disconnects between tone and your ideal customer, it's time to check out the competition. Take the time to study the communications of three of your biggest competitors. What parts of their copywriting do you admire? What are they doing well? Where do you think they are weak? Is there any way your tone could step into a space they are missing from?
4. SEEK OUT NEW SOURCES OF INSPIRATION
To create a truly exciting tone of voice, it is also important to look at copywriting happening outside of the fashion industry. Are there any other brands that you think are really doing something special with tone of voice? Maybe you are drawn to Apple's minimalistic language, Starface's youth vibe or Waterboy's cheeky tone. Figure out what exactly it is you like about the brands you admire and experiment with ways you could inject a similar feeling into your own fashion brand's copy.
5. DISTINGUISH KEY LANGUAGE
Now that you have a clear understanding of the kind of tone of voice you want and who it's for, it's time to start the refining process. Create a word bank of adjectives and phrases that convey the feeling of your tone of voice. Take a look at how your customers describe your products in reviews to get a handle on how they talk about your brand, and see if there are any great words that you can adopt into your tone of voice. Alongside this bank of new brand words, create a bank of banned words and phrases. These should not connect with your target audience at all and would actively turn them off. Keep these stored and refer back to them when creating copy to make sure your tone stays on track.
6. CONSIDER ALL AREAS OF BUSINESS
Your tone is now redefined, but different parts of your business will require a slightly different approach to copy, so it's time to get clear on what's appropriate and for when. Social usually lends itself to a more casual tone, and this is often where you can have the most fun with your copy, while customer service requires the most conservative version of your tone. Think about SMS and email communications. Will you address your customer by first name, last name, or a pet name? All the work you've done on tone of voice leading up to this step should make these questions easy to answer.
7. SET NEW EDITORIAL GUIDELINES
Once you have worked out how to improve your brand tone of voice, it's now time to detail the changes in a new set of editorial guidelines. Create detailed descriptions on how to create copy for areas of business, alongside a list of dos and don'ts. This will help guide all employees on how to implement the new tone and ensure communications are aligned across your business.
WHERE TO FIND A TONE OF VOICE CONSULTANT
Google and LinkedIn show limited results for tone of voice consultants for the fashion industry, as this area of expertise is so niche, but if you are looking to work with an expert, consider me. As a senior fashion copywriter with over a decade of industry experience, I can not only improve your brand-new tone of voice but also create and implement new copy across all areas of your business, from homepage to product descriptions. Get in touch with me here to enquire.
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