Whether you’re starting fresh or refreshing your brand, it’s essential to understand who you are and how to communicate it clearly. Your brand voice is a big part of this, as it shapes how others see you right from the get go.
If you want to grab peoples attention, make them feel seen, and convey your brand personality, it’s important to know what your brand voice is and how to use it.
As with all brand strategy work, finding your voice isn’t necessarily the easiest thing to do. We know because we’ve gone through this process with brands of all shapes and sizes. It requires awareness, reflection, and a deep understanding of who you are. Having said that, there are a few ways to make it easier.
In this guide, we’ve rounded up everything we know about finding your brand voice (including a free questionnaire) to help you find yours, and put it out into the world.
Your brand voice is how you express your brand’s personality through words. It’s reflected in both the way you speak and the way you write.
There are two main reasons why your brand voice is an important part of your overall strategy:
Many brands jump straight into defining their voice without looking at how it fits into their overall strategy. But your brand voice isn’t something you can pull out of thin air. It needs to be grounded in a deep understanding of who your brand is (and isn’t) and what you’re trying to achieve. So, before you try to find your brand voice, make sure you’ve covered the basics of brand strategy first.
Your Brand DNA is an articulation of your core beliefs, specifically your:
This is the core of who you are. Your brand voice is a way to express it.
To find your Brand DNA, follow our guide and download the free template.
Think of your personality as your brand’s human characteristics and attributes. It’s a reflection of your Brand DNA, influenced by your beliefs and demonstrated in your behaviour.
The better you know your brand’s personality, the more naturally it will come through in every touchpoint, including your voice. Try our step-by-step guide to finding your brand personality if you haven’t done this yet.
Who exactly are you trying to reach? Personas help you identify who these people are.
If you’re not sure who you’re trying to attract, follow our guide to create marketing personas.
The biggest mistake you can make is blending in with your competitors, so understanding who they are is key to standing out. If you need help, try our guide to doing a competitive analysis.
Once you have an intimate understanding of these elements, you can start to think about how to express them through your brand voice.
Finding your brand voice can seem like a lot of work, but it’s actually not that difficult. Your brand voice already exists; you just have to identify and articulate it. So, where do you start?
There are plenty of tactics out there. Some involve half-day workshops. Others require trust falls and group therapy sessions. While those may work for some people, most brands don’t have to go that deep. In fact, you can do it with a solid questionnaire and a few clear, practical steps.
At its core, finding your brand voice is about getting clear on how you naturally communicate, how you want to sound, and what will actually resonate with your audience. So if you’re ready, here’s a no-fluff, straightforward process you can use right now.
Start by duplicating our free questionnaire and answering a few thoughtful questions about how your brand should sound and feel. This works whether you’re a solo founder, a small business, or a full-fledged marketing team trying to get aligned.
Use these prompts from the questionnaire to guide your answers:
Once you’ve got your answers, sense-check them against your audience.
Your voice should feel authentic to you—but it also needs to connect.
More often than not, we think too hard about who we’d like to be, when we should just focus on who we are. Before you reinvent the wheel, see what’s already working.
Go through your last 10–20 pieces of content:
Look for patterns in tone, phrasing, humour, or formality. Are you casual on Instagram but weirdly stiff on your website? Are you accidentally using buzzwords you’d rather avoid?
Notice what feels on-brand and what doesn’t. These through-lines may hold helpful clues to help you refine your voice.
Now that you know how you want to sound, turn those decisions into a guide you (and your team) can actually use—not a 20-page document that gathers dust. Think of it like a cheat sheet: quick, clear, and easy to reference any time you’re writing.
Here’s what you can include:
Finally, sometimes it helps to give your voice a nickname or persona. “The Friendly Expert,” “The Rebellious Guide,” “The Warm Storyteller”. It’s a quick, memorable way to remind yourself (and your team) what kind of tone you’re aiming for.
Now that you have a fully articulated brand voice, it’s time to actually use it (that’s where the real value comes from). Here’s a few ways to get started:
The goal isn’t perfection, it’s consistency. The more often you use your brand voice intentionally, the more recognisable, trustworthy, and human your brand will feel to the people you’re speaking to. And if you get stuck or need a little help at any stage, hit us up. We’d love to help!