Importance of brand tone for early-stage start-ups

During the early stages of a start-up, many founders are focusing on the product and the idea. While this is crucial, they spend little time on the company’s tone of voice, which is so integral to building an engagement with customers they will help grow their business. A lot of this has to do with not realizing how important it is for customer service or marketing purposes. Companies who invest in their company’s tone of voice see a significant boost in customer acquisition rates amongst others(customer engagement, customer support and experience etc.,).

I agree. Early-stage start-ups are characterized by small sizes, limited resources, and ambitious goals. Focusing on brand voice might seem not necessary or important amongst all the other things we plan on doing. Building the product, getting those investments, running those marketing campaigns are all on the top of that list. Now, I personally believe that these are important but somehow the idea or the product often end up being the centre of all your marketing activities. So, what is wrong with this? I don’t know what others think but for me, this is an absolute blunder.

Making your product the centre for your campaigns would have worked before. But in this day and age where you can see innovation almost everywhere, customers should be the centre of your campaigns. Questions like what does my product offer or how can my product solve an issue are important, but questions like what does my customer need or how can I make my customer’s life easy might give you better results. Now, this article is not about which type of marketing campaigns work better but rather how do you present them.

So, when trying to find the tone of voice for one’s early-stage start-up, it is important to maintain a balance between excitement and realism. You want people to believe in your idea and be confident in your ability to execute what you’re pitching, but at the same time, you should avoid misconceptions that might scare off potential customers and also investors. Also, you have an opportunity to make mistakes when you are still small. Utilize the opportunity yot learn more.

What I would suggest to all those early-stage founders who want to have sustainable growth is to put their customers at the centre and run marketing your campaigns. Give those campaigns some time to mature. Don’t change your tactic just because one Instagram post failed. Track everything. Understand all the components that might affect your campaign (e.g: time, channel, audience, relevancy, etc.,). But leave your messaging tone the same. This way you can understand if the tone really resonates with your customer base. And to come up with that initial massage, talk with your target customers. Build communities before launching your product. Build an extensive customer persona that your marketing team can use and optimize as they go.

Now then, do you want to be passionate and yet not too presumptuous? Confident in your skills but humble? Have a sense of optimism and a pioneering spirit? be optimistic with a sense of hope? Or be optimistic and upbeat?

Whatever you decide don’t make assumptions. Figure out your tone early on is by asking yourself “what feeling do you want the audience to have when they read your content?” or “when they use your product”. You can also ask questions like, “What would I want if I was in this audience?” or “What would I find really helpful for me?” And then put this information down in your brand book. But remember, having a brand book and not using it is a mistake. Creating a brand book without understanding your customer is foolish.

Thank you for reading this article. Can you share how you approached or didn’t approach building your brand voice? Comment on this post about your thoughts and stories so we can create a list of good case practices and bad case practices when it comes to building your brand tone.