Brand Tone 101: Why How Your Startup Speaks—Could Determine Its Sales

Photo: ChatGPT (2026)

Take a moment, and imagine your company’s ideal customers. No, I’m not talking about in a typical consumer profile type of way like: knowing what they likely do for a living, their yearly income, and their age range. What we’re talking about here is imagining your target customer in a more intimate sense. 

Knowing the answers to questions like: How’s their personality? Which comedians would they find funny? Which comedians would they find offensive? As well as What would they view as being cringe? Are extremely important for brands like yours that are hoping to appeal to their ideal target audience (we’ll revisit these questions later). 

Understanding your ideal customers is especially important as it pertains to your approach to successfully marketing towards them. And brand tone plays a major role in not only the way your brand will be perceived by its ideal customers—oftentimes, it’s also the determining factor that decides whether or not they’ll actually go on to become customers.

Why tone matters 

We’ve all heard the saying, It’s not what you say, but how you say it. In many cases, that is absolutely true. Especially when it comes to how a brand communicates. It’s important to keep in mind the difference between brand messaging—and brand tone. The purpose of brand messaging is to convey information to an audience. 

While the purpose of brand tone is to evoke emotion. 

The reason why a brand’s tone is especially important is because it helps establish a brand’s identity. And your brand’s identity is what will ultimately determine the way in which the general public (especially your target audience) will perceive your brand. 

Understanding the proper tone for your brand 

Obviously, every brand is unique in its own right. Therefore, every brand should have its own unique voice. The key to finding your brand’s distinctive voice is by simply realizing how you’d like for your brand to be perceived—in conjunction with how your audience would ideally enjoy being talked to. 

The tone your brand uses when communicating to the public should always be predicated on how you want the public to perceive your brand. 

Remember those four abovementioned questions? By understanding your ideal audience well enough to be able to answer all four questions accurately—you could set a tone of voice that would best appeal to their particular personalities. 

For example, most brands aspire to be known for having one or more of these characteristics:

• Boldness

• Excitement

• Hipness

• Humor

• Sincerity

• Sophistication

More often than not, the greatest brands on earth usually became that way because they communicated to the public in a tone that is congruent with a brand personality that is most relatable to their ideal customers. 

By speaking to your ideal audience in a way that is relatable to the way they also communicate with themselves, they'll gravitate more towards your brand emotionally. And as any great marketer would tell you, it’s not the mind that nudges people to fall in love with brands enough to the point they’ll make a purchase—it’s the heart. 

Let’s choose the perfect tone for your brand!

Still uncertain of which tone is best for your brand? If so, we’ve got your back! Contact us today and tell us all about your brand and its ideal customers during a complimentary client consultation and we’ll help identify the perfect tone and personality that your target audience would adore.