“My brand voice is failing me”: Here’s how to fix it
When you shout into an echoey chamber, you can usually count on one thing: that the sound of your voice will reverberate back at you. But when you’re screaming into the abyss and all you hear is silence… that’s unsettling.
It leaves you questioning not just what you’re saying, but whether anyone is listening at all.
Last month, a client came to me feeling this way about the copy on their website. It just wasn’t connecting. It wasn’t converting, and they couldn’t figure out why. So we jumped onto a marketing clarity call and over 90 minutes, we dug into the issue.
What was evident almost immediately was that their brand voice was inconsistent and lacked a distinct identity. Without a clear personality behind the words, their audience couldn’t connect, or find a reason to care.
But the problem was bigger than that, because this was a personal brand. When we looked through their content together and highlighted a few examples, my client was able to see the real issue - they couldn’t recognise their own voice in the copy.
If it didn’t feel like them, how could they expect their audience to connect with it?
Brand voice is an integral part to how we communicate with our audiences, and if it’s not right, our content and copywriting efforts can easily fall flat.
For my client, the solution to this meant going back to basics - clarifying their voice, refining their messaging, and creating consistency across every platform.
So where do you start with something like that…? (Keep reading to find out.)
It begins with your audience
Everything about your brand voice hinges on one question: who exactly are you talking to?
Without a clear understanding of your audience, your content risks becoming vague, disconnected, or overly broad.
Refining their brand voice, meant my client taking a detailed look at their ideal customer. We asked questions like:
What challenges are they facing that the brand can solve?
What values and priorities shape their decisions?
How do they communicate - formally, casually, or somewhere in between?
Answering these questions helped us narrow down not just who the audience was, but what they needed to hear, and how they needed to hear it.
The result? A clearer, more targeted approach to their messaging.
If you’re looking to define (or refine) your understanding of your audience, start by creating (or updating) an ideal client profile. Are they looking for expertise or reassurance? Do they respond better to humour or professionalism? Understanding these details will help you shape a voice that feels personal and relevant.
Define your brand’s personality
Your brand voice is a personality on the page. It’s the thing that makes your audience feel like they’re connecting with a person, not a faceless business. Without it, your content can feel hollow - or worse, forgettable.
Defining personality is about capturing the traits that make your brand unique.
As the face of their brand, my client needed to pull elements from their own personality, such as warmth, creativity, and approachability, and blend them with traits their clients wanted to see, such as professionalism, reliability, and expertise.
Once we had these traits nailed down, we worked on reflecting them in their tone of voice.
Think about your brand. Are you bold and confident, or empathetic and supportive? Are you informal and conversational, or polished and authoritative? Choosing three or four words to define your personality can serve as a guide for how your brand sounds in every interaction.
Remember: Your tone isn’t just about what you say - it’s about how you say it. Words like “We’ve got you covered” sound different from “We provide support.” Both may deliver the same message, but only one will feel right for your business.
Create consistency across your marketing channels
Even the most distinctive brand voice can lose its impact if it’s not consistent. When your tone changes from platform to platform, or across campaigns, it can confuse your audience and make your messaging feel scattered.
For my client, this was a significant challenge. Their website copy felt overly formal, while their social media posts leaned towards a casual, chatty tone that, if anything, overshared. There was a huge disconnect in who was showing up and where.
Putting together some simple brand guidelines to ensure a cohesive voice is a very easy way to avoid this happening.
Consistency doesn’t mean you have to sound identical everywhere. Your tone may shift slightly depending on the context - more formal in a proposal, more casual in an Facebook post - but it should always feel like it’s coming from the same person.
Audit your own content. Look for places where your tone feels disconnected or inconsistent. Then, create a set of brand voice guidelines, including examples of how your voice should (and shouldn’t) sound. This will help ensure your messaging stays recognisable and reliable across all platforms.
Tying it all together
When you align your brand voice with your audience, personality, and messaging, the results speak for themselves. My client and I were able to complete this process together during our 90-minute clarity call, and they could immediately see how it brought their content to life.
Their messaging felt more authentic, their voice felt unmistakably theirs, and it finally felt like someone was calling back from the echoey chamber.
This transformation didn’t just improve their content - it gave them confidence. They knew their words were ready to work towards building trust, creating connections, and ultimately driving action in their business.
How to get started refining your brand voice
Fixing your brand voice isn’t about reinventing the wheel (when it comes to marketing, it hardly ever is) it’s about going back to basics.
Define your audience, clarify your personality, and bring consistency to your messaging.
If you’re ready to take the next step, my Define & Refine Your Brand Voice Challenge is designed to help you transform your brand voice in just 30 days. With simple, daily prompts delivered to your email inbox, you’ll learn how to create a voice that’s clear, consistent, and uniquely yours.
Prefer a more personalised approach? Book a Marketing Clarity Call, and let’s tackle your brand voice together.
