Developing Your Brand Voice: A Step-By-Step Playbook For Small Businesses

Brand voice refers to the distinct personality, tone, and style expressed through a company’s communications. It shapes how your small business “sounds” in written content, social media posts, video scripts, newsletters, product descriptions, and even customer support chats. If you think of your small business as a person, your brand voice is how that person would speak, the words they would choose, and the feeling they would convey in a conversation.

Why is this important for small businesses?

In today’s crowded marketplace, it’s hard for a small business to stand out by product features alone. Larger companies often have bigger budgets and more name recognition. But a well-crafted brand voice can help level the playing field. According to a 2022 survey by Lucidpress, consistent branding can increase revenue by up to 33%. This is particularly significant for small businesses, where every single customer interaction counts. A strong, consistent voice helps customers remember you, trust you, and feel more connected to what you offer.

For a small business, your brand voice can highlight what makes you truly special. Maybe that’s your warm, neighborhood feel or your commitment to going the extra mile. Perhaps it’s your focus on personalized customer service, or maybe it’s your innovative approach to solving a common problem in your community. When your brand voice consistently reflects what’s unique about your small business, it resonates more deeply with your audience. Over time, this authenticity can translate into loyal customers who support and champion your brand.

2. Research and Understand Your Audience as a Small Business

Before you start defining how your small business sounds, you need to know who you’re talking to. Your customers are at the heart of your brand voice. If you don’t understand their interests, concerns, and communication preferences, you risk speaking in a tone that doesn’t connect.

How to understand your audience as a small business:

• Engage directly: Small businesses have a great advantage here. It’s often easier for you to talk directly with customers—at your store counter, community events, local fairs, or through social media polls. Ask them what they appreciate about your brand’s communication and where they think you can improve.
• Use analytics and data: Even a small business can leverage tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, or email marketing reports. Look at what content your audience clicks on and shares. Notice which messages spark conversation.
• Learn from reviews and feedback: Small businesses often receive direct, personal feedback. Customers might leave comments on your website, send emails, or write reviews on sites like Yelp or Google. These comments are a goldmine of information about what your audience likes, dislikes, and expects.
• Observe competitor interactions: By looking at how other small businesses in your niche communicate, you can learn what customers respond to. Identify gaps you can fill with your unique voice rather than just copying others.

Understanding your audience at a personal level is a superpower that many small businesses have. You likely know some of your customers by name and can sense their needs. Use that closeness to craft a voice that feels directly relevant and genuinely caring.

3. Define Your Small Business’s Core Values and Mission

Your brand voice should be a natural extension of your small business’s core values and mission. These fundamental principles define who you are, what you believe in, and why your business exists.

Questions to ask yourself:

• What does our small business stand for?
• What positive impact do we want to have on our customers and community?
• Which ethical standards guide our choices?
• What is our mission beyond just making a profit?

For example, if your small business is committed to providing ethically sourced products, transparency and honesty should shine through in your voice. If your mission is to improve local well-being—maybe you run a community fitness studio—then encouragement, positivity, and inclusiveness might be key voice attributes. By closely tying your voice to your values and mission, you ensure that everything you say supports the bigger story you’re trying to tell.

4. Identify Your Unique Selling Points (USPs) as a Small Business

Your Unique Selling Points are the qualities that set your small business apart from competitors. It’s crucial to identify these differentiators because they should strongly influence the tone, style, and messaging in your communications.

How to find your small business’s USPs:

• List out features: Consider your products or services and note down their standout features.
• Translate features into benefits: What do these features mean for your customers? For example, if you offer a specialty product sourced locally, the benefit might be fresher quality and support for the regional economy.
• Identify uniqueness: Look for something special your bigger competitors can’t easily replicate. Maybe it’s your highly personal customer service, your handmade approach, or your ultra-fast response time.
• Refine into a statement: Once you’ve identified these points, summarize them into a short message that your audience can easily grasp.

When you know your USPs, you can infuse them into your voice. If your USP is personal attention, your voice might be warm, empathetic, and encouraging. If your USP is unbeatable value for money, your voice might emphasize simplicity, accessibility, and directness. By linking your voice to what makes your small business unique, you’ll stand out in a meaningful way.

5. Audit Your Current Communications

Before you reinvent your brand voice, it’s wise to understand where you currently stand. Many small businesses have already published content—emails, flyers, social media posts, product descriptions—that can offer clues about what’s working and what isn’t.

Performing a content audit for your small business:

• Collect samples: Gather various pieces of communication. Include website copy, email newsletters, brochures, social media posts, and packaging copy.
• Look for consistency: Do you sound welcoming on social media but overly formal in emails? Are you clear and helpful in blog posts but confusing on product labels?
• Check for alignment with values: Does the tone reflect your small business’s values and mission? If you pride yourself on personal touch, yet your emails sound impersonal, there’s a disconnect.
• Note customer responses: If certain messages or posts attracted positive feedback, study the tone and language used. If some content fell flat, consider whether the voice was off mark—too pushy, too vague, or too technical.

This audit helps you identify gaps between your ideal brand voice and your current communication style. Small businesses often evolve quickly; an audit ensures your voice evolves just as intentionally.

6. Brainstorm and Develop Your Brand Voice Attributes

Now that you have a solid understanding of your audience, values, mission, and USPs—and you’ve reviewed current communications—you can start defining the attributes of your brand voice. Think of these attributes as personality traits for your small business.

Questions to guide your brainstorming:

• What adjectives best describe your small business? Friendly, innovative, down-to-earth, eco-conscious, knowledgeable, playful, or trustworthy?
• How do you want customers to feel when they interact with your brand? Inspired, comforted, supported, excited?

Examples of brand voice attributes for small businesses:

• Friendly and approachable: Great for small businesses that pride themselves on personal relationships with customers.
• Down-to-earth and honest: Ideal if you want to emphasize authenticity and transparency—common and appealing strengths for a small business.
• Supportive and educational: Useful if your products or services require some explanation, and you want to guide customers rather than just sell to them.
• Confident and expert, yet humble: If you have deep expertise as a small business owner, you can share that confidently without ever sounding arrogant.

Start with a long list of possible attributes, then narrow it down to three to five that capture the essence of your small business. For example, you might settle on “friendly,” “helpful,” and “authentic.” These attributes will form the backbone of your voice guidelines.

7. Create Detailed Voice Guidelines and Style Rules

Once you’ve chosen your attributes, it’s time to turn them into concrete guidelines. This will help ensure that anyone writing or speaking on behalf of your small business knows exactly how to stay on-brand.

What to include in your brand voice guidelines:

• Tone overview: Describe your chosen attributes clearly. For example: “Our small business voice is friendly and welcoming. We use everyday language and talk to our customers like neighbors.”
• Vocabulary and phrasing: Decide on words that suit your small business’s identity. If you run a local market, you might talk about “neighborly deals” or “fresh finds.” Avoid overly technical language if you’re trying to be warm and accessible.
• Grammar and style preferences: Clarify if you’ll use contractions (we’re, it’s) for a casual feel. Decide if you prefer short paragraphs, bullet lists, or storytelling. Consider whether emojis fit your brand voice, especially in social media posts.
• Brand-specific wording: Are there certain phrases you use that capture your small business’s spirit? For instance, a family-owned café might often say “From our family to yours…” in newsletters.
• Do’s and Don’ts: Spell out what language or approaches to avoid. For example, Don’t: “Use complex jargon or long-winded explanations that might confuse our customers.” Do: “Keep it simple, clear, and friendly at all times.”

These guidelines act as a reference manual. They help maintain consistency as your small business grows, as you add new team members, or as you explore new marketing channels.

8. Test and Refine Your Voice

Your guidelines might look great on paper, but the real test is in action. Before officially rolling them out across all channels, put them to the test.

How to test your small business’s brand voice:

• Draft sample content: Take a piece of existing communication, such as a product description or a social media post, and rewrite it using your new guidelines. Compare how it feels. Is it clearer? More aligned with your desired tone?
• Get internal feedback: If you have a small team, ask for their opinions. Does the voice sound like your business? Is it enjoyable to read? Team members often know your small business’s character well.
• Ask a few trusted customers: Because small businesses often have close customer relationships, you might simply show a handful of loyal customers your new messaging. Ask if it feels natural and reflective of what they love about your brand.
• A/B testing: If you have an email list, send two versions of a newsletter: one in your old voice and one in your new voice. Measure open rates, click-through rates, and any responses you get.

Be willing to revise. If the new voice feels forced or off-brand, tweak the guidelines until they feel just right. A brand voice should sound natural and not like you’re trying too hard.

9. Train Your Team and Keep Everyone Aligned

A well-developed brand voice is only as strong as its consistent implementation. For a small business, this might mean training just a few people—but every voice matters. Whether it’s the person running your social media, the employee writing email responses, or the owner themselves drafting blog posts, everyone needs to understand and embrace the brand voice.

How to train your small business team:

• Share the guidelines: Make sure everyone has easy access to your brand voice document. Keep it in a shared folder or a printed handbook.
• Host a short workshop: Even a brief meeting can clarify the importance of a consistent voice. Encourage questions and give examples.
• Demonstrate with samples: Show before-and-after versions of your communications. This helps team members see how to apply the guidelines in practice.
• Encourage ongoing feedback: If a team member finds certain phrases awkward or too formal, listen. The strength of a small business is often the open communication within the team.

By aligning everyone, your customers will hear the same friendly, authentic voice whether they’re reading a social media post, asking a question by email, or chatting with someone at your storefront.

10. Monitor, Measure, and Adjust Over Time

Your brand voice isn’t something you set and forget—especially not as a small business. As your customer base grows, your offerings evolve, and market trends shift, you might need to refine your voice to stay relevant.

Ways to measure the effectiveness of your small business’s brand voice:

• Engagement metrics: Do customers share and comment more on your social posts since you introduced the new voice? Has your email open rate or click-through rate improved?
• Website analytics: Are visitors spending more time on your site, indicating they find your content more engaging or easier to read?
• Customer feedback: Listen to what customers say about your communications. Even small comments can reveal if your voice is resonating.
• Sales and conversions: While many factors influence sales, clearer and more relatable communication can help customers understand why they should choose you, potentially boosting conversions over time.

If you notice areas where your voice isn’t landing as intended, adjust. Perhaps you tried to sound too casual and ended up feeling less professional. Or maybe you wanted to be friendly, but your language became too informal. Revisit your guidelines, refine them, and keep experimenting until you strike the perfect balance.

Conclusion

Developing a brand voice is an ongoing process. The good news is that as a small business, you’re in the perfect position to remain nimble and authentic. You can adapt your voice as needed without losing touch with what makes you special.

Final tips for small businesses:

• Stay authentic: Your small business voice should feel honest and true to who you are. Customers connect with authenticity more than polish or perfection.
• Focus on clarity: Even if you want to be friendly or playful, clarity should never suffer. Your audience should easily understand what you’re offering.
• Be patient: It might take time to find the right tone and for it to start resonating. Don’t rush the process. Your patience and care will pay off.
• Keep learning: Continue to listen to customers, watch industry trends, and update your voice guidelines as your small business grows and changes.

With a well-crafted brand voice, your small business can foster deeper connections, build trust, and stand out from the competition. Consistency and authenticity in your messaging help customers feel like they’re interacting with a brand that genuinely cares about them—something many large corporations struggle to replicate. For small businesses, a distinctive voice is a powerful asset that can turn one-time buyers into lifelong supporters.