How To Create A Tone of Voice for Your Beauty Brand

When you’re starting a beauty brand, there’s a huge amount of planning, sourcing and hard work that goes into it. It’s tempting to focus on the here and now of setting up your brand rather than planning out your marketing strategy – you want to make some sales and then you’ll worry about crossing T’s and dotting I’s later. 

It might not sound like it needs to be a big priority against a backdrop of suppliers, customers, shipping, formulating products and coming up with social media content every day across five different channels, but brand tone of voice is huge. 

It filters through to everything you do and getting it right from the start will save you time, money and confusion later. Especially as your business grows and you’re not the one who has to do everything. Not having a brand tone of voice makes it tricky to communicate it to others.

What is Brand Tone of Voice?

Your brand tone of voice is the way that you communicate with your target audience. It’s part of your brand personality and can set you apart from your competition. A good tone of voice is consistent, relatable and recognisable.

Your tone of voice sits alongside your other brand assets like your logo, brand colours, graphic templates and brand values.

Why Does Tone of Voice Matter for a Beauty Brand?

Let’s be honest, the beauty industry is competitive. There are new brands, new launches and copycats everywhere. Today’s new thing is tomorrow’s old news. A strong brand – including tone of voice – can help you to stand out from the crowd.

Depending on the tone of voice you choose, it can be relatable and approachable for your customer. A tone of voice that resonates with them builds confidence, trust and belief in the brand. It makes it easier to communicate and connect with your target audience. It’s confusing if on Monday your brand is telling jokes on Twitter but speaks like a robot on Instagram on Tuesday.

Brand recognition is another part of building trust and relatability. A consistent tone of voice and brand personality across all channels – website, social media, printed materials, packaging, PR – helps build that brand recognition, reputation and trust. This can boost your sales, conversions and your return on investment (ROI).

Having a tone of voice (especially one that’s written down clearly somewhere) is a must when it comes to working with others. If you founded the brand, you probably have a clear idea in mind of how it sounds, but that may not be as clear to your team, agency, influencers or the freelancers you work with. 

A Tone of Voice document is extremely useful for communicating how your brand sounds and sharing in creative briefs – plus it can save you time and money in the long run if you’re working with someone who’s struggling to ‘get’ your brand voice. It stops having to go back and forth as much on rewrites (which is a win on all fronts).

How to Find Your Brand Tone of Voice

You might not know where to start in developing your brand tone of voice. It might feel a bit overwhelming or you might think “look I know about beauty, I’m not a marketing expert”. You don’t have to be. You just need to know more about your audience and your brand.

Here’s how to start to find your beauty brand tone of voice:

Start With Your Target Audience

Your audience is going to be who you’re going to be speaking to, so get to know them. Plan out who your ideal customer is and look at the brands they interact with, what their motivations are, how they speak, their age, their income and what their hobbies and interests are. You might find it useful to come up with some customer personas to really identify your target audience.

Take a Look at Some Competitors

This might feel a lil sneaky but there’s no harm in keeping an eye on the competition. Definitely don’t copy your competitors – you’re unique after all – but see how they speak to their customers, how they react and what you like or dislike. Sometimes it takes seeing something to see how you feel about it and there’s nothing wrong with getting a little inspo.

Think About The Channel

This might sound weird, but different channels have different levels of acceptability when it comes to tone of voice. If your brand is mainly active on TikTok and Instagram, and your audience is Gen Z, you can probably use a more informal tone of voice that’s lighter and friendlier on these channels. If you’re a super high-end, lux beauty brand that solely advertises in glossy magazines and through PR, you might want to make it more exclusive and aspirational.

Get Some Ideas Together

Think about four words that describe your brand and how you want to speak to your brand. Now describe how those words fit in with your brand in one sentence. Then add some do’s and don’ts that encompass this.

Work With a Professional

If you’re finding it tough to get your beauty brand tone of voice pinned down, then there’s nothing wrong with working with a marketing professional, brand strategist or writer specialising in the beauty industry to help you nail down your brand’s tone of voice.

Sometimes working to your strengths and hiring experts to do the other stuff is the best way to move forward. Running a business is stressful enough without juggling things that you’re going to find frustrating or take up a lot of your time.

Beauty Brand Tone of Voice Examples

There are a few brand voices that come up again and again when clients give me examples of what they want to sound like or the type of content they want that I’ve gone into a little more detail about below.

A couple of others that I really like are Fenty Beauty and Krave Beauty. Both of these have tones of voice that work perfectly for their audience and showcase their brand personality really well. 

Krave Beauty is honest, clean and plain-speaking which absolutely fits their brand. I think Fenty in particular is a tough one to emulate because…it’s Rihanna. The whole brand sounds like it’s Rihanna and that’s exactly how it should be. I don’t think it would work as well if another brand tried to sound the same.  

Let’s look a little closer at some beauty brand tone of voice examples:

Frank Body

Frank Body have taken their idea of a brand persona to the next level with their mission to “remove hyperbole from the skincare industry and make natural skincare fun”. Their imaginary spokesperson/boyfriend/ambassador – Frank – speaks to the audience like your funniest, cheekiest and most honest friend. 

It’s distinctive, makes them stand out and runs through their whole brand right from their website through to their packaging, social media and emails. I’ve lost count of the number of times Frank Body has popped up as an example from a client of what they want to sound like. 

This Frank Body Case Study from Canva goes into a lot of detail about the brand and their distinctive tone of voice if you want to find out more.

Paula’s Choice

Paula’s Choice is another skincare brand that regularly comes up when clients are looking for on-site content. If I had to describe it in a few words, they would be:  approachable, knowledgeable, positive and no-nonsense.

The “knowledgeable” part is huge with this brand, their content is endless and they talk expertly about a range of skin conditions, products and ingredients. They explain clearly what products and ingredients do, who should use them and what the benefits are. It’s like an encyclopedia of skincare written by experts and it absolutely works.

Their taglines are things like “The products you use should work and be good for your skin, no exceptions” and “Paula’s Choice: The best skin of your life starts here.” Bold statements, but they back it up by demonstrating their knowledge on site. It never feels overly spammy or sales-y either – even where they include product recommendations it feels natural.

Aesop

Aesop are a luxury skin, hair and body care brand that use emotive language and tell stories through their brand tone of voice really well. Their brand ethos is calming, tranquil and understated luxury; this comes across in the imagery they use and their tone of voice across all channels. They definitely have a clear idea of who their target audience is, and that’s an audience with a bigger budget.

“Created with sensory pleasure in mind”, “supporting the architecture of the skin” and “a meticulous passion” are just some examples of the way the brand writes on their site. It’s almost like prose, and certainly gets across the message that this is high-end, sumptuous products for those who like luxury and formulations that work. It all feels super-soothing, relaxing and calming – just like their brand.

Conclusion: Tone of Voice is Important for Beauty Brands

There have been so many new beauty brands launched in the last few years alone that standing out is more important now than ever before. A strong tone of voice can help you to do this, and can attract customers, increase sales and make your brand feel…well, more like a brand. It can also help you to match up with your ideal customer which is invaluable.

Don’t let your hard work, innovative products and time be let down by a confusing brand tone of voice or poor copy. A strong brand is the key to growing your beauty business, connecting with customers and building long-term relationships.

Check out some of the beauty brands that I’ve helped to develop their tone of voice in my portfolio.

Struggling with your tone of voice?

Get in touch with me and we can talk about the vision for your beauty brand.