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It’s super important to know how to talk to your audience at every buyer journey stage. Keep reading for Good Egg’s tone of voice guide on how to do just that.
If you’ve landed on this article, chances are that you’re looking to learn more about using your brand’s tone of voice during the various stages of the buyer journey (if not, maybe one of our other tone of voice guides will be more up your street).
The goal of creating content marketing material is to catch the attention of your target audience and make them want to stick around to find out more. Otherwise, honestly… what’s the point?
For this to work, your messaging needs to be tailored to fit whichever stage of the buyer journey the reader is at. Your tone of voice shouldn’t change entirely — your messaging should use a consistent voice so it sounds like you wrote it — but you’ll need to switch it up a little to suit the content’s purpose.
In this article, we’ll outline the three main stages of the buyer journey and explain how your brand voice and communication styles should be adjusted to suit it.
P.S. If you don’t have a tone of voice document for your business yet, we can help you with that.
The buyer journey is the process that a potential customer goes through while they’re making a buying decision. Whether you’re buying lipstick or a laptop, pretty much any consumer or business will research and purchase products and services via this process, so taking the time to understand it will be a brill boost to your marketing efforts.
There are three key stages in the buyer’s journey:
It’s widely suggested that a buyer will interact with your biz seven times before they’re ready to invest their hard-earned dough in your offering. So, it stands to reason that you’ve gotta make every interaction count… this is why it’s super important to get your brand voice right for every touchpoint.
Your task as a business owner is to ✨dazzle✨ a buyer at all three stages of their purchasing journey. This will give you the best possible chance of being the one they choose to buy with when they’re ready to do so.
To make this happen, you’ve gotta know how to communicate with your audience at every part of the journey. Your brand’s tone of voice plays a huge part in this process, and in the next section, we’ll look at how it should be adjusted to suit each stage.
Read more here about what a tone of voice document is and why every business needs one in their brand kit (it’s as important as having a logo and brand colour palette).
If you’re wondering what the best tone of voice is for the three key stages of the buyer journey, we can help answer that question. Let’s pin down the three key steps that potential customers will pass through, pus how your tone of voice will change throughout the buyer’s journey.
This is when someone is coming into contact with you for the very first time. At this stage, they’re learning about you, your business, and your products/services.
This might have happened when one of your social posts popped up as suggested content, someone in their LinkedIn network shared a post of yours, or they found your website on Google via the powers of SEO.
At this stage, this person knows they have some sort of ‘problem’ that needs to be fixed, and they’re probably looking to learn more about it while checking out available solutions. For example:
However your digital meet cute happened, this is the time for your business to be as helpful as possible. That means speaking in a clear, informative tone that gives them the answer to their question.
Centre the person and use empathetic language to build an emotional connection that lets them know you understand their problem. Your tone of voice should be engaging enough to capture their attention and tempt them to learn more about your business.
Do: focus on educating, building authority, and creating a sense of trust with an approachable tone
Don’t: overwhelm them with jargon or launch straight into a hardcore sales pitch
This is the point at which a buyer better understands their problem and is thinking more about their buying options. They might already know about you and be following your socials or be coming across your business for the first time.
Either way, they’ll likely be looking at your offering and comparing it to your competitors’ to figure out who’s going to do the best job of meeting their needs.
At this point, your job is to address any potential objections (aka reasons not to buy) and provide proof that you’re the cream of the crop. You can do this in a number of ways:
The perfect tone at this stage will exude confidence at the consideration stage. Your audience is approaching the point of being ready to buy, so you don’t want to spook them by seeming unsure of your industry or offer.
Use this stage to talk clearly about your USPs and answer any questions that the buyer might still have. Here, you can sell yourself more than you can in the awareness stage. Let more of your brand personality shine through and create content to big up the value of your products/services.
Do: be confident and persuasive by using authoritative language while clearly demonstrating the value of your offering
Don’t: be pushy or skip the social proof — you still have some convincing to do
Get your tone of voice guidelines done for you.
This is the most exciting stage for a business because it’s when the buyer is ready to take action and/or spend some ££. They’ve done their research, weighed up their options, and are ready to invest in the product or service they think has the best chance of solving their problem.
If you’re a fully online business or you take bookings online, it’s super important for your website to be well-designed and user-friendly. You’ve done way too much work on…
…to throw away a sale with a slow-loading website or an unclear purchasing process.
As you might have guessed, you’ll also need to ensure your tone of voice is on point for this buyer stage.
Your tone of voice at the decision stage should be tailored to inspire your audience to act. It should be reassuring and supportive while motivating them to follow through with the purchase.
You also want to ensure that you’re being informative and authoritative to maintain the trust that you’ve built up in the previous two stages of the buyer’s journey.
Remember that many of us have a short attention span and very little patience (or is that just me!?). With that in mind, ditch the hyperbolic language and make sure it’s super easy for your audience to make a purchase/booking. Be very specific about what you want them to do next (e.g., click the buy/book button) to avoid causing confusion.
Do: provide everything needed to be able to make a confident buying decision
Don’t: lose your audience by being unclear or making it difficult to seal the deal
As you may have deduced from the 1,500ish words you just read, it’s super important to have a memorable tone of voice at every stage of the buyer journey.
Creating a brand voice that’s authoritative, consistent, and flexible enough to fit every online interaction with your target audience can be the difference between 🤑 and 😔.
Your business needs tone of voice guidelines to be able to form deeper customer connections while standing out in your crowded industry (because, let’s face it, all industries are pretty crowded these days).
If you don’t have a tone of voice document and want to rectify that, you’re in the right place! We have two options to choose from:
We do all the legwork using our years of copywriting expertise — your step-by-step brand voice guidelines are developed for you, so you’ll have everything you need to write in a consistent brand voice for every piece of content you create for your business (buyers loveeee consistency). Learn More About Our Tone Of Voice Guidelines Service.
Need help with your website’s messaging? Stuck on your digital marketing strategy? Let’s chat (in an obligation-free and cost-free way).
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