Why Your Brand Voice Might Be Costing You Clients
CREATIVE SUPPORT | 6 min read
Published 18 August 2026 · Updated 1 September 2026
Your brand voice is supposed to make people want to listen.
But if it makes them work too hard to understand what you actually do, you've got a problem.
And the annoying thing is, you might not realise it's happening.
A lot of businesses put quite a bit of thought into their brand voice.
They create guidelines.
They decide whether they're friendly or authoritative.
They choose a few words they like.
Maybe they even have a list of phrases they're supposed to use and a list they're definitely not supposed to use.
On paper, everything looks sorted.
Then the voice meets the real world.
The website.
Instagram.
Emails.
Service pages.
Adverts.
And suddenly things don't feel quite as clear as they did in the brand guidelines.
What is brand voice actually supposed to do?
At its simplest, brand voice is the way your business communicates consistently across different situations.
It's the personality behind the words.
Your tone might be:
warm
direct
playful
knowledgeable
reassuring
energetic
understated
There's no universally correct voice.
A funeral director probably shouldn't sound like a streetwear brand.
A children's activity centre probably shouldn't sound like a corporate law firm.
And a small independent business doesn't need to sound like a multinational company to be credible.
The important thing is that your voice feels appropriate for your business, your audience and the relationship you want to build with them.
Brand voice and tone aren't quite the same thing
This distinction is useful.
Brand voice is the consistent personality of the business.
Tone is how that voice changes depending on the situation.
You might have a warm, playful brand voice but use a more reassuring tone when dealing with a customer problem.
You might be confident and energetic in a launch campaign but calmer when explaining something complicated.
The voice stays recognisable.
The tone adapts.
That gives you consistency without making every piece of communication sound like it was written by the same robot.
The problem starts when personality gets in the way of clarity
This is where I think businesses sometimes get themselves into trouble.
They've been told their brand needs personality.
So they add personality.
More humour.
More clever phrases.
More unusual wording.
More “on-brand” language.
And that's not necessarily bad.
In fact, personality can be one of the things that makes a brand memorable.
But there's a point where being distinctive starts competing with being understood.
Imagine a café describing itself as:
“A neighbourhood ritual for curious palates and slow moments.”
It sounds nice.
But if I'm standing outside wondering whether I can get a coffee and a sandwich, it hasn't necessarily helped me.
Something simpler might do a better job:
“Independent café, breakfast, lunch and really good coffee.”
Less clever.
Much clearer.
And clarity usually wins.
Five signs your brand voice might be getting in the way
1. People don't understand what you do quickly
This is the biggest one.
If someone reads your website or social profile and still needs an explanation, your voice might be obscuring the message.
The first job is to communicate.
Personality comes afterwards.
2. Your copy sounds good but says very little
This is surprisingly common.
You can write beautiful sentences that don't actually tell people anything useful.
Lots of atmosphere.
Lots of adjectives.
Lots of personality.
Not much information.
If you're repeatedly reading your own copy and thinking “That sounds great” without being able to answer “What does this actually mean?”, it's worth another look.
3. You're trying too hard to sound different
There's nothing wrong with wanting a distinctive brand.
But distinctiveness doesn't have to come from strange wording.
It can come from:
what you stand for
who you serve
your point of view
your experience
your visual identity
the way you treat customers
the things you choose to say repeatedly
You don't need to invent a new language.
4. Your tone changes from one channel to another
Your website sounds professional.
Instagram sounds completely different.
Your emails sound like someone else.
Then your printed material uses a third voice again.
A customer shouldn't feel like they're dealing with four different businesses.
The exact wording can change.
The personality shouldn't.
5. Customers regularly ask questions you've already answered
This one is particularly useful.
If people keep asking:
“What do you actually offer?”
“Is this for people like me?”
“How does this work?”
“What's included?”
don't automatically assume people aren't paying attention.
Your communication might simply not be making the information easy to find or understand.
That's worth fixing.
Clarity doesn't mean sounding boring
This is probably the biggest misconception.
Clear writing isn't the same as bland writing.
You can be funny.
You can be opinionated.
You can be warm.
You can be a little weird.
You can sound like an actual human being.
You just don't want the personality to make the important bit harder to understand.
Think of it like seasoning.
You want enough to make the dish memorable.
You don't want so much that you can't taste the food.
Your audience matters more than your ego
This is the slightly uncomfortable bit.
Sometimes we write in a way that we enjoy reading ourselves.
We like the clever phrase.
We like the joke.
We like the unusual description.
But the question isn't really:
“Do I like the way this sounds?”
It's:
“Does this help the person I'm trying to reach understand what I mean?”
That's a different question.
And it's one worth asking whenever you're writing something important.
This is closely connected to how clearly you're talking to your audience.
If your brand voice is distinctive but the message isn't landing, the issue might not be the audience at all.
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A simple brand voice test
Here's something you can try today.
Take your homepage headline, Instagram bio or main service description.
Read it once.
Then ask someone who knows nothing about your business:
“What do you think this business does?”
Don't explain it.
Don't help them.
Just listen.
Then ask:
“Who do you think it's for?”
And finally:
“What do you think makes it different?”
If they get all three, you're probably in a good place.
If they understand the business but can't see why it's different, your positioning might need work.
If they can't work out what you actually offer, your messaging needs attention.
And if they understand everything but the tone feels completely wrong for the audience, that's when I'd look more closely at the brand voice itself.
Start with the message, then add the personality
This is probably the order I'd recommend:
1. Get the message clear.
What do you do?
Who is it for?
Why does it matter?
2. Get the positioning clear.
Why should someone choose you?
What do you want to be known for?
3. Then develop the voice.
How should the business sound while communicating all of that?
That order matters.
Because a great brand voice can't rescue an unclear proposition.
It can only make a clear proposition more recognisable and memorable.
This is also why What Brand Strategy Actually Does is relevant here. Strategy gives you the thinking underneath the communication, so your voice isn't being asked to do a job it can't do.
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Your brand voice should make things easier
I think this is the real test.
After someone encounters your brand, do they feel:
“I get this.”
Or:
“That sounded nice, but I'm not entirely sure what they mean.”
The first is what you're after.
Your brand doesn't need to sound clever.
It doesn't need to sound corporate.
It doesn't even need to sound particularly polished.
It needs to sound like you, in a way that helps the right people understand why you're worth paying attention to.
And sometimes that means taking a few things away rather than adding more personality.
Before changing your brand voice, check the bigger picture
If your communication feels wrong, I'd resist immediately rewriting everything.
First ask:
Is the business itself clear?
Is the audience clear?
Is the positioning clear?
Is the offer easy to understand?
Is the message consistent?
Is the voice appropriate for the people you're trying to reach?
Because sometimes what looks like a brand voice problem is actually a positioning or clarity problem underneath it.
That's why I wouldn't treat tone of voice as a standalone exercise.
It works best when it's connected to the wider brand.
If you're trying to work out whether the issue is your messaging, positioning or the wider brand itself, Is Your Business Easy to Understand? is a useful next step.
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The goal isn't to sound like a brand
It's to sound like a business people understand, recognise and want to connect with.
That's a subtle difference.
You don't need to strip all the personality out.
You don't need to make everything shorter.
You don't need to sound “professional” in the traditional sense.
You just need to make sure personality is helping the message rather than hiding it.
Because the best brand voices don't make you think:
“What a clever brand voice.”
They make you think:
“I like these people. I get what they're about.”
And that's a much more useful job for a brand voice.
Hope you found this useful,
Mark
