Brand voice and tone guidelines · Marketing
Six people answer your customers and the business sounds like six companies.
Our brand guidelines page covers the logo, the colours and the typography, with a short note on voice inside it. This page is that note taken seriously, for businesses where most of the brand a customer meets is a WhatsApp message.
In one paragraph
Brand voice and tone guidelines is a written rule set for how a business sounds in words. It fixes the vocabulary, the phrases to avoid, and how the tone moves between a new enquiry, a delay and a complaint. GullySales writes it from your team's real messages rather than from adjectives.
Your buyer rarely sees the letterhead. They see a reply from the front desk at nine at night, a quotation email from a rep, a caption written by somebody's cousin, and a payment reminder from accounts. Four voices, one company.
The fix is not a personality invented in a workshop. It is your own manner, written down with examples, so the person who joined last Monday can sound like the business without being corrected for six months.
The problem
Does this sound like your business?
What owners tell us on the first call, in their words.
“Every person here writes differently”
One reply opens with Dear Sir and closes with kindly do the needful. The next is three words and a thumbs up. The customer reads both in the same thread.
“We sound rude when we are busy”
Short answers written under pressure land as curt, especially in text with no tone to soften them. The reply that costs you an order is usually the one typed in four seconds.
“The agency's captions do not sound like us”
A freelancer with no guide writes in whatever voice is popular that month. You reject drafts you cannot explain, which is slow for everyone and never gets better.
“We cannot say no without sounding defensive”
Refusing a discount, admitting a delay or raising a price are the moments the voice matters most. Most teams have no agreed wording, so they either over-apologise or go silent.
What we do
Everything that is included.
Each deliverable, and what it gets you. Nothing here is an extra.
Four or five voice traits with examples
Each trait written as a pair: what we say and what we do not say, taken from real messages of yours. Adjectives alone are useless, because nobody knows what friendly looks like at 9pm.
The word list
What you call your own products, services and people, spelled one way. A clinic that says patient in one place and client in another has two brands. The list also names the phrases to retire.
Tone by situation
How the same voice sounds on a new enquiry, a follow-up, a delay, a complaint, a price revision and a refusal. This is the part a new joiner actually uses.
Language and script rules
Which languages you reply in and who decides. Whether Kannada goes in the Kannada script or in Roman letters. How Sir and Madam are handled with a customer half your age.
Rewritten message templates
Your own recent threads rewritten to the guide, ready to paste. Templates written from scratch get ignored; a rewrite of yesterday's message does not.
A one-page card
The traits, the word list and five example replies on a single page for the counter, the phone and the reception desk. The full document stays for the people who write longer things.
A brief for outside writers
A short version for agencies, freelancers and printers, so a caption or a brochure arrives close enough to sign off the first time.
First-month review
A sample of real messages read against the guide after it lands, with the corrections given as examples rather than as a scolding. A document with no follow-up changes nothing.
How the result is measured
- Customer messages sampled against the guide
- Drafts returned for rewrite before publishing
- Templates in use, by channel and by person
- Complaints and escalations that mention how something was said
- Time a new joiner takes before replies need no correction
Recorded as a baseline before work starts, then reported every month against it.
Who it is for
This is written for you if these sound familiar.
- Clinics, hotels and showrooms where four or five people answer the same WhatsApp number
- Owners who rewrite every message a team member drafts and want to stop
- Businesses handing social media or content to an agency that keeps sounding like a different company
- Family firms where the founder's way of speaking is the brand and nobody has ever written it down
- Teams that have just doubled in size and lost the manner they had at six people
Not for
It is not the right fit if.
- A one-person business, where the voice is you writing as yourself and a document adds nothing
- A company without positioning or a name settled yet, because what you sound like follows what you are for
- An owner who wants a PDF to change forty people's habits with nobody reading the messages afterwards
How it works
From your first message to the first monthly report.
No open-ended retainer. Each step has a point in time and something you receive.
01 · Day 1
Free audit call
45 minutes with whoever handles your enquiries: how they arrive, how fast they are answered, where they are lost.
02 · Within a few working days
Written, scored report
Six areas scored, fixes ranked by return and cost. If you want our help, the scope and fee come with it, in writing.
03 · Before work starts
Baseline recorded
Enquiries by source, reply time, conversion and cost per order, written down so every later month has an honest comparison.
04 · Month 1
The first fix goes live
Usually the cheapest one on the report: reply time, a follow-up sequence or the marketing-to-sales handover.
05 · Every month
Report against the baseline
What moved, what did not, and what changes next, in plain words.
06 · Month 3 to 6
Renew on the numbers
The term ends and you decide whether to continue from the results. No twelve-month lock.
How the brand voice and tone guidelines work runs
- 1
Collect what you actually write
We read a month of real enquiry threads, quotation emails, reminders and captions. The voice is already in there, along with the four versions of it.
- 2
Sit with the owner and two staff
One conversation with whoever built the business, and one each with the people customers speak to most. The person at the front desk knows things the owner has not heard.
- 3
Draft the traits and the word list
Short, with a say-this and not-this pair under each. You argue with the draft, which is the point of it.
- 4
Rewrite the real messages
We take the threads from step one and rewrite them to the guide, so the team sees their own words improved rather than a stranger's examples.
- 5
Hand over and review
The document, the one-page card and the outside brief go out together. A month later we read fresh messages and correct with examples.
Proof
What happened when owners fixed this.
Real clients, the work we did, and the result as it was recorded. Where no number was recorded, none is claimed.
Hotel Felicity Inn
- Situation
- A traveller compares three hotels on a phone and books one. The website was not built for that.
- What we did
- The site rebuilt around booking
- Photography and one look
- Search work for destination searches
- Content a traveller reads
- Result
- Online bookings increased 35%
- Organic traffic increased 50% within six months
- Positive reviews on Google and TripAdvisor increased 30%
SB Engineering
- Situation
- Buyers searching for laser cutting and sheet metal work in Bengaluru were finding other suppliers first, because the company did not rank for the terms its own customers type.
- What we did
- The site redesigned for mobile
- Search work on the buyer's terms
- Content that shows the work
- Social channels managed
- Result
- Website traffic rose 60% within six months, against a target of 50%.
- High-quality leads rose 45%, with a rise in conversion rates alongside them.
- Fifteen target keywords moved up the rankings, five of them into the top three positions.
Growth Sage
- Situation
- There was no settled visual identity, so nothing on the page told a prospect what kind of firm this was.
- What we did
- Vision and brand values
- A logo for a professional firm
- The site audited, then rebuilt
- Market and competitor research
- Result
- No numbers were recorded for this engagement. The work is described in full in the case study.
Also worked with
Chord Road Hospital · Curtain Label · Difesa Security Services · Hands On CSR · Implevista · Kambar Group · Kalessi · Kerur Pain Clinic · LL Trust · Lucky Deals · Natural Gases · NavaShakthi Souhardha · NewCom Logistics · Proton Technical Services · Shakthi Foundation · Shakthi Group · Urbanest · Insyde Studio · Venkateshwara Laser Tech · Vivara Studios
Why us
Why owners pick GullySales over an agency.
Marketing and sales, as one job
Most agencies stop at the enquiry. We also fix what happens after it: the reply, the follow-up, the quote and the CRM.
The person on the first call does the work
No account managers in between. You are never handed to someone you have not met.
A baseline before anything starts
Your numbers are written down on day one, so every monthly report compares against something honest.
The fee in writing, split three ways
Our time, your media spend and production on separate lines. You always see what goes to us.
No lock-in, no guarantees we cannot keep
Three to six months at a time. We never promise a ranking or a lead count, because nobody controls those.
One office, and we say so
Nagarbhavi, Bengaluru. We work across India by call and WhatsApp and travel when a session needs to be in person.
#257, 3rd floor, Sri Nanjundeshwara Complex, Nagarbhavi 8th Block, Outer Ring Road. How we work.
Engagement options
Ways to work with us.
Pick the size of commitment that fits. Every option starts with the free audit.
Option 1
The audit on its own
A 45-minute call and a written, scored report. It says honestly whether you need outside help, and many fixes are ones your own team can make.
Option 2
One fix, scoped
Start with the fix the audit ranks first, such as reply time or follow-up. The fee is in writing before anything starts.
Option 3
A three-to-six-month programme
We run the work month by month, report against the baseline every month, and you renew on the numbers. No twelve-month lock.
Option 4
Guidance for your own team or agency
We plan, brief and check the work of your in-house team or current agency, instead of replacing them.
The offer
Start with a free audit of how you sell.
It is useful on its own, whether or not you hire us.
What you receive
- A 45-minute call with the person who will do the work
- A written, scored report on the six places orders leak, within a few working days
- Every fix ranked by what it returns and what it costs
- The one thing to do first, and why
- An honest line on whether you need outside help at all
- If you do, the scope and the fee in writing
No invoice. No obligation. No sales script.
FAQ
Questions owners ask before they call.
Not here? More answers, or ask on WhatsApp.
Is this not just a style guide for writing?
We already have brand guidelines. Do we need this too?
Will our team actually follow it?
Can the voice be different on Instagram and on a quotation?
What if the owner's way of speaking is the brand voice?
How is this priced?
How long is the contract?
How soon will we see results?
Who will actually do the work?
What do you need from us?
By industry
Brand voice and tone guidelines, written for your industry.
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