Are you confused about branding? Have you explored the benefits of brand consistency? If not, this article includes actionable insight to help you create brand guidelines, a strong brand voice and a memorable brand identity. Start here for relevant, unforgettable brand messaging...
Why is brand consistency so important?
Brand consistency is key when establishing your place in your niche. However, sending your audience mixed messages will only confuse them and decrease the authenticity of your brand.
In addition, you are risking your customers’ hard-won loyalty. Thus, your branding should be consistent across all mediums:
- Online
- In-store
- Across your advertising material
Here are ten essential tips to affirm brand consistency.
1. Create An Incredible Logo
You should consider an eye-catching, well-designed logo mandatory to establish your brand identity. Using this logo on all of your materials will instantly identify your company to consumers.
Creating a logo that stands out amongst your competitors' will draw customers to your product. Once those customers become familiar with your logo and your company, your brand consistency reinforces your message and your brand becomes established.
You cannot overstate the importance of your brand’s logo. Thus, it needs to be right from the beginning.
It is worth doing your research to find a reputable, well-regarded marketing company to design your logo. They should make your brand memorable and symbolize the quality of your services.
2. Develop Brand Guidelines That Frame Brand Consistency
Most large businesses, as well as many smaller and midsize businesses, create brand style and usage guidelines. These guidelines describe brand consistency and ensure that all use of the brand’s:
- Logo
- Color schemes
- Graphics
- Typography
Meet the company’s visual brand consistency standards.
Brand guidelines developed by some companies can be incredibly in-depth. But this is exactly what it takes to ensure your messaging is on-brand. Target, for example, has created an entire brand guideline document focused solely on the correct usage of the Target gift card branding.
3. Help Your Employees Remain On-Brand
It is vitally important that your employees fully understand your brand identity and what is expected of them when communicating with customers. Inconsistency between the delivery of services from employee to employee can be detrimental to your brand identity.
Regular team meetings where you can reinforce brand identity and brand messaging can keep things on track.
Work together with your employees to establish and develop your brand. Listening to your employees’ ideas and opinions about your brand can be quite valuable. They are the ones who are most closely interacting with your customers. Thus, they can often give insight into which aspects of your branding and brand messaging are working and which are not.
4. Remain Loyal To Your Brand On Social Media
Resist the temptation to go completely casual on social media. It remains vital to stay on brand across all your social media pages.
Be sure all who post from the company pages have clear understanding of guidelines, and what is acceptable and what is not. This is your chance to engage with your customers in a different way. Letting your brand identity slip will confuse your customers and weaken your brand awareness.
Consumers increasingly use social media to research brands. So if your brand is not recognizable on this medium, your potential customers are more likely to engage with your competitors.
For a more in-depth look at the use of social media, be sure to take a look at Four Social Media Marketing Mistakes Your Brand Must Avoid.
5. Give Your Brand A Voice
Establish your brand's personality and voice. Your brand voice can have any style. It should reflect your brand values and appeal to your target markets. Brand persona is difficult for some in retaining brand consistency.
You can only rely on your brand’s logo, visual content and product features to a certain extent. The written content you produce should have the same consistency as any other aspect of your branding.
6. Engage With Online Influencers
Working with online influencers can improve and increase your brand awareness. However, you must ensure that your partners align with your brand’s identity.
Screen to make sure the influencers you choose will appeal to your target audience. They must also understand what you expect of them. Build a collaboration where both win from the impact of brand consistency.
7. Relevancy And Brand Consistency Go Hand-In-Hand
In your content, show your audience that you have a clear vision about your core values and what your brand represents. Inconsistency can alienate customers and potential collaborators.
Track the relevance of your content at every stage and maintain high standards of customer service by collecting feedback from customers. Post short focused questions on social media, and go through feedback forms.
Measuring site traffic also gives you great insight into the interests of your customers. Continuing to produce content your customers enjoy will increase their engagement with your website.
8. Create A Memorable Domain Name
Create a memorable domain name directly related to your products or services. Keep it relatively short and easy to spell. Including complex spelling or misspelled words can make it difficult for customers to find your website. If it is not easy to find customers will quickly move on.
Choose a unique domain name that fits in with your brand identity. It is worth researching any companies with even vaguely similar names so your domain name stands out easily from theirs. The last thing you want is another company pulling away your customer.
9. Repurpose Content
You can reinforce your message and reach new audiences using existing content. Isn't that sweet?
It is worth considering any previous content you have created to re-use it in a different form. Not only does this keep your branding consistent, it also saves time not reproducing content that is essentially already created.
Creating new content can be expensive and is often not necessary when you consider how easily existing content can be transformed and repurposed. Periodically using the same graphics and wording will reinforce your brand identity.
10. Plan Ahead
With multiple campaigns sometimes happening simultaneously, taking advantage of planning tools keeps your team in sync. Marketing calendars will prove essential. While they do take a bit of work to set up, it will be worth the time and effort to organize your team.
You can achieve a consistent message by having everything in one place so you can clearly see how it all fits together. Planning ahead gives you the freedom of being able to adjust details of promotions and make changes as you go, without feeling rushed.
The benefits of planning can also be felt retrospectively as your marketing calendars will be useful documents to refer back to for future campaigns. You can identify areas from previous campaigns where branding could have been more consistent and correct that in future.
Final Thoughts On Brand Consistency
Maintaining brand consistency by following these guidelines will have a plethora of benefits for your company. Consistent brands attract and retain customers through their on-message approach. They are also more likely to continue that trend as their brand identity grows.
A consistent brand is a strong brand.
