Why Brand Consistency Matters
Your brand is your identity—what defines your business, creates your reputation, engages your customer, and sets you apart from the crowd. Your logo, typography, imagery and color palette all need to be carefully crafted to perfectly fit how you want to present your business to your clients.
And with a consistent brand, repeated throughout your marketing efforts, your company will begin to spark the recognition and respect that comes with cohesive social media posts, emailers, print collateral, and every other way you connect with your audience.
But when consistency is key, why do so many companies let ineffective brand management derail all the hard work that goes into creating and maintaining their message? It’s easy to let your brand fall apart without a strong brand management strategy that ensures that everyone involved in your marketing efforts are supporting a single goal: brand consistency.
Remember the Rule of 7
The Rule of 7 marketing adage says that it takes seven interactions with a brand before a prospect becomes a customer. And if those interactions don’t show brand consistency, you’re wasting time, money and effort as you work even harder to get to that conversion. Our brains are very good at sorting through the clutter of advertising bombardment if they are presented with a consistent message—whether we’re aware of it or not. That’s why it’s critical to take advantage of our natural tendency toward recognition and give your audience an easy way to latch onto your message.
How Do You Improve Your Brand Consistency?
Taking the steps to ensure strong brand consistency will streamline and focus your marketing efforts, save you money, and free up time to service your hard-earned clients. Here are some tips:
• Develop brand guidelines—including logos, font usage, colors, design element placement, and anything else you use to define your brand—and communicate those guidelines to everyone inside and outside your team.
• Make collateral usage rules clear and consistent for tone, messaging, look and feel.
• Keep collateral easy to find and easy to use, and make sure everyone on your team is trained in how to use each element correctly.
• Keep all current collateral in one location to avoid old versions being used.
• Create an approval process that mandates that someone who knows your brand guidelines gives the final OK before any content goes out.
Need help developing a consistent brand so your marketing efforts start paying off faster? Let’s sit down to discuss the right strategy for you.
