What does it mean to have a consistent brand? The pattern of expression that influences how people perceive your firm is known as brand consistency. Your branding will be more consistent if your messaging is constant, whether through language, design, offerings, or perspective. Customers should be aware of your brand, and trust and loyalty should emerge.
These days, it is straightforward to set up a website, be it a blog, information site, news outlet, eCommerce, or pretty much anything else you can think of. But what is that website saying about you, and is it consistent with the branding and image you are trying to achieve?
Branding needs to be clear and effective to avoid it being interpreted by others in a way that matches their version of what you are putting out there. There is no room for error or interpretation when it comes to branding your business. It would help if you were confident in what you are doing, your ethos, and the exact message you are putting out there.
Creating Your Branding
A brand is made up of many different elements, and maintaining consistency across all of them is a difficult undertaking. To keep everyone on the same page and your assets and communications on-brand, create a brand style guide that defines your brand aspects and branding standards.
The mission of your company, the brand’s color palette, fonts (including when and how they’re used, such as for certain headings, etc. ), brand voice and copy guidelines, photo and imagery styles, and any other information that your team needs to know to maintain consistency should all be included in your brand style guide. Finally, to make things easier, trust a domain and log package that can combine two of the most important elements of your online brand. Your logo can then be replicated throughout the company for use on other items such as uniforms, letter headings, social media, and more.
Any firm that wishes to establish brand awareness and promote confidence among its target audience must maintain brand consistency, which means that brand consistency is crucial for every organization. Without it, your target audience will not identify your brand, identify your brand with feel-good messaging and positive feelings, and lack trust that if they choose to engage with your brand, they will have a consistent experience.
The Benefits of Consistent Branding
Customer experience is always a top priority. Using constant and clear branding and messaging that conveys well across different mediums will help your customer trust your brand and give them the confidence to know they are using your service regardless of how they come across your company, be it online or in person.
Unified Employee Front
When it comes to branding, many people focus on the image; it gives out to others without checking that their internal image is on point. Marketing teams might become so focused on raising awareness and generating leads that they overlook internal clients. Employees in your company must believe in the brand. Is your company involved in any of the following?
- Ensure that brand values are incorporated into onboarding and training activities.
- Build internal brand loyalty, provide branded items for staff, and customers, for example, shirts, mugs, business cards, and laptop covers.
- Use programs like GaggleAMP to empower employees to become brand ambassadors who can promote social media. This can aid in the consistency of the companies and brand messages.
- Create collateral to show how each department contributes to the brand promise’s fulfillment.
When your internal audience understands and embraces the brand, the brand experience delivered to customers will be more consistent.
Build Trust And Loyalty.
Not just from customers but from employees too. You need to be making sure that the image you are projecting to the outside world is being carried out internally. If your employees have confidence in your company and your values, this will enforce the message you are putting out.
If your customers know that your brand is consistent, then they will know what to expect from your time and time again. The phrase “if it isn’t broke, then don’t fix it” applies here, and you can align this to many large successful brands still going today. So, for example, if someone were to say to you KFC, you wouldn’t need to know much else as the branding is consistent, and you know that you are getting chicken using the same mix of 7 herbs and spices used for many generations.
Easily Identifiable.
Brand consistency is also important for distinction. In a competitive market with many nearly identical offers, brand consistency might make the difference between winning a customer’s business and losing it to the competitors. Use brand consistency to explain what sets your firm unique from the competition repeatedly.
Consistent Words and Actions
It’s critical to have a consistent tone and personality while communicating as a brand offline or via your website, social media profiles, or other online platforms. For example, if your brand is lighthearted and welcoming on Twitter, it should be the same on Facebook and LinkedIn. Your LinkedIn messaging might be more casual or more formal, but it shouldn’t sound like it’s coming from a different company.
Consider this scenario: There’s the you who’s “at work” and the you who’s “at home or with friends.” Your personality remains the same, but your demeanor changes depending on the situation. The same may be said for your brand’s personality and communication channels of choice.
If you are considering rebranding, be wary of any change you are making; this could undermine all of the work you have put in so far. Changing too much about the logo or the message you convey could have the opposite effect and confuse customers who might not be as quick to connect the dots between your previous branding and your new one. Ask yourself exactly what you need to convey and what you can keep the same or similar to carry through to the new branding.
