Building your brand takes work but you can boost your brand’s effectiveness by being consistent with your messaging. Regardless of the method you use to build your brand – from wording to design – you want to create standards for all areas of your message.
Large companies do this very well. They typically have style and usage guidelines to ensure that all of their messaging and brand asset use is consistent and on-point with their guidelines. While they may have an entire department to achieve this goal, even small businesses can use the same model. Having a set of brand guidelines that align with your vision and mission will help you stay on track over time.
How to Create Recognizeable Brand Consistency
One great example of a company that has maintained consistency is the company Tiffany & Co. Even without seeing their logo, you would likely recognize them just from their colors, fonts, icons, and taglines. When you’re able to maintain consistency, you’ll increase brand recognition and give your company a boost against the competition.
1. Develop Logo and Design Elements
How exactly do you achieve this goal? Start by developing a business brand board that features your logo variations, font faces and size uses, colors and any other elements used regularly in your marketing material.
You can also develop branded slide deck themes, and document templates so all of your marketing materials are consistent. There’s nothing worse than seeing a logo that’s been stretched out of shape so be sure to develop high-quality designs including vectors for each use case.
2. Select Appropriate Topics for Your Content Calendar
If your company produces blogs, videos or webinars, the topics should align with your brand’s mission and goals. Only make content that is consistent with your brand. For example, if you run a gardening company, it wouldn’t make much sense to produce videos on fashion. That is an extreme example, but you get the idea. Curate content around key developments in your industry that will affect your customers.
3. Bring Offline Events into Online Branding
If your company does offline work such as community events or industry trade shows, or receives awards then make sure to share this with your online audience. Any area where you’ve received recognition should be included in your brand-building efforts. Share these achievements through blog posts, social media posts and always add your logo or some branding element (like fonts or colors) to anything that you share.
4. Keep Tone and Personality Consistent
Chances are that your company is going to be sharing information in a number of ways. From different social media sites to your own company website, your tone should have the same flavor. For example, think about how you act personally and professionally. Of course, you’re going to display yourself differently in a work setting but you’re still the same person.
The same concept applies for your brand personality, make sure everything from your social posts to your website lead magnets all have the same tone and personality.
5. Participate in Platforms and Channels that Align with Your Brand Identity
There are some marketing trends and platforms that every company has a presence on such as Facebook. However, before putting your company on a new platform or following a new trend evaluate whether or not it makes sense for your business. Ask yourself whether your current or target customers actually use these platforms and if it aligns with your business’s personality.
6. Align with the Right Influencers
Influencer marketing is a growing area but it’s also one that allows for many missteps. If you decide to work with an influencer, ask yourself if that person will appeal to your target audience. Will that person use your brand appropriately? Additionally, is the influencer legitimate? Asking yourself these questions allows you to avoid costly mistakes.
7. Share Your Brand with Employees
Be sure to give your employees or design contractors access to all your brand assets in a shared drive so every piece of content that goes out into the world is using the same design elements and message. If you tend to hire out for design projects it is helpful to build a relationship with a single person so that your logo is always used correctly – or If possible, have one member of your team do all the design work that requires branding elements.
Conclusion
It’s easy to make mistakes when developing your brand identity but these steps will allow you to create good communication and identity around your brand. These guidelines can help your business stay consistent across all your platforms. Remember to start with your brand board mentioned in step # 1 and then add to it. Be sure to create an ICA, ideal customer avatar to help pinpoint what your brand personality is. This will help to determine what topics you should cover, what platforms and channels to align with, and what influencers are right for your audience.
Happy branding!
