Brand consistency ensures that your brand is easily recognizable throughout all of your marketing. When you’re consistent with your branding, it creates a cohesive brand identity and helps build trust. The more consistent your brand is, the more recognizable it is, which makes your customers feel like you are reliable and trustworthy.
HOW TO BE CONSISTENT WITH YOUR BRANDING
1. BRAND GUIDELINES:
A brand guideline gives instruction for how everyone involved in a business should communicate the brand to their audience. It’s a good idea to give a copy of your brand guidelines to anyone involved in your marketing to ensure everyone always has access to your current guidelines. Here are the elements that should be included in your brand guidelines:
TONE AND VOICE:
Your brand’s tone and voice is what your brand’s personality would be if it were a person. It’s how you communicate, written and spoken, with your customers and is an expression of your company’s values. How do you want to be perceived by your audience? Is it fun and approachable or serious and dependable? Whenever you speak for your brand, you need to use a consistent tone of voice.
MESSAGING:
The words you use and how you use them will say a lot about your brand and what it represents. Punctuation and copy guidelines help to maintain a consistent message. They can have details like whether you use all caps in headings or whether or not your brand is casual enough to use slang words. Whatever you choose, make sure it’s laid out clearly for everyone in your company.
COLOUR PALETTE:
Choose a colour palette that represents the feeling and emotion you want your brand to give your audience. Select one or two dominant colours and two or three complementary colours so that your brand’s visual assets are consistent but not lacking in variation. Consistent colours help to strengthen brand recognition. Anytime you create something for your brand’s marketing, try to stick as closely as possible to your colour palette.
LOGOS:
Once you have a logo set designed, lay out rules for how the logos should be displayed. Make sure to include guidelines for colour variations, layout formatting, spacing and positioning. An example of a logo guideline is if your logo is placed on a dark image, which logo and colour variation should be used?
IMAGERY:
Think about what type of imagery is appropriate for your brand. Clear guidelines should be set for the type of stock, proprietary photography and graphics to use for your brand. Some brands will choose to use bright, fresh and modern images, while other businesses might do better with a moody, dark image. Make sure whatever images you use, that they represent your target audience so potential customers can identify with your brand.
FONTS:
Brands typically have a primary and secondary font that are used for titles, paragraph text and captions. Using a limited rotation of fonts will help increase your brand recognition. Stick to your brand fonts when any visual elements are created for your business.
2. ORGANIZED MARKETING ASSETS:
If there are multiple people involved in your marketing, organize your marketing assets in one place so that all team members can view or access them easily. It streamlines the design process and makes collaboration simple.
3. ALIGN YOUR ACTIONS WITH YOUR BRAND:
Your actions need to align with the brand you create. Whether you’re posting on social media, have a company guarantee or a slogan, keep it at the front of your audience’s minds. Post regularly and stand by what you say and what your brand represents. Every action, message and post should be done with your brand in mind.
4. INTERACT REGULARLY:
Your potential customers may not always stumble upon your company; you have to make your presence known. Make sure you are actively interacting with your target audience so you have a better opportunity to reach potential customers. Whether that is on social media or within your community, having multiple ways of interaction will give you a better opportunity to reach people. When you’re interacting for your brand, don’t forget about your brand’s tone of voice.