When it comes to branding, consistency is key. If you do not keep your brand consistent, consumers can easily become confused. And confusion often leads to disinterest. Ultimately, without brand consistency, there is no customer loyalty, affinity, or trust.
How do you start developing a consistent brand? Here are some tips on how to keep your brand consistent.
Ø Mission Statement - If you are not sure where to start with your branding, a mission statement is a good place to start because it can help clarify what your brand should be working toward.
Ø Know your audience - You can only deliver your fantastic services if you target the right audience. Find out who your current target audience is and what they expect from you.
Word of caution here: If you think everybody is your customer, Nobody is your customer. The importance of creating one or more user personas is an oft-overlooked, but highly effective exercise to get clarity on your right audience and their wants, needs, and aspirations.
Ø Set your brand guidelines - Color palette, fonts, logo, grammar rules, purpose and values, tone of voice, frequency, USP, printed and online marketing collateral, indoor and outdoor branding, signage, apps, advertisements, videos.... the list of touchpoints where your brand identity is reflected, is practically endless. Setting very specific guidelines right at the beginning of the branding exercise leaves no room for error and ensures accuracy and consistency in branding.
Ø Use the same color palette everywhere - Choosing consistent brand colors can increase recognition by up to 80%. Developing a consistent color palette for your brand is a great way to create instant recognition.
To learn more about using color, visit our blog here: https://www.torusdxn.com/post/how-to-use-colors-to-influence-your-audience
Over the years and across cultures, different colors have come to symbolize specific values and characteristics. Depending on how relevant these color symbolisms are to your industry or campaign, the creative use of a structured color palette would help establish credibility and consistency. Going against the grain and using a totally outrageous color palette is a game for the brave (and the famous). Let's master the fundamentals before breaking the norm.
Ø Maintain visual uniformity across all channels - Your brand may have its presence on multiple online and offline channels and it goes without saying that maintaining uniformity in the core messages, the presentation style, the visual aesthetic and the overall experience is of prime importance. Also, it's easier to keep your brand consistent across channels when all your assets are accessible to everyone who needs them.
Ø Create high-quality content - Create and share high-quality content regularly. This is especially true on social media, where the barrier to entry is low. No matter how much noise is created every hour, building value-rich and solid content will always set you apart and give you much-needed leverage.
Ø Keep a consistent schedule - Create a schedule for all your marketing activities, including your campaigns, your social media posts, and any other content you create. When you post your content regularly at similar times, you build trust. It also helps keep you anchored on the important stuff - being visible to your target in a sea of competitors.
Ø Engage with your customers on all channels - To achieve consistency, you must tirelessly engage with your customers. Once you have decided to be active on certain platforms, you need to respond to customer inquiries promptly, address all doubts, provide massive value to your community and potential customers, and then and only then promote your products or services.
Ø Be authentic - Authenticity is the best way for any brand to connect with its target audience and build a strong brand that resonates with them. No matter to what extent automation or AI penetrates business functions, the strength of an authentic relationship built on trust and care can never be faked. Connect through stories, become a trusted expert in your field, and choose honesty and transparency over everything else.
Brand consistency is critical because it influences customer perceptions and allows you to make an emotional connection with your audience.
The larger your business becomes, the harder it gets, to introduce a compass in terms of customers' experience of your brand. This is why it is inevitable to have at least Version 1.0 of consistent branding right when you start. That would make it much easier to deploy brand consistency mechanisms when your business scales up.