Think about your favorite brands like Coca-Cola or Walmart or Old Spice. What makes these brands stand out to you? You may think it’s the bold colors they use or the happy faces smiling at you through their ad campaigns. But, one of the most important aspects of digital marketing is brand consistency. Does your brand flow smoothly from platform to platform? Can your audience point out your content and graphics in a lineup of other unlabeled brands?
Check out why the consistency of branding your small business is important and how to keep it all together.
What Is Brand Consistency and Why Does My Business Need It?
All business owners and marketers need to understand the importance of branding in marketing—that is, brand consistency.
Many people think branding is just creating a cool logo. But slow down, partner! Branding and keeping that brand consistent requires much more thought and effort. It’s everything that represents your company throughout various media platforms. Often, branding is driven by your business’s “why” and your personality—or the personality you want your business to have.
Here are some aspects that represent your branding and need to be consistent across the board:
- Your company’s logo
- Any images you use for blog posts and onsite pages
- Images and videos you share on social media
- The voice and style of your writing on social media, in blog posts, on onsite pages, in email blasts, and more!
- The emotions you want your audience to feel while consuming your content
- The fonts you use in graphics and on your website
- Whether or not your audience sees employee involvement in your social media (like staff spotlights or images of employees working)
- Anything else that represents your company—whenever someone interacts with your company, what do they think, see, and feel?
Here’s what will happen if your branding is all jacked up and random
When it comes to brand consistency, you want to avoid branding mistakes. For instance, Gap decided to chase recent design trends and ended up displeasing their fans when they rebranded their logo in 2010. People were misled by the altered design, causing the company to un-rebrand and bring back the classic navy blue square.
Branding inconsistency occurs simply when your branding doesn’t match across platforms. Perhaps, your Facebook and Twitter accounts have two different profile pages. Or maybe, you can clearly tell that two different people wrote your “About Us” page and your latest blog entry. Your branding needs to look and feel consistent, no matter where a user is consuming your stuff. Or else…
When your business lacks brand consistency, it can appear unprofessional and unorganized. Sometimes, you can lose an audience’s interest—and sometimes their trust. Your target audience won’t know your brand’s core identity. You may come off as fake and disjointed. You want your branding to seem genuine, so stay true to who you want your company to be. Your branding should reflect your mission and passion.
Keep Brand Consistency across Channels
When users click from various pages on your website to your social media profiles, the transition should be seamless. They should know they’re viewing content from the same company.
Coordinate your visual assets
Use consistent graphics and images everywhere your company is represented. On all your owned media, (including your website, social media profiles, business directories, digital ads, YouTube videos, print marketing, and more), your consumers should see the same images, or a similar style of graphics. Keep consistent with the same color tones and subjects of images.
A great way to keep your team on track with consistent branding is to create a brand style guide for your company. It’ll act as a rule book for your company’s branding information. Include more than just the logo. Describe the preferred colors and fonts, the voice of your content, the types of images you use, etc.
Keep your message cohesive
A crucial part of brand consistency that a lot of people overlook is the tone and style of their writing. But, as we say here at Post Launch, content is king. What you write is directly consumed by your audience, so you must present them with similar-sounding content week after week.
Take some time to determine your brand’s voice and personality within writing. Woot, an online store featuring really great deals, has product descriptions to die for. They’re consistently cheeky and sarcastic. If you don’t buy their stuff, the least you can do is read some of the descriptions and have a little chuckle.
Think of these questions when developing your company’s voice in writing: How do you want your content to sound? What are your core values? What type of people do you want interacting with your content?
Reflect all this in social media engagement
Last, but certainly not least (I’m glad you’re still here ‘cause this is all important!), is social media engagement. Think about your branding when you engage with people on social media. How would your brand respond to trolls, if at all? How would they thank someone for a follow, or respond to a question? What content would your brand retweet, share, or comment on?
Why Must Post Launch Keep Giving Me Things to Fix on My Website?
I know, I know. We wrote another long blog about all the things you need to fix in order to improve your company’s web presence and overall credibility. But, no worries, pal. It’s our job. Visit our digital marketing services page to check out all the things we can do for your business—so you don’t have to.
