Brand consistency oversees making your products and services recognizable and personal for your audience. It adds a personal note to your company and makes consumers think of you when they see a font, color or ad background. Consistency sounds the Holy Grail of 21st century advertising and it is. However, so many brands fail to build or maintain in properly and have lower conversion rates than they should.
By far, the universal example of brand consistency success is Marvel. Everyone knows Marvel’s logo, the movies, the characters, the merchandise and all the other branded products. That’s brand consistency. However, even if you succeeded to develop a brand consistency strategy, you must maintain it. These are 5 essential ways to too keep your brand consistent and updated.
Related: How to create website that will strengthen your brand
5 Marketing Tasks to Have Up-to-Date Brand Consistency
1. Start from the Inside
Brand consistency involves your project management, marketing and branding team. When you want to ensure that your brand is consistent, start by evaluating your corporate communication. If you don’t have an updated one already, find a printable personal letterhead for each member of the above teams. Check out email signatures, internal documents and headers and footers of press releases.
Make sure that everyone adheres to the purpose of your brand communication, tone of voice and rhythm of communication with the customers. Once your team agrees with your core values, developing consistent messages will come easier. You can even assign a brand manager who monitors the teams that handle marketing and branding.
2. Avoid Clichés
Some might think that consistency is boring, since it has limitations. Instead, they recommend you focus on brand visibility and awareness. However, brand consistency leads to the above two. Consistency is not about saying the same things, but how you say them so that clients will recognize your answer. Consistency doesn’t involve limitations, but it emphasized your USP (unique selling proposition).
You won’t be resilient to market changes. By being consistent, you adjust your approach towards that change. Also, some marketing amateurs think that what works for other brands, should work for you. These are the ones that follow trends, instead of predicting them. Your audience may not engage certain initiatives such as QR-code based promotions. However, it might be extremely engaging in virtual reality campaigns. Thoroughly knowing your audience will keep you away from the influence of clichés.
3. Integrate Channels
Find the channels that your audience is most active on and use them. Once you’ve decided on your communication channels, you should develop consistent layouts for each channel. Develop the layout considering all relevant details: position of your tagline and logo in pictures, the message you want to send, fonts and posting hours. Use the layout throughout all your postings and inside your content. This way, audience will recognize your content without even seeing your brand’s name.
Make sure you find and include all channels into your campaigns: websites, social media, in-store locations. Each of them should adjust to the same message and to the specific audience category. Also, integrate your brand into every message you send. This way, your audience will also get a feel of your vision and mission. By integrating more channels, you also remain user friendly, thanks to the slight adjustments for each of them. You should include as many social media platforms and channels as possible with each campaign. This will show your audience that you are open to communication. However, make sure that you adjust the message, instead of posting the same text on each platform and risk being boring.
4. Repurpose and Adjust
If you had a marketing campaign with successful results, you can repurpose it for future marketing initiatives. You audience engages in relevant and high-quality content. So, if they enjoyed specific content, they might react the same to a campaign that sends a similar message.
However, make sure that you repurposed messages includes a fresh perspective, instead of sounding like a broken record. You can promote the subject of a blog post or a picture, without using the same tools all the time. Let’s say that your audience engages in online shopping solutions. You can develop a few blog posts with different perspectives on this matter.
5. Audit Your Brand
There are ways to measure your brand consistency. Study your ROI (return of investment) and find the details which are common to most campaigns. These show the power of your brand. The more consistent your brand is, the more visible it will be. Carefully monitor your results and see if they match the target of campaigns.
Also, brand management involves updated results. Don’t be afraid to audit your brand internally and externally, at least once a year. See if your message is sent through all channels and if your customer service follows the communication guidelines. Also, find out if you have specific occasions in which your brand is more visible and find the cause.
Summing Up
Remember that brand consistency revolves around guidelines. See if your branding guidelines provide information on visual branding (logo, font, position in an image), tone of voice, images, preferred colors, layout and language. You guide need to cover all the aspects that an agency which doesn’t know you needs. The brand manager can check if the guidelines are followed and if they include every aspect of your brand.
So, you developed consistency and plan to keep it as a priority. Now, it’s time to get creative. You can make your audience laugh, think about certain subjects or just make them smile with social media posting. You can even make focus groups and see unique perspectives on your brand. When asking customers, they might provide different answers. However, you will know how they define your brand and which areas you still need to work on. Then, it’s time to develop you campaigns and enjoy their results!
