Managing all the ongoing elements of a brand usually takes quite a bit of time and works best when you partner with a brand management agency. Having the right branding partner that develops brands and your ongoing marketing efforts helps to keep things consistent and works to protect your brand and bring it value.
What is Brand Consistency?
You’ve seen brand inconsistency many times, we’ve seen a company with more than 20 logo variations, and probably more than several dozen presentation decks. It seemed like every person in that company created their brand for the company.
Don’t let this happen to your company and brand. Brand consistency starts with 1 logo, one messaging platform/framework and one brand look and feel that composes your brand that your market, targets and customers see.
Why is Brand Consistency Important?
The last thing you want is to have brand confusion in the marketplace. You want to make sure your brand is unified, clear, concise and straightforward. As stated above, you’ll have 1 brand logo, colour palate and one brand messaging platform where everyone in your organization communicates the same message about what you are and how it does it consistently.
Elements of Brand Consistency?
Typically, a couple of the first elements that would be the foundation for your brand consistency would be a messaging platform that spells out your messaging framework for your brand. Next, you would have your brand development agency put together a brand architecture presentation that pulls together the creative and content elements that form your brand, by having and following these foundational elements will help keep your brand consistent.
Benefits of Brand Consistency?
1. Name Recognition
A key benefit of having brand consistency is that your brand name will connect with your target prospects and customers can and will keep your brand at the top of their minds which will lead to more sales and increased revenue and profits.
2. Brand Recognition
With a consistent brand, your target prospects and customers see and recognize your brand, logo, messaging, tagline, packaging, social media, etc. They’ll recognize your brand and make purchasing decisions based on familiarity.
3. Known Entity
With name and brand recognition and consistency, your target market, customers and prospects alike will know your name, brand, look and feel and you will have become a known entity.
4. Customer Loyalty
Because of your hard work and consistency, you are now a known entity, customers will begin to show their loyalty and reward you and your brand with the power of the purse and continue to buy your products and services.
How Consistent Branding Can Help Your Company?
1. Lower cost of Customer Acquisition
Having a brand that is consistent and recognizable helps to get repeat customer sales, and speeds up your time to sell because of your known brand and thus, these lower your customer acquisition cost.
2. Repeat and Increase Sales
When people know and feel comfortable with your brand it helps to bring in current/repeat customer sales, you should be able to attribute x % of your sales to current and repeat customers. Also, because of these repeat sales, and not having to acquire these as new customers, it should increase your overall sales.
3. Recruiting Benefit
Another big benefit of brand consistency is your appeal to potential employees. Branding is hugely beneficial for your HR department and building your brand, relationships and engaging with potential candidates you want to come to work with you.
4. Increased Brand Value
Brands have value and because you have worked hard to make your brand consistent, your brand will have increased in your brand value. Your investment in your branding and marketing helps increase your brand value and that turns into real tangible results.
5. Increased Corporate Value
With an increased brand value, that is a very valuable part of your overall corporate valuation. One of the factors that valuation experts look at is your brand value, and since you’ve invested to build and grow your brand, that investment shows in the increase in your overall corporate valuation.
Brand consistency in visualizations?
One of the foundational elements of a consistent brand is having a brand architecture document or brand guidelines that your marketing and sales team utilize to keep your brand and sales and marketing materials consistent.
So make sure you have your brand architecture or guidelines that your team follows to keep your brand nice and consistent. Your brand guidelines will cover things like your logo usage, the colour palate that represents your brand and how and how to use them. It also includes information like how to use your brand on marketing materials, signage, merchandise, etc.
Conclusion
Make sure your brand is consistent and that it accurately represents your brand in the marketplace. These efforts typically take a lot of effort and may require getting a brand management agency’s management assistance to keep it consistent and maintain its value.
Many people may think they can manage these efforts in-house, but few companies can do that effectively. Having a leading brand management firm like Brand Iron helps you refine and effectively manage your brand to ensure you maintain your brand value.
