With the fast-paced nature of marketing and new brand ideas popping up all the time, it is hard not to get caught up with creating new ways of marketing your brand.
However, it is vitally important that you are consistent with the ways in which you promote your brand with its styles, designs, values and messaging.
Brands can have multiple effects; they can attract customers with their brand personalities as well as keep customers loyal to the business.
The businesses that become bored with their brands too quickly and constantly want to create original ideas for keeping up with current trends, usually jeopardize their brand.
Keeping up with current trends is not a bad thing, it can ensure that your brand does not get outdated. However, some companies may sacrifice other important elements of the brand if it is changed too much.
Keeping the brand consistent is especially important, if your brand is constantly changing over different platforms then it can have negative effects.
The Benefits of a Consistent Brand
The Visuals of a Brand Can Be Easily Recognized
The biggest and most popular businesses out there have well recognizable visuals, such as Coca-Cola, Google, eBay and so on.
When we see these logos, we intuitively know who they are and what they do, and we feel like we can trust them.
They not only have consistent logos but also their color schemes, fonts and other visuals. These are all maintained over all areas of their marketing.
If a business changes their color schemes across different channels, then it could create confusion.
It could also lead to potential customers feeling as if they cannot trust the business as it looks different to how they remember, and they may think that the company is not the real thing.
Repetition Makes Customers More Likely to Choose You
Sometimes it takes some time for customers to notice a brand and decide to purchase a product or use services.
Therefore, if the brand is consistent and potential customers see the brand in lots of different areas in its recognizable state, it will increase the credibility of the business.
It Maintains Expectations
If a potential customer clicks on an advert with branding that portrays a business that is classy and sophisticated but is directed to a page which is messy and unorganized then it will confuse the customer.
They may even think that they have been directed to the wrong page and not go ahead with purchases that they may have if they were faced with a page which related closely with the advertisement.
It Creates Trust
Producing content and branding that is consistent with the businesses values and goals creates trust. Customers are reassured that the brand will not drastically change and keeps them loyal to the business.
How to Ensure That You Maintain Brand Consistency
Take a Course in Marketing
Brand marketing requires a great deal of different components, having experience from a marketing course is hugely beneficial.
Not only will it allow you to make better branding decisions and further educate you on brand consistency, it can help you in other areas of marketing.
It can help you get ahead of competitors as well as learn about how to budget for business marketing.
Marketing is a key component of business and many individuals in the industry also have experience in business. Becoming experienced in business with a business course can allow you to progress to a marketing manager or executive.
Create a Set of Rules
To ensure brand consistency is maintained, make sure that you write down the rules for your brand so that when creating content for multiple channels you always maintain the key similarities.
Many companies make brand charters which is the strategy that sets the goals of the brand long term.
These similarities may be that the text is always the same font or that you keep a consistent personality to your brand.
With this in place, you can never stray too far away from the key factors that make your brand recognizable.
Conduct Regular Reviews
To ensure that branding never strays too far from the set standards, it would be beneficial to conduct reviews of how the brand has progressed and shown across multiple channels.
Keeping tabs on the development will also ensure that there are not any drastic changes. Furthermore, reviews may allow you to refresh your memory about what the brand stands for, its values and the overall goals of the business.
Ensure That All Departments Are Involved
It is especially important that all departments are aware of the marketing goals of the brand. If organizational silos occur it could mean that some areas send out information regarding the business in a different light.
For example, those involved with social media may post material that goes against what the brand stands for. This is especially problematic with social media sites since word spreads fast and mistakes cannot be put right if people have already seen the posts.
Plan Topics to Keep on Track
If your brand represents certain values, then planning what content will be produced in advance will ensure that the business does not go off track.
Planning content allows multiple departments to come together and have a say on what will fit with the brand. It will also ensure that content is not produced last minute that could either be completely irrelevant, resulting in customer confusion, or be the opposite of the brands values.
Examples of Inconsistent Branding
An example of when a brand has completely gone off track and confused customers is when Colgate produced frozen meals.
Colgate was already well known for producing toothpaste at this point, so branching out to produce food with their same logo and name was a disaster.
These two ideas are very conflicting and the idea of cleaning your teeth and eating just do not go well together.
Another branding mistake was when Coca-Cola rebranded their Coke as ‘New Coke’ after they were met by competitors ‘Pepsi’. This confused consumers and their reaction was negative. To amend their mistakes, they created ‘Coca-Cola Classic’.
Conclusion
We have seen what benefits there are of brand consistency, how to keep it consistent and the examples of when inconsistency has led to business disasters. In conclusion, brand consistency is especially important.
Have you seen other forms of consistent branding? Please let me know what and where and we'll start another blog post with more examples! Of course, if you have any questions - use the form below to ask.
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