Your brand is the face of your company, but no one likes a two faced person, therefore having a brand with multiple messages and branding can cause distrust, confusion, and ultimately, hurt your business. Brand consistency is the key to correcting this issue.
But where do you start? Follow our “triple D” process, and your brand will go from forgettable and dull to dazzling and memorable.
1. Discover What You Already Know
First, take the ten seconds test. Within ten seconds, think about a brand, any brand. Then, draw the brand’s logo from memory. When your ten seconds are up, check your results!
Compare how accurate the drawing is to the actual logo. You may be surprised how “unknowingly” well you know the brand, which should lead you to the following question about your drawing: what did you emphasize? Was it the color, the text, or simply the illustration? This will help you pinpoint exactly what stands out to you in other logos.
Use this knowledge to your advantage before creating or redesigning your company’s logo. If there are certain colors you feel more strongly about, incorporate that. If there’s fonts you find more interesting and memorable, utilize that. But if you don’t know that much about design, be sure to avoid making the worst logo ever on accident.
2. Deliver Recognition
Well-known brands do not have secrets to their success. In contrast, these businesses make sure there are no secrets. But how do they do it? We all know that the bigger the company, the harder it seems to be to attract their customers to your business. This is because they have built strong recognition among customers, making it more difficult to entice customers with something that is less known.
Building brand consistency helps you gain your customers trust. But this goes beyond your logo and marketing material. Building a strong presence on social media, and publishing blog posts and thought leadership consistently will increase your recognition as a reliable source. When the brain recognizes, it remembers. When the brain remembers, it knows.
3. Demolish Confusion
The key to building customer loyalty is consistency of experience. This means giving customers a unified experience, no matter where they interact with your brand. Some of the most important ways to do this include creating consistent experiences across:
- Website(s)
- Social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.)
- Publishing materials (Blog posts, infographics, guest blogging, ebooks, etc.)
- Brand stationery (thank you cards, brochures, pens, business cards, etc.)
- Advertising (PPC display ads, offline ads, etc.)
You want to make sure your customer can explore the same experience in every aspect. If they are overwhelmed with different information and design, they will no longer trust nor recognize the brand. In order to avoid confusion, review the following steps:
- First, no matter how big or small your company is, create a business identity.
- Then, research and learn about your buyer’s history. By doing so, this will help gain an idea of customer expectation.
- Last but not least, work to build brand loyalty.
While brand consistency presents a challenge, it is well worth it. Using this process will help you not only think deliberately about your brand, but implement consistency across every platform. Unifying your brand image will ultimately prove extremely valuable to your business.