A good first impression counts for something – and especially so in the world of branding. Brands that offer a unified front across all their different touchpoints – its website, social media platforms, online advertisements, point-of-purchase within stores – deliver a more positive overall experience for consumers. Consistent branding can help you build trust among consumers, which will ultimately lead to increased sales. According to Lucidpress, consistency in branding has found to improve sales revenue by 33%.
Consumers want to see brands behaving in predictable ways. It means building cohesiveness in your brand personality, brand voice and visual branding. It’s also the ability of a brand to consistently deliver on its promise, which is an important part of any business strategy. In this article, we explain the importance of consistency in branding and how to achieve this.
Why is brand consistency important?
Brand consistency is important because it creates a consistent message that consumers can rely on. Consumers expect brands to behave consistently, and they like knowing what to expect from a product or service. Inconsistent branding is one of the pitfalls of bad branding. A brand that changes too much risks losing credibility among consumers; it can confuse, irritate and put off consumers from wanting to interact further with your brand. A brand needs to make a great impression from the get-go, so as to successfully nurture a lead along the next stages of the buyer journey, from consideration and finally to purchase.
Brands should always strive to maintain a consistent voice, look and feel throughout their website, email campaigns, advertising, and everything else they do. This consistency helps keep customers coming back for more. It helps to build brand awareness – which leads to brand recognition, and ultimately paves the way for brand loyalty and advocacy.
How can you ensure brand consistency?
1. Define your core values and determine your target audience
Your mission, vision and core values represent the foundation of your brand. They define how you want to be perceived by others. When creating a brand identity, it’s crucial to establish a clear message that represents your brand personality. Once this is established, make sure that every piece of communication reflects this message.
Also, create a brand that resonates with consumers by conducting market research – the process of understanding who your target audiences are and what they want. This can inform the rest of the branding and marketing process and can ensure you’re consistently producing collateral that targets this group of consumers.
2. Set brand guidelines
Brand guidelines are essentially rules that govern how brands should behave and is developed through an extensive process called brand strategy. These rules outline everything from the colours that should be used to the typeface that should be used. Brand guidelines are especially important for small businesses since they can set a standard for how others perceive your brand. Without clear brand guidelines, these businesses run the risk of confusing consumers and losing customers. By establishing brand guidelines, you ensure that everyone involved in your business knows what your brand represents and how it wants to interact with others.
3. Define your brand personality and voice
Branding is the process of creating a distinct identity for your company, and brand personality is a big part of this. Is your brand exciting? Or rugged? Or sophisticated? You can mould your brand’s identity by studying what your target audiences want. If you sell sports energy drinks, for example, your target consumers seek adrenaline-pumping adventures, and so an exciting brand personality might suit your brand best. This also then helps you define your brand voice. To bring out the characteristic of excitement strongly, create a persona of spontaneity, thrill and delight with the vocabulary you use and the way you structure your sentences.
4. Develop a consistent visual identity
Your visual identity represents your brand visually. This includes everything from logos to colors to fonts. You need to make sure they align with your brand promise, core values and brand personality. This is the face of your brand – ensure you’re strongly invested in keeping it well put together and unified. You can achieve this with visual branding, which is the implementation of visual elements, such as your colour palette, logo, fonts, and photography.
Create a consistent brand with BDSA
BDSA is a brand consultancy and social media marketing agency in Singapore that helps you develop a brand strategy. We review your current branding to understand which components might be inconsistent and that leave target audiences with a negative impression. We seek to clean up your brand image and increase your business’ bottom line. Learn how you can offset branding costs with Enterprise Singapore’s Enterprise Development Grant with BDSA. Wish to find out more? Speak to us today.
