What is Brand Consistency?
Brand consistency is the practice of maintaining a unified look and feel across all of your company’s touchpoints. It helps create a strong, recognisable brand identity and develop trust with customers.
By creating a consistent brand image, companies can make themselves more easily identifiable to their target market. Brand consistency also helps ensure that customers are receiving the same message no matter which platform they’re using.
This is especially important for companies that operate across multiple channels or have a large digital presence, as it ensures that customers know what to expect from your brand when engaging with you.
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Why Brand Consistency Matters
Consistency is the key to successful branding, but it goes far beyond the product itself.
Brand consistency helps build customer trust. When customers see that your brand looks the same across all touchpoints, they know what to expect and that you are reliable and trustworthy.
They also show customers that your brand is professional and credible – important qualities in today’s competitive marketplace
There are a lot of benefits brand consistency can offer, including:
Increased Brand Awareness
The first key benefit of brand consistency is increased brand awareness. When customers see that your brand looks the same across all platforms, they’ll be more likely to immediately remember and recognise it in the future.
Brand Consistency Builds Trust (and Revenue)
As mentioned earlier, brand consistency helps to build trust with customers. Considering that customers are more likely to purchase from a brand they know, like, and trust, this is a factor that cannot be overlooked.
In fact, 81% of consumers said that they need to trust the brand in order to buy from them.
It also communicates that you have a strong understanding of your target market and can provide them with the best possible experience, which increases loyalty over time.
Build Up Brand Recognition
It’s no secret that consistent brands are able to build up brand recognition faster.
Customers are more likely to quickly recognise and remember your brand if it looks the same across all platforms, making them more likely to come back for future purchases.
It also makes it easier for customers to share positive experiences with their friends, family, and peers – which in turn can help you to reach a larger audience.
Considering that a study recently found that 71% of consumers are more likely to buy a product from a brand they recognise, we can’t ignore the importance of brand recognition.
Brand Consistency Shapes Customer Perception
Controlling your brand’s consistency allows you to shape how people perceive your brand.
Customer perception is all about how people think and feel about your brand. This includes everything from their thoughts on your product quality to how reliable you are as a company.
Brand consistency has the ability to make consumers feel connected to your brand, ensuring that they see you in the same positive light, regardless of which platform they’re engaging with.
Makes You Memorable
Another key benefit of brand consistency is that it makes your company more memorable.
When customers see the same message and visuals across all channels, they’re more likely to remember it. The more memorable your brand is, the higher the chance of them actually engaging with and making a purchase from you.
12 Tips to Build Brand Consistency
Now you know the benefits of brand consistency, it’s time to look at how you can begin creating consistency.
Here are our 12 essential top tips for building brand consistency that can be used across businesses of any size:
1) Create a Mission Statement
The first step of every brand should be establishing a mission statement. This statement is an essential part of your brand and should be used to guide all your decisions.
Ensure your mission statement is easy to read, memorable and contains a “big picture” view of what makes your company unique.
Companies implementing an SEO strategy must also make sure that their goals align with the business’s mission statement to ensure brand consistency.
2) Create Easily Accessible Brand Guidelines
Brand guidelines help you to remain consistent and ensure that your brand has a clear identity and voice.
Ensure these guidelines are easily accessible by all staff members, so everyone is on the same page when it comes to brand communication.
One key aspect of brand guidelines that remains one of the most important is the tone of voice you use.
Consistently using the same style of writing and tone of voice across your branding can help build brand trust, recognition and awareness, allowing users to perceive your brand to be reliable and understandable.
Setting out brand guidelines can help maintain accuracy and consistency across your brand, ensuring that everything from your website copy to social media posts is consistent.
3) Use the Same Colour Palette
Although looks aren’t everything, ensuring all your branding and visuals are using the same colour palette is key to successful brand consistency as it lets people easily recognise and remember your brand, even when they’re not actively engaging with it.
Using the same colour palette across all platforms will help to create visual consistency, boosting brand recognition by up to 80%!
Make sure you choose a colour palette that complements your mission statement and brand guidelines – this will also help to create an emotional connection with customers.
4) Be Consistent with Your Font Choices
Using the same font style and size across all platforms will create visual continuity, allowing people to quickly recognise your brand.
Your typography choices should consist of primary and secondary typefaces that complement each other, creating a unique yet consistent look and feel.
Your primary font should be used for all communication, such as marketing material, website copy, social media posts and more. Your secondary font can then be used for smaller text on images or infographics.
Make sure you use a combination of fonts that are easy to read and visually appealing. This will help customers quickly identify your brand, increasing the chances of them engaging with and remembering it.
Be sure that these fonts are used consistently across all channels, from your website to printed materials, such as business cards and flyers. This will ensure that the brand experience is unified no matter what platform customers are engaging with.
5) Put Your Logo on All Your Assets
It only takes 10 seconds for a consumer to form an opinion on your logo, which is why it’s essential that it’s placed and used in the correct way.
After crafting a logo that conveys your brand values, it should be used on all communication channels, from your website and social media platforms to print materials such as business cards and flyers.
Ensuring that each asset is branded with your logo will create a memorable experience for customers, regardless of how they come into contact with your brand.
It’s also important to consider how your logo is used across all channels – for example, on a website it may be displayed in the header or footer so that users can quickly identify what company they are visiting, while on social media it could be included in your profile and post images.
6) Be Picky in the Topics You Cover in Your Content
It’s important to stay consistent with the topics your brand covers and the content you post on social media, blogs and other publications.
Sticking to an industry or niche will create a perception amongst customers that your brand is focused, knowledgeable and trustworthy in its chosen field.
Straying away from this can create confusion amongst consumers and dilute your brand message by making it appear vague or unfocused.
For example, a branding, design and SEO studio, like Inc Studio, shouldn’t begin posting about lawnmowers and DIY projects – unless there’s a way to relate to their services.
7) Only Publish Your Best Content
Following on from the last point, make sure you’re only publishing high-quality content as this forms part of brand consistency.
Publishing content that’s relevant, well-researched and accurate, as well as being engaging and visually appealing, will only help to strengthen your brand’s reputation.
Creating quality content that’s clear, concise and relevant to your brand values will allow customers to quickly understand why they should choose you over a competitor.
8) Run Regular Audits
Speaking of your competitors, it’s important to keep track of who they are and what they’re doing.
Periodically running brand consistency audits will give you an insight into how customers perceive your brand compared to others, as well as helping you identify any areas that need improving.
While it can be a time-consuming task, conducting a regular audit of your competitor’s content is an effective way to measure your brand’s consistency and keep track of customer expectations. However, you can cut down the work hours by hiring an SEO studio to complete the audit for you.
Ultimately, on a SERP only the best content ranks on the first page, meaning that it’s just as important for major businesses as it is for small, independent businesses.
9) Maintain a Consistent Schedule
One efficient way of building trust in your brand is by maintaining a consistent upload schedule of your content.
By publishing content regularly, people will begin to recognise your brand’s presence and remember when they can expect new posts. This increases the chances of them engaging with and remembering your brand, which is why having a consistent posting schedule is vital.
It’s also important to consider the content you’re creating for each channel.
For example, it’s more beneficial for businesses to post longer and more detailed blog posts on their websites rather than short updates on social media as this will help to provide customers with useful information that they can read in-depth.
10) Ensure Your Brand is Consistent Across All Channels
Similar to maintaining a consistent tone of voice, all channels should reflect the same brand values and personality – regardless if it’s onsite or offsite.
In the age of social media, it’s vitally important to ensure customers are receiving the same brand message and experience across all channels.
By doing this, you can ensure your brand remains consistent and recognisable to customers, which will help to build trust in your business.
11) Encourage a Strong Internal Effort
Brand consistency is a company-wide effort, meaning that you should encourage your team to learn the brand mission and company values. By doing this, you can ensure that everyone is on the same page with your brand’s message and understands why it’s so essential.
Everyone from the marketing and design teams, to customer service agents and even top-level executives should have access to the right tools and resources to help them use and enforce brand consistency across all channels.
This will ensure all departments are headed in the same direction, promoting a consistent message that customers can recognise and trust.
12) Create a Strong Online and Offline Presence
Our last tip is that you create an offline presence that’s as strong, if not stronger, than your online presence.
By running offline marketing campaigns such as radio ads, billboards and print media, you can ensure that your message reaches more customers and reinforces why they should choose your brand over competitors – just make sure the messaging and tone remain consistent across all platforms!
How Does Rebranding Affect Brand Consistency?
Rebranding can be a difficult and lengthy process, however, it often has the purpose of creating or strengthening brand consistency. The key is to ensure your rebranding efforts stay true to the company’s core values and beliefs.
For example, if a business decides to update their logo, they should keep in mind that any changes should be subtle and reflective of their brand.
This will help the company maintain a consistent look throughout all channels, whilst also giving customers something new to remember and engage with.
Overall, rebranding can have a positive effect on brand consistency if done correctly, as it ensures that customers are given an updated version of the same message they have come to know and trust.
How Can Inc Studio Level Up Your Brand?
You’ve reached the end of our post on why brand consistency is important. Thank you!
Now it’s time to level up your brand and make sure it stands out from the competition. That’s why at Inc Studio, we offer tailored branding solutions to help you create a professional, consistent message that customers can recognise and trust.
Contact us today and tell us about your business, our team will be in touch shortly.
Our team of experienced designers and strategists can assist you in creating a powerful brand identity that’s both visually stunning and consistent across all channels. From designing engaging website content to implementing an effective SEO strategy, we will help you craft a memorable experience for your customers that they won’t forget.
We look forward to hearing from you!