Your Small Business Roadmap to Consistent Branding
When you start your small business, it’s important to craft a brand that is memorable. Keeping your brand messaging, story and brand visuals consistent helps potential clients to recognize and remember your business. Before we dive deeper into the topic of how you can establish a consistent branding, let’s get clear on what brand consistency actually is:
What is brand consistency?
Brand consistency means that a brand is presented in the same way across different media channels and marketing touchpoints. It means that the same visuals, messaging, story and tone of voice is maintained on a daily basis, ensuring the same brand experience for everyone who interacts with this brand.
Why is brand consistency important?
Brand consistency is crucial for establishing a strong and memorable brand presence, building trust with customers, and differentiating your business from its competitors. When a brand is consistent, it creates a sense of familiarity and reliability, allowing customers to recognize and connect with the brand more easily.
Which elements do I need to consider to keep my branding consistent?
Before we dive deep into the topic of consistent branding: Here is a quick overview of the elements you need to keep in mind for keeping your branding consistent:
Brand Strategy: The strategy of your brand includes your brand values, vision, who your clients are, your unique selling point and what you promise your clients. This is the foundation of your brand and needs to stay consistent. For example, imagine Nike as an everybody’s-athletic-brand starts to serve only doctors from tomorrow onwards. This change would be catastrophic to their brand and would essential destroy everything the brand stands for.
Brand Identity: This includes the logo, color palette, typography, and imagery used in brand materials. Consistency in visual branding ensures that the brand is instantly recognizable and memorable. Having a set of colors and fonts together with visual elements creates a recognisable image in your customers heads that they can hang on to.
Brand Messaging: Your brand's tone of voice, language, and key messages should remain consistent across all communication channels. This helps reinforce the brand's personality and values. For example, the brand dove has a very caring and calm tone of voice and promotes women to practice their self love for their unique bodies. Imagine the brand would change their soft tone into a rebellious one that uses very strong, bold and cursing language in their marketing materials. This would be totally off and harm the brand.
Customer Experience: The brand experience should be consistent across all customer touchpoints, whether it's in-store, on the website, through social media, or in customer service interactions. This means to keep visuals and the tone of voice of the brand in all touchpoints. it’s crucial to make the buying process as easy as possible and keep in contact with your customers.
Marketing and Advertising: Consistency in marketing and advertising campaigns ensures that the brand's message is cohesive and reinforces the brand's unique selling proposition. For example, if you use email marketing, you want to ensure your brand visuals, colors and tone of voice is captured in all emails you send to your potential clients. Stay consistent on all marketing channels.
Overall, brand consistency helps create a strong and unified brand identity that resonates with your customers and fosters long-term brand loyalty. It enhances brand recognition, builds trust, and ultimately contributes to the success and growth of your business.
After giving you a quick overview, you might be wondering: “Well, sounds good, but where do I start to create a consistent brand?” Let’s lift the curtain and gain some light and insight into that question:
Your Brand Roadmap-
How to Create Consistent Branding:
Laying the Foundation: Define Your Brand Strategy
As said above, it all starts with brand strategy.
Define your brand heart with your brand purpose, vision, mission and values.
Define your ideal client: Gain clarity on your ideal client you are going to serve. What is their main problem you are going to solve for them?
Define the personality of your brand: What is the personality of your brand? Happy and cheerful or rather bold and rebellious?
Define your brand voice and brand messaging: How speaks your brand? Does it use slang, makes jokes or speaks caring like a mother?
Grab our free brand strategy guide on how to create your own brand strategy that works for your business
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Craft Your Visual Branding
Once you are clear on your brand strategy, you have done the foundational work on your brand and can start working on your brand visuals.
What is included in brand visuals?
Logos
Fonts
Brand Colors (Color palette)
Images that transport the same messaging
Patterns
When crafting these things, it is crucial that they have recognisable features. For example, when you craft your brand logos, I recommend using those fonts also for your social media and website to remain consistent. If you have icons you use for your logo, try to keep them and embed them in parts of your social media presence, email marketing or website to increase brand recognition. For example, Nike has used their swoosh and this has become the most recognisable icon of their branding.
🤓 Wondering how to best match your brand personality with your brand colors? 👉 Check this out! 🎨
Brand Consistency Examples:
Below you find multiple examples of logos, alternative logos, submarks, watermarks and icons. Those are all consistent because they all use the same brand color, fonts, sun icon and shape of the half circle mirroring the sun icon. The R/S watermark with the dash can also be found in the sun icon. The fonts are the same and keep the same thickness even when the logo is displayed smaller. The letter spacing is consistent and the words are in all caps.
Brand Non-Consistency Examples:
Now, on the contrary, this brand would not be cohesive anymore if we did any of this:
changing the symbol by incorporating it into the font writing
changing the symbol from a sun to a mountain
changing the font
How to keep consistency across different media channels? Introducing the Brand Style Board:
Once you have crafted your brand visuals, a brand style board or brand style guide will help you to stay consistent when it comes to applying all your branding “in-action”.
Building a Cohesive Online Presence by Aligning Your Branding Across Platforms
Your online presence is a digital storefront that needs to remain consistent. Your brand consistent website incorporates your logos, brand fonts, brand colors and images that match those themes to remain cohesive. If you have a physical store, the style and visuals should match your store. Try to incorporate your brand colors and showcase your logos on in your store, packaging and marketing collateral such as business cards, flyers and vouchers.
Empowering Your Team to Embrace the Brand
A successful brand is a collective effort, and your team plays a vital role in upholding consistent branding. Discover strategies to empower and educate your team members about your brand values, positioning, and voice. When your team becomes brand ambassadors, they can authentically represent your brand, building trust and credibility with your customers.
Here are some examples and strategies on how to empower and educate your team members about your brand values, positioning, and voice:
Brand Training Workshops: Conduct interactive brand training workshops where team members learn about the brand's mission, values, and key messaging. Use real-life examples and case studies to illustrate how the brand's positioning aligns with customer needs and expectations.
Brand Handbook: Create a comprehensive brand handbook that outlines all aspects of the brand, including its history, mission, values, visual identity guidelines, and tone of voice. Distribute the handbook to all team members and refer to it during onboarding and training sessions.
Internal Brand Communications: Use internal communications channels, such as newsletters, emails, or an intranet, to regularly share updates, success stories, and brand-related news. Keep team members informed and engaged with the brand's initiatives and developments.
Role-Playing Exercises: Conduct role-playing exercises where team members practice delivering brand messages and handling customer interactions in alignment with the brand's voice. Provide feedback and guidance to improve their understanding and application of the brand's positioning.
Brand Champions: Identify brand champions within the organization who exemplify the brand values and positioning in their daily work. Recognize and reward these employees to motivate others to follow their lead.
Storytelling Sessions: Organize storytelling sessions where team members share their experiences and encounters with customers, demonstrating how the brand's values and positioning influence customer interactions and relationships.
Collaborative Brainstorming: Encourage open discussions and brainstorming sessions where team members actively contribute ideas on how to embody the brand's values and voice in their respective roles.
Brand Ambassadors Program: Create a brand ambassadors program where select team members receive specialized training and resources to represent the brand externally. These ambassadors can speak at events, engage with customers on social media, and act as brand advocates.
Continuous Learning Opportunities: Provide ongoing learning opportunities, such as webinars, seminars, or online courses, related to branding, customer service, and communication skills. This ensures team members stay up-to-date with best practices and trends.
Employee Feedback Surveys: Conduct regular surveys to gather feedback from employees on their understanding of the brand's values and positioning. Use this feedback to identify areas of improvement and tailor training programs accordingly.
Team Building Activities: Organize team-building activities that incorporate brand-related challenges and exercises. This fosters camaraderie among team members and reinforces the importance of representing the brand cohesively.
Remember, empowering and educating team members about brand values, positioning, and voice is an ongoing process. By providing continuous support, resources, and recognition, you can create a culture where every team member feels aligned with the brand and motivated to embody its essence in their interactions with customers and stakeholders.
Congratulations on completing your small business roadmap to consistent branding! Armed with newfound knowledge and actionable strategies, you are now equipped to elevate your brand to new heights and create a lasting impact in the minds of your customers. Remember, branding is not a destination but a continuous journey of growth and refinement. Stay true to your brand's identity, be agile in your approach, and watch your business flourish like never before. Here's to a brand that stands the test of time and leaves an indelible mark in the hearts of your audience!
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