BRAND IDENTITY

3 WAYS TO MAINTAIN CONSISTENCY
IN YOUR BRANDING

Finding it hard to produce the kind of cohesiveness you desire for your brand?

Here are three ways to help you maintain consistence and cohesiveness in your brand.

1. Know Your Messaging

Firstly, your target audience should be hearing the same message throughout all your brand touchpoints. Knowing your message reduces any confusion as to what your brand is about. When we talk about consistency, we mean that brands should have a unified voice across all their social media platforms. So that, for example, if you post something on one site then it will be posted the same on other sites too. Coherence refers to the ways in which you use language across different media channels so that they convey consistent messages.

Of course, the deeper you know your target audience, the easier it will be to stay in alignment when creating all your marketing materials. One of the absolute best ways to ensure your audience will understand and resonate with your messaging is to tell your brand story.

STORIES MAKE YOUR BRAND SO MUCH MORE MEMORABLE.

When you tell a story that your audience can relate to, you are making a strong emotional connection with them. It has been proven that people make purchasing decisions based on feelings and emotions rather than on logic.

Using stories humanizes your brand and communicates who you are, what you do and how you can help people. People may forget your message, but they never forget a good story. So, wrap your message in a brand story that will cause your audience to remember exactly what you want them to and provide consistency in your brand.

This works even better if your brand has something that you stand for or a mission you believe in. People will begin to know, like and trust your brand when they can relate to how you change your corner of the world!

2. Create Your Own Brand Style Guide

Have you thought of creating your own brand style guide as a way of maintaining consistency for your brand?

If you have a team that works with you, then a brand style guide would be a must to help with consistency across all your marketing elements.

A brand style guide is a set of instructions or rules for how to present your brand to customers. The goal of a style guide is to align the visual identity with the overall branding and provide guidelines for how that is reflected in different media. Creating clear rules and standards for your visual and written materials is an important first step toward establishing brand consistency. This upfront work will help you keep focused as you launch new campaigns.

HAVING CONVERSATIONS WITH YOUR TEAM ABOUT CRITICAL DETAILS WILL HELP ENSURE CONSISTENCY THROUGHOUT YOUR BRAND.

Some of these details can include the tone and voice of your brand as well as the color palette, logos, images and the types of typography you use. It is imperative that you include a section that shows how NOT to use these assets so your customer will not undo all your good design work.

One of my favorite ways to help keep consistency in my branding is to use images and mockups from Moyo Studio.

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3. Use a Content Calendar

Planning tools can help you maintain consistency.

Taking advantage of planning tools like a content calendar, can help maintain consistency and keep everyone on your team in sync, even with multiple campaigns happening simultaneously. While it takes a bit of work to map out a marketing or promotion schedule, it’ll improve your chances of success and save time in the long run. Planning in advance means you’ll have plenty of time to tweak your messaging for consistency if necessary.

Every little detail in your marketing materials, website content and social media channels can either evoke or destroy your brand’s emotional appeal. However, it is important to not overschedule the content you post on social media. Posting too many ads, discounts and promotions can turn away your customers and encourage them to take their business elsewhere. A strong brand is built on trust and loyalty. Customers know, like and trust a brand for the quality of services or products it provides.

A CONTENT CALENDAR HELPS YOU TO SEE EVERYTHING IN ONE PLACE AND SHOWS WHERE THERE MIGHT BE INCONSISTENCY.

Having a theme for each month can make it easier to create content in advance. You can schedule email blasts and social media ads weeks in advance. When you plan ahead, you’ll have breathing room to make changes and adjust the timing of promotions as needed. Then you can review your past campaign performance to adjust future efforts, looking for places where you can improve message consistency.

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