Brand consistency is the practice of giving all your products and communications a similar look so that your customers can easily recognise your company as the source. Making your company easily recognisable means that customers are more likely to come back for more, and having good brand consistency will also give your business a professional look. Here are some ways in which you can achieve brand consistency for your business.
Hire a professional designer
Identifying the logo and colour scheme for your new company can be one of the most exciting tasks on your to-do list. However, unless you are a professional designer yourself, you are unlikely to have all the skills and knowledge required to create a branding look which will stand up to the competition and communicate everything that you want it to to your potential customers. A brand’s graphical identity and logo need to communicate your company values and specialism through the psychology of colour. They need to do a mixture of blending in and standing out in your sector, and ideally they need to look both modern and timeless. It’s a lot of work for a few colours and fonts! Your best bet, therefore, is to hire a branding design company to develop a logo, colour palette and font choices for your company.
Apply your branding everywhere
Once you have your colour palette, logo and fonts chosen, you need to make sure that they are used in every single product and communication you make, from your website to your social media cover images to branded stationery or other promotional items. Especially if you are working by yourself or in a small team, it can be tempting to cut corners when you are creating a new product or sending out a new message, but keeping your branding consistent will pay off massively in terms of customer retention and having a professional image. To make your life easier, make templates for everything you might need – web pages, social media assets, headed paper – and share a copy with every member of the team, so everyone has easy access to branded materials at all times. Don’t forget to make a note of the HEX values which correspond to your company colours – it will make everything quicker and save you from accidentally selecting the wrong colour.
Don’t forget your brand voice
Although brand consistency has a lot to do with the way your company’s products and communications look, there is more to it than that. A huge element of brand consistency is deciding on the voice and tone that you want your brand to have, and then maintaining it across all platforms and products. For example, sportswear manufacturer Adidas uses a strong, motivating, “you can do it” voice, as exemplified by slogans such as “Feel the boost” and “Athlete is an attitude”. By contrast, sustainable toilet roll manufacturer Who Gives A Crap uses humour to get their customers to engage with the product – their blog is called Talking Crap!