3 Ways To Build a Consistent Brand
As a business owner, it’s likely been brought to your attention that branding will play a huge role in your success in today’s world. There’s a lot to unpack when it comes to building a consistent brand that attracts the ideal client. Today, you may not have the budget to outsource your marketing and design, which helps to build your brand the way you would like. Furthermore, you are wearing many hats unless you have a big team. There usually isn’t time for everything. However, when it comes to promoting and marketing your business, it’s something that needs to be done. It’s a full-time job. Anything that can streamline your process and make it easier is a win. I’m here to guide you on how to build a consistent brand as a small business owner.
Why is branding so important, and how does it impact your business?
What is branding?
Simply put, branding distinguishes your business and brand from another brand. There are two ways to approach branding.
Visual Branding Includes:
- Logo
- Color palette
- Fonts
- Illustrations
- Photography
- Symbols
Non-visual branding includes:
- Messaging
- Words
- Brand promise
- Marketing
- Processes
- Customer service
- Environment
All the visual and non-visual elements come together to tell your brand’s story. It’s helpful to remember how you want your customers or clients to feel when they interact with your brand when you consider any aspect of your branding. As humans, how we feel plays a huge role in making decisions and judgments about a business. More importantly, whether we buy from them or not. Your brand has the power to influence how people feel and if they buy from your business.
Why branding is a powerful tool for your business.
- It helps people understand what makes your business different.
- Why should they buy from you over others
- It is a tool that attracts the right people
Why is brand consistency important?
Recognizability
We have all heard the cliché, but don’t judge a book by its cover. That is exactly what we do daily. Today, there is so much noise in the form of ads, posters, and brands everywhere. As a result, we need to make fast decisions to filter out what is relevant to us and what is not. Therefore, sharing your visual brand consistently will help people recognize content that is relevant to you and your brand. It will help them stop and see what you have to say and what it is you’re selling. This visual recognizability can increase sales when people can easily access you.
If every time someone sees something from your brand that looks different, this will slow them down. They will have to work out who is talking to them. If it’s not clear, they will scroll on by. It would help if you had your fans and ideal customers recognize you and know it’s you.
Trust
If you want a thriving business, you need your clients and customers to know you will deliver what you are promising. They want to feel confident purchasing and working with brands of all levels. It helps to think of trust as human relationships. People earn our trust through consistent behavior. Over time, brand trust can be earned by shipping orders on time, showing up in inboxes every week, and offering value or educational content on social media. Ultimately, it’s the consistent effort of your business that builds trust.
Timesaving
Being consistent with your branding saves you time. We all have thousands of decisions to make daily. Let that sink in for a moment.
Consistency and small habits over time save time. Making certain decisions in advance versus on the fly helps to save time. This includes your brand visuals, from your logo to your color palette. You do not have to start from scratch whenever you create something new to promote your business. You already know which font or colors to pick and what photographs to choose. You will not have to make so many decisions that result in creating marketing content quickly and save the mental energy to make other decisions daily.
3 Practical tips for keeping your branding consistent
Branding can help create consistently recognizable branding that involves spending time thinking about your business goals and who your ideal customer is. When you know that information, you can make a strategic decision about the look and feel of your branding that will attract the ideal people to achieve your goals. This will make creating content for your brand easier than outdated designs.
Next, the following way to stay consistent in your branding is to create brand guidelines. This is typically a document to reference that includes the following information:
- Logo & logo variations
- Examples of log usage
- Brand colors
- Typography or your fonts to use
- Photography style
- Illustrations
Brand guidelines can be very detailed. It is up to you and the person you are working with how much information you need. Having it collated and accessible saves you time, whether you are creating content or outsourcing content creation for your brand.
Finally, batch creates similar tasks. Setting time aside to create blogs, record video content, or make visual branding templates across various platforms can look like setting time aside. Maybe you want to post regular testimonials on Instagram. You can make a template that includes, for example, ten testimonial posts in one sitting and schedule them out each month. As a result, you won’t need to create a new design each time, saving you time and creating a good amount of social content.
If this resonated with you and you are ready to learn more about what it’s like to outsource your marketing, let’s chat! This kind of support can be a game-changer for your business.
