Is your brand two faced?

If you want to gain trust, loyalty and make your business stand out from the crowd, it’s time to make your brand consistent.

Brand consistency is achieved when a brand clearly communicates its values, mission, and service ethic across all platforms and throughout the customers' entire experience journey. By doing this, they create a unified brand image.

Putting your logo on all marketing material and using the proper pantone colour is important but it’s not enough. Brand consistency is an evolution; it’s not just about logos and colours. Your business needs to have core marketing messages aligned and compatible first.

Using consistency to build your brand provides your business with credibility and recognition. Gaining brand recognition moves your business to the next level – trust and loyalty with your customers.

To achieve this, you need the look, feel, tone, vision and terminology to be consistent across all of your business’s customer touch points i.e., business cards, website, social media profiles, LinkedIn profiles (personal and company pages), marketing materials, letterhead, envelopes, invoices, signage, banners, email signature and all things related to your brand.

Whether you are a start-up business or established business the “face” and “voice” your business portrays is key to your success. A consistent brand is how consumers get to know you as a business.

How will a consistent brand help grow your business?
Consumers trust brands they can easily recognise.

Brand recognition is not just about getting your name out there. It’s about helping customers get to know and understand your brand on a personal level. Part of engaging the right emotions with your customers is making it easy for them to recognise your brand, know your brand and that your brand can be trusted.

Brand consistency is part of building trust. Giving customers a dependable experience across all your channels of communication works along the same lines as always providing a dependable product or service.

When they know you, they will identify with you and your purpose. And when they feel like they know you and can trust you, they are more likely to recommend you to their friends.

Many clients have told me that if they could just get consumers to try their product, they know they would like it and would want to buy from them again. By placing a consistent brand message in front of consumers is a step in the right direction to converting “almost” customers into buyers.

Brand consistency takes your business to the next level in marketing.

Developing a seamless look and voice for your brand across your website, all social media channels, your storefront, on your packaging and your business card will make customers easily recognise your brand and feel more comfortable with your brand.

What this means is that you’re no longer convincing customers to come into your store or buy your product or take up your service offering. Your brand is so consistent and recognisable, that when a customer sees your signature brand logo, they know who you are, what you offer and may already be thinking about making their next purchase from you without you even having to ask. 

Consistency makes your brand feel more dependable.

When you’re getting to know a person, you start to develop opinions, ideas and assumptions about them based on your interactions. If they are inconsistent in clothing attire and personality, it can be hard to know exactly who they are and what they stand for or believe.

This is exactly how it feels to a potential customer who may be considering your business and is presented with an inconsistent brand look and voice. Inconsistency with branding can lead to a concern about your business consistency. You may think twice before bringing them into your business because they’re unpredictable. Also, it’s harder for new customers to find you in the first place if your brand is not easily recognisable.

Your customers can feel the same about your brand if you aren’t careful. If your social media voice is whimsical and silly but your product packaging is sterile and plain, you’re sending mixed signals that will confuse consumers and leave them feeling like your brand can’t be trusted.

 Consumers trust brands they can easily recognise.

Brand recognition is not just about getting your name out there. It’s about helping customers get to know and understand your brand on a personal level.

Part of engaging the right emotions with your customers is making it easy for them to recognise your brand, know your brand and be certain that your brand can be trusted.

Brand consistency is part of building trust. Giving customers a dependable experience across all your channels of communication, customer experience journey and customer complaint resolution process work along the same lines as always putting out a dependable product or service. It’s what distinguishes a good brand from a great brand.

Developing a seamless look and voice for your brand across your website, all social media channels, in your store, on your product packaging, your business card and the way you/your staff interact with customers will make customers easily recognise your brand and feel more comfortable with your brand.

Author’s Bio

Kim MacDonald, Principal of Spindrift Marketing, a Sydney based agency, helping businesses create marketing strategies and plans that deliver on business priorities as well as providing a full suite of outsourced marketing services. www.spindriftmarketing.com.au.

Kim is a Marketing, Brand and Business Development specialist with over 20 years’ experience in a range of top tier multinational organisations, in industries including Professional Services, Airlines, Financial Services, High Tech and MedTech in both Australia and the UK. She is passionate about helping SME’s achieve the best outcome, value and return from their marketing by aligning marketing initiatives to business priorities.