Marketers today face a fascinating conundrum: Amidst a sea of minimalist logos, catchy taglines, and perfectly calibrated color schemes, what truly makes a brand stand out?
Gone are the days when consumers would buy the first product they saw on department store shelves or check out from the first link they clicked. Today, branding is everything, and most businesses and customers know this.
Branding has finally caught up with mainstream marketing. Businesses, brand managers, and digital marketing companies know the value of building a robust brand when building their own. Companies have realized that they need to put in the work and resources to create a lasting brand image; they know 'what' to do, but it's a matter of figuring out the 'how'.
But before we dive deeper into the essentials of branding, let's take a look at why consistent branding is so important.
Why Building a Consistent Brand Matters
Building consistency is very important to branding; let me explain why:
When most companies, especially small and medium-sized businesses, think of branding, they imagine well-suited logos, strong social media presence and email marketing campaigns, consistent color palettes, and maybe a catchy tagline accompanying all marketing copy. That's good, but consistent branding is a lot more than just covering these basics.
These companies often miss the importance of little things like staying consistent across all customer communications, aligning product messaging with brand messaging, targeting the right market segment, and more. And they are not to blame here.
Optimizing every customer touchpoint is challenging, especially for upcoming companies. Product development is universally difficult, and young brands often want to target as many segments as possible instead of being precise. All of these decisions, though, lead to an inconsistent brand image that can hurt a company big time if not rectified.
Consistent branding is foundational to a brand's growth and longevity. Not only does it build trust and credibility (more on that below), but it is also vital for building brand recognition, recall value, customer retention, and marketing efficiency.
To understand this, we need not look any further than personal experience. Think of any brand that you are used to buying from; it could be your local supermarket or an online store. Now imagine if you had a different experience every time you wanted to make a purchase from them. The lack of consistency would certainly confuse, if not irritate you.
Humans love patterns; we like it when things are predictable, we like it when we know what to expect, and good branding is all about playing into this quirk of human nature. By maintaining consistency in your branding, you simplify the buying decision for consumers. Recurrent purchases become effortless when consumers have good and consistent brand experiences. On the contrary, imagine making regular purchases from brands that are inconsistent. You wouldn't even be sure if you were buying from the same company half the time!
There is enough and more to be said on the matter of consistent branding, but moving forward, I want to explicitly focus on perhaps the most important benefit of consistent branding, i.e., building trust and credibility. Read along to find out how exactly this happens and what your brand can do to boost trust and credibility using consistent branding.
How Consistent Branding creates Trust
Be it in branding or psychology, familiarity is the basis of all trust. We only trust the people and things that we know well and interact often with. Brands that are consistent in their visuals, messaging, and experience begin to feel familiar after the first few interactions.
This familiarity becomes the basis of comfort that comes from repeated interactions. Bear in mind that consumers need to like your product/service in the first place to move from familiarity to comfort. If you are a Chrome user and someone asks "is brave better than chrome?" you might think about it for a second but you probably won't stop using Chrome as it is your trusted browser and you are fully in your comfort zone when using it.
Moreover, branding consistency defines consumer expectations. When done right, it aligns every aspect of your business, from the quality of your products to the user experience on your website. This consistency is key because when customers know what to expect and their expectations are met consistently, brands appear more reliable. Later, you can learn how business telephone systems can help with not only branding but also improving customer experience and therefore, your brand reputation. Then, you can also submit your guest post to credible sites, as it is also a great way to boost brand awareness, expand your reach, and establish authority in your industry.
Why is any of this important? Because values like reliability and consistency are essential to building trust. The only way to enjoy recurrent sales is when your customers are comfortable with your products/services and consider your brand reliable enough to form a long-term relationship with you.
And that's essentially why building trust is so important because the ultimate goal with branding, and marketing in general, is to build a long-term relationship with your customers, and being consistent at your customer touchpoints plays a vital role in building that necessary trust.
How good branding builds brand credibility
If you haven't guessed it yet, brand credibility and trust go hand in hand. According to Global banking and finance reports, 71% of customers are more likely to buy a product/service from a brand they recognize. And what is the best way to appear familiar and recognizable to your customers? You guessed it, having a consistent brand image.
What is more important to you ?
Understanding how consistency in branding leads to credibility is easy; I'll give a personal anecdote to explain. Every time I look at a brand that displays good, clear, and consistent branding across various channels and product lines, I develop a level of confidence in the company.
That's because branding expectations have risen fairly high in the minds of the average customer. If a company cannot even have a consistent logo, style set, or messaging across a few channels, I doubt if they'll be able to deliver a high quality product and decent customer service. To ensure a cohesive brand identity, consider creating a comprehensive Business Playbook that outlines guidelines for a consistent logo, style set, and messaging across all channels.
Consistent branding has become an imperative; it's not just a strategy. And rightly so; it's the first step to building credibility because it signals your users that you know what you are doing as a company. Consistent branding not only fosters credibility but also extends to encompass data security and management, reflecting a company's commitment to safeguarding sensitive information and maintaining trust with its users.
A consistent brand also appears to be more authentic. When companies stick to their values and core principles, they appear to be more than just entities that we transact with and instead assume a character of their own. Baking authenticity and character into your brand is the fastest way to build credibility and long-lasting relationships with your customers. In this matter, for a restaurant online ordering system, a consistent brand builds authenticity, turning the business into a trustworthy character and fostering lasting relationships with customers.
How to Make Your Branding Consistent? Tips and Strategy
All this talk about keeping your brand consistent won’t be worth much without some practical tips and advice on how to achieve the same, so here we go:
Tip #1: Get the basics right
And what are the basics? All the branding 101 stuff, from colors, logo, and typography to the sentiment in your marketing copy. Top branding companies go out of their way to maintain the highest level of professionalism and quality in these aspects of the brands they are trying to build, and you need to do the same.
Creating a Brand Identity: From Start to Finish
Tip #2: Unify efforts based on brand values
How exactly does one maintain brand consistency? By unifying your branding and communication efforts across all channels and customer touch points, be it a B2B client portal, e-commerce website, or social media. The best way to do that is to identify the core value your brand desires to stand for and try to incorporate them in all your marketing and communications efforts as organically as possible.
One good example is Patagonia. They are a clothing and outdoor gear brand, but the core value they champion is environmental sustainability and responsibility. They've woven their commitment and value into everything they do, be it sustainable producing their products or pledging a small slice of their profit for environmental initiatives. These efforts not only make Patagonia more consistent, but they also make it look like a brand with a cause, something bigger than just another company trying to make a buck.
Source: Patagonia
Tip #3: Audit, train, improve and repeat
Consistent branding isn't just a matter of coming up with a new marketing campaign. As mentioned, every customer interaction, direct or indirect, needs to be in line with the desired brand message. A lofty goal like this can't be accomplished in a day. Instead, companies need to constantly audit and monitor all potential customer touch points by training their staff to identify and improve on these. They can also provide their remote employees with online coaching sessions to ensure consistent and effective customer interactions, aligning with the company's standards and values.
Tip #4: Balance creativity and adaptation
And finally, remember to be creative but in a way that's executable. It's a fine balance that is so easy to get wrong. Brands often get 'too creative' such that their message and promise are impossible to reflect in the actual product or service. All of their branding just ends up becoming marketing speak that suspects customers can sniff out from miles away. Sure, creativity is important, but companies need to ensure that they can adapt the very message they are portraying. Sounds too obvious to be stated this way, but every digital marketing companies knows what I'm talking about!
Conclusion
As we saw, consistent branding isn't just a marketing strategy in the modern marketing landscape but has instead become a necessity in the face of elevated customer expectations and rapidly shifting market trends.
By being consistent, a brand is guaranteed to generate trust and commitment within its audience. At the same time, consistent branding isn't as simple as improving our off-page SEO or even designing a product your users love; it's about doing all of these things in a way that focuses on your core brand values.
As you strive to improve your brand's value and image, consider consistent branding like an adventure that calls you to weave together everything your company is about into a story that your target audience will love.
The Benefits of Consistent Branding: Building Trust and Credibility
FAQ
Why is consistent branding important?
Consistent branding is foundational to a brand's growth and longevity. Not only does it build trust and credibility (more on that below), but it is also vital for building brand recognition, recall value, customer retention, and marketing efficiency.
How does branding build trust?
We only trust the people and things that we know well and interact often with. Brands that are consistent in their visuals, messaging, and experience begin to feel familiar after the first few interactions. A consistent brand also appears to be more authentic.
Companies must stick to their values and core principles, they appear to be more than just entities that we transact with and instead assume a character of their own. Baking authenticity and character into your brand is the fastest way to build credibility and long-lasting relationships with your customers.
How create consistency credibility?
Create consistent branding has become an imperative, because branding expectations have risen fairly high in the minds of the average customer. So, company can have a consistent logo, style set, or messaging across a few channels.
It's not just a strategy, it's the first step to building credibility because it signals your users that you know what you are doing as a company.
How to make your branding consistent?
- Get the basics right
- Unify efforts based on brand values
- Audit, train, improve and repeat
- Balance creativity and adaptation
What are the benefits of consistent branding?
Benefit of consistency branding is simplify the buying decision for consumers. Consumers will do recurrent purchases effortless when consumers have good and consistent brand experiences. On the contrary, imagine making regular purchases from brands that are inconsistent.