The Importance of Brand Consistency

Consistency within your brand translates to trust with your customers. Like any relationship, trust is the cornerstone to success, including with your customers and potential customers.

Your business exists for a reason. At a high level, your products or services meet your customers’ needs. Whether you are a local coffee shop. a plumber, or offer software solutions, you have customers that turn to your brand because they trust you to provide them with quality goods and services. When you are consistently meeting your customer’s needs and desires with high quality work and products, your business does well.

While this concept seems so simple, you need to make sure that your marketing efforts are as consistent as the products and services that you sell. After all, consumers trust recognizable brands. Giving your customers a consistent experience across each channel of communication is as important as providing them with your dependable product or services.

A few questions to ask yourself when you are looking to make sure you are being consistent:

• Do your social media sites align with your website?

• Does the tone of your emails match your website?

• If you’re speaking with someone on the phone, do they recognize that you’re a representative of your brand?

• Are you using your colors, and logos appropriately?

• How about the images that you use in your brochures?

There are countless ways for costumers to reach out to you. Phone, website, social media, email, and sometimes even postal mail. It’s important to make sure your messaging and graphics remain true to your brand.

When your brand has the same look, feel and voice, you are promoting yourself in a way that helps to build trust. Even the smallest of businesses can gain a lot from providing consistent messaging and branding. Not only will it make your brand seem more dependable, but also customers will appreciate your attention to detail.

Some simple ways to create consistency across your various communication platforms include:

• Use the same graphics or graphical elements across all channels (icons can be a great way to do this).

• Make sure your tone and messages across all channels are the same. Are you more formal, or more conversational?

• Create a brand style guide, so everyone representing your company can refer to this one document to see everything from the type of font to use, to the colors to use.

• Make templates (ppts, email signatures, letterheads, etc.) for your team to use, and make them easy to find.

Regardless of what industry or sector your business operates within, consistency is key to building a brand that your clients trust. After all, you want to make sure every customer has positive experience with your business.