What is brand consistency?
Brand consistency is maintaining a distinguished image or experience for a certain target audience you are marketing towards.
Sure. Developing a brand is critical.
But maintaining a consistent brand presence gives you more brand recognition. With brand recognition comes great brand loyalty. Why?
Well, brand loyalty comes from the service or product you provide, but it also comes from the brand identity.
So to go over: you’ll need to develop a brand identity, maintain brand consistency, and, in the end, you’ll gain brand loyalty. We’ll just be focusing on brand consistency, but will return later to the others.
Abstract, I know. But that is why your brand needs to be consistent. If you’re not consistent then you’re not concrete.
Know Your Brand
This is the planning stage. You are going to have to figure out what exactly is your brand.
Essential there is one thing to keep in mind when developing a brand: authenticity. If you feel your brand doesn’t heart, then you should probably think about a different approach.
This is a complex process that we dive into for your personal brand here.
How to Be Consistent with Your Brand
So there are three measures to keep track of being on-brand.
- Brand Experience: This is the target audience’s experience with your brand.
- Values: It’s always good to do a little self-reflection, so why not do that with your businesses’ values? Making sure that your mission statement or slogan on your about page reflects the brand.
- Visual Elements: This is the logo, color scheme, and graphic design aspect.
The brand experience will begin to vary as your business grows. Keeping track of how a target audience is receiving your brand is important.
Speaking of values, this is where authenticity comes in. If you don’t feel your brand is authentic, then the values will begin to shift. Doing some reflection and assessment of your businesses’ values is an integral way to measure brand consistency.
Finally, arguably one of the most important measures, your logo.
Look at Apple’s logo or Microsoft’s logo. They are instantly recognizable with an attachment of their values even without any words.
Keeping your visual brand elements in check is a must if you want to maintain consistency.
Resist Re-branding. Focus on Being Consistent.
Rebranding is a long and arduous process with big risks for big companies and can be done right with a lot of planning and time.
If you are just starting out, rebranding will not have huge risks. But this is a poor excuse for rebranding.
The constant rebranding will tell others that your business is having an identity crisis. This will show disorganization at the core of your business.
Imagine a business that constantly opens and closes in different locations. It is frustrating and just inconvenient.
So be entirely sure that re-branding will help your business in the long run.
The End Goal is Brand Loyalty
Building brand loyalty requires a lot of patience. Try not to stare at the clock and count the hours. It might take a while.
But it will take even longer if the logo changes colors or the values of the business don’t reflect the service provided.
Over time, with consistency, your target market will come to recognize your brand, and it will not be much. But it is a start.