The reputation of your brand will play a pivotal role in the success of your business. It’s how consumers perceive the company while deciding whether to purchase goods or services.
If the brand is not consistent in development, it could lead to lower-than-expected popularity and income. It’s your job to do everything possible to make sure that target consumers understand your organization and what it represents.
Thanks to the popularity of social media marketing, maintenance of this brand recognition is more important than ever. Information regarding your company can be shared among a vast target audience relatively quick.
From the advertisements you place to the sharing of content by your fans, you don’t want any confusion as to what you provide.
And the best part is you can automate a lot of marketing while streamlining your identity.
Why Brand Consistency is Important
Consistency is what drives people to recognize the company. Without it, you may be faced with a myriad of problems that may be difficult to fix. For instance, you wouldn’t go to seafood restaurant looking for ice cream.
And it’s not just the products you provide, either. Take YouTube personalities, for example. Without a consistent schedule, many video producers will lose a significant number of followers and fans.
Consumers need reliability as well as quality in the goods they consume. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself with a shrinking target market.
The following are the top five reasons why you need to keep consistent with the way you market the brand. From taglines to imagery, it all plays an important role in the continuation of your company.
1. Customer Recognition
One of the most important aspects to brand consistency is that of customer recognition. You want consumers to identify the brand whether it’s from a musical jingle or the colors of the logo.
When you develop strong brand consistency, consumers can recognize your company based on colors or the tagline alone.
For instance, what comes to mind when you see or hear the words, “Just Do It?” Without imagery, most people will recognize that saying as the popular shoe manufacturer Nike’s tagline.
While things like logos, taglines and musical scores help people associate ads to a specific business, this is only the beginning. Customer experience is also associated with those promotional nuances.
For example: If a customer has an excellent experience dealing with your company, the sheer sound of your musical signature could fill the individual with elation. A bad experience could make the consumer dread even seeing the company logo.
It’s how consumers correlate experiences with brand recognition.
2. Keeping Focus of Objectives
Building a strong brand identity can help you and employees remain focused on company objectives. Over time, you may be tempted to veer off the logical path of the organization.
Perhaps there are things that may sell well in your location but are unrelated to your business. But who would expect to see golf supplies in a computer repair shop?
This is an extreme example, but it happens more than you’d think. Small businesses are especially susceptible for losing brand identity as they try to make things work by selling unrelated goods and services.
You want customers to recognize the organization for its primary focus. Otherwise, you could create confusion as to the actual purpose of the company.
Maintaining the consistency of the brand will help you create future strategies for marketing as well as related procedures. You’ll be less likely to throw in the random product or service because you think it may sell.
By maintaining the key focus of the business, you can inspire consumers to relate the business to your specific industry.
3. Supporting Employee Direction
Brand recognition is driven by the motivation of your employees. If your staff has poor customer service skills, then the brand of the company may be seen as negative.
Having a strong plan for the growth and development of your employees can be easily seen in the overall brand of the organization.
If your staff is consistently going the extra mile to help customers, your brand builds the reputation of having superior customer service. However, it’s consistency in this behavior that is vital to continued success.
Customers need to see the logo of the company and relate it to a good customer experience, which can be done if the experience is repeated every time someone visits the business.
By setting a policy for procedures within the company, it gives employees a goal that needs to be obtained. This goal should be a focus of everyday activities as it can help create brand consistency as perceived by consumers.
It gives employees a direction in which to follow to build that reputation.
4. Strengthening Company Identity
People associate information with companies when the message is presented to them over and over again. It’s almost Pavlovian as a certain message or belief can be attributed to an organization through continued presentation.
The core idea is that people can associate a certain level of quality in products and services with the identity of the organization. This can work both for and against your company depending on your overall practices and procedures.
A good example of strengthening a company identity is that of Apple. From merely seeing the half-eaten apple logo, people associate the company with superior computer electronics and smartphones.
Duracell’s three-tone musical score can be identified and associated with top-of-the-line batteries.
It’s these messages that have been presented over time in a consistent manner that customers relate. This helps solidify trust between consumer and company which can turn those individuals into long-term supporters.
5. Separating from Competitors
Depending on the company’s niche industry, the competition may be excessive. If you operate an online aspect to your business, the competition could be even greater.
Maintaining consistency of what your brand represents is one of the biggest methods in which consumers will identify your business among the others.
Keeping the brand consistent helps people associate the business with specific products or services. Things like logo designs, musical scores, company colors and more are used to differentiate the business from the competition.
If you change it up after everyone gets used to the jingle or graphic, it could cause a great deal of confusion.
Keeping your company separate from the competition relies on everything from the font you use on the website to the color of the shirts worn by employees. The entire facade of the business needs to be unique.
You don’t want your company to receive negative feedback because customers mistake it for one with poor customer service.
Be Unique to the World
Think of the business as a separate entity. It needs to have its own sense of style that creates a unique experience. If you haven’t put effort into fine-tuning your brand’s image, you may be losing out on sales.
Don’t assume that your target audience understands your company’s presence. Take steps necessary to remove all doubt and be recognized as a leader in your industry.