Ensuring Brand Consistency at Every Touchpoint

Brand consistency can increase revenue by 10 - 20% (Lucidpress)

We’d say that's a pretty convincing reason to align your brand consistency across every stage of the customer journey. Wherever a potential customer sees your brand, consistently showing up in the same way not only builds trust but offers the opportunity for them to decide whether your brand aligns with them or not. In this blog we will cover a step-by-step of how to achieve brand consistency online and offline.

Know your brand.

First things first, you need to know your brand inside and out. What do you stand for? What are your values? Who are your ideal customers? What is your demographic? Conducting surveys internally and externally can be a great way to gather insights from lots of perspectives. This way you know current perceptions and can decide if you would like to change those perceptions.

Brand Guidelines.

Now you firmly know who you are as a brand, it’s time for you to consider how that translates to the visual. Brand consistency begins with the holy grail, your brands holy book - brand guidelines. Comprehensive brand guidelines offer a guide to anyone creating artwork, writing copy or even shooting video. It will include colours, logo usage, fonts, image styles, tone of voice, ethos, video style, the list goes on. We have a handy guide on creating brand guidelines here.

Map your customer journey.

Mapping your customer journey allows you to see where all the touchpoints are from different demographics perspectives. By mapping these touchpoints you can see where your brand must align, which will then allow you to put a plan in place to make this consistency seamless.

Digital Channels.

Most people will interact with your digital channels in some way across their customer journey. Digitally is where most people will do at least part of their research on your company when they’re deciding if they want to work with you, purchase from you etc. This means your brand consistency is key here, utilising the web presence section of your brand guidelines will form the foundation. Once you have an approved on-brand design for your website, forming a style guide for any future pages created should minimise the risk of any off-brand formatting making it’s way onto your website.

A tried and tested way of maintaining consistency on social media and email is the use of templates. Setting up a series of social media/email templates where you are able to keep the same layout but change the images/text ensures you’re on brand every time.

Print Channels.

Brand consistency in print is where we most often see huge disparities. Depending on the size of your company and number of locations, ensuring consistency can be a difficult task. A brand portal is a great way of managing this. A brand portal acts as one central hub from where all of your brand's collateral can be purchased and fulfilled to any location.

As well as pre-populated artwork, a brand portal can be home to templates. Templates include variable information which allows users to edit copy, images and information easily without risking any off-brand artwork. Find out more about brand portals here.