Why Consistent Branding Is Important (And How to Stay on Track)

Establishing and maintaining brand consistency is no mean feat. Digital marketers work across dozens of channels and platforms, often in divided, asynchronous teams, making it all too easy to sacrifice consistency for convenience.

But we all know that consistent branding is worth the work, and it’s easier than you think with the right systems in place.

Keep reading to learn why consistency in branding matters and how to keep your team working from the same playbook.

What Is Brand Consistency?

Just so we’re all on the same page, brand consistency is the ongoing effort to present your company’s image and values uniformly across all your marketing channels. It’s more than just using the right logo, fonts, and colors. Brand consistency includes representing your brand’s voice and tone consistently across all your owned media, as well as evaluating the relevancy of the platform to your brand’s identity.

Why Is Brand Consistency Important?

Branding consistency makes your brand easily recognizable and relatable and differentiates your company from the competition. Consumers (that’s “customers” to you, bub) see roughly thousands of logos and advertisements per day—so many that even ad companies aren’t sure what the correct averages are.

You can bet it’s between “a lot” and “plenty,” which means keeping your brand consistent helps you cut through the proverbial clutter and improve awareness and consideration.

Consider this: You’re driving along a busy highway with fast food joints dotting either side. If Burger King’s signs had different logos and colors for each location, it would be harder to differentiate from the McDonald’s, Arby’s, Chipotles, Subways, and Jimmy Johns’ along the same stretch of road.

It’s the same effect for display ads, boosted Instagram posts, and viral TikTok videos; the more content users scroll through, the more important it is to keep your brand uniform and consistent.

The Benefits of Brand Consistency

Consistent branding has three primary benefits, including:

1. Differentiation – Brand differentiation is a key element in building customer trust and loyalty.
2. Recognition – The long-accepted marketing tenet that consumers need to see something (or hear a radio ad) seven times before they remember it, is now probably hogwash. These days, every customer likely has their own magic number. Using different logos, colors, or fonts means missed opportunities to earn brain space.
3. Authority – Let’s face it: Inconsistent branding looks unprofessional. Misused colors; spelling errors; or mismatched, low-rez logos hurt your brand’s credibility and, hence, its authority.

How to Maintain Brand Consistency Across Multiple Channels

Easier said than done, right? To achieve the powerful cohesiveness that benefits the world’s most successful, recognizable brands, marketers need to start with a go-to source for brand standards and guidelines: a brand guide or brand kit.

Brand guides serve as a single source of truth. They show your team and creative partners how to use and present your brand online, in print, and in internal communications. While a guide is where it all starts, maintaining brand consistency is an ongoing effort that requires vigilance.

Below is a short brand consistency checklist to help you keep tabs on your brand wherever it may live online, in print, over the airways, or on billboards and highway signboards.

Once your brand guide is created and approved …

1. Make sure everyone who needs it has access to it.

Your internal team needs access to your brand guide and so does every new hire and every vendor you hire to create content. Include a password-protected link to the brand style guide, logos, and photos in your brand kit, and any additional brand elements your new hire/contact might need.

2. Stress the importance of brand consistency and enforce standards when necessary.

Inconsistent branding reduces the impact of marketing efforts, which has a financial cost. Coach internal marketers, sales teams, and external vendors to stay consistent and in compliance with the rules in the brand guide. It’s especially important to maintain brand consistency on social media, where your content can be quickly redistributed and seen by hundreds of thousands of users.

3. Recycle content.

Reuse branded assets and elements when it makes sense. This not only saves time but also reduces the risk of breaking branding rules with new iterations of the same deliverable. If your brand needs to turn around branded assets quickly, such as spec sheets or sales collateral, consider using design-approved templates instead of letting individuals get a little too creative with their WordArt.

Consistency also means efficiency, which is good! Stick with it and consider a marketing operations audit to put fresh eyes on your brand’s image and operations.

We’re Always On-Brand and at Your Side

Are products and services important? Of course! At the same time, how many brands would tell you their branding is their most valuable asset? For nearly three decades, Oneupweb has helped brands across the country and in multiple industries create and deploy airtight brand guides that have made them stand out from the competition. Let’s talk! Get in touch or call (231) 922-9977 today. (Tomorrow works, too.)