3 Rules for Staying On Brand

Improve brand recognition by strictly adhering to these rules

There are no two ways about it - brand recognition is essential for marketers. Ideally, a customer can spot your logo, your typeface, or your colors from a mile away and immediately associate it with you. This kind of response breeds a feeling of familiarity and, as a result, loyalty.

But building that sort of attachment to the look and feel of a brand doesn’t come easily; it takes a concerted effort to ensure that your collateral is cohesive, that your online presence is consistent, and that your audience gets a good sense of what it means for you to be “on-brand.”

Here are a few simple steps that marketers can take to ensure that their content marketing efforts present a united front.

Determine your tone upfront

One of the most important things you can do is to establish a tone. Are you upbeat, straightforward, professional, a little quirky?

One good way to get a more concrete idea of what your content marketing voice should sound like is to ask the following question: Who is the persona of your brand? How old are they? Are they male or female? How do they speak? What do they do?

Once you have a better idea of who’s doing the talking, it’s a lot easier to make sure that all of the language in your marketing pieces is consistent.

Stick with the Brand Book

If you’ve got a brand book, don’t deviate from it. If you don’t have one, make one!

Every brand should have prescribed fonts, colors, and language use rules outlined in a brand book. Work with your design team to make it exceptionally clear which typefaces and hex codes are to be used in every piece of collateral. Establish secondary fonts and make sure that every staffer who may be doing design work has them at their disposal. Then, be a stickler about staying with those images, whether it’s for blog images or Facebook ads.

Knowing exactly which design choices you’ll be making ahead of time can limit back-and-forth conversations between teams and act as a trump card when trying to determine the direction of design. Is it in line with the book? No? Next.

Limit the number of voices

Many firms will shop social media out to three or four or even five different colleagues to spread the work around—but unfortunately, this can have a negative effect on the outward-facing communications of your company.

Maintaining a consistent voice across social media platforms is a big component in staying on brand, and even with a clear, prescribed tone, it can be difficult to ensure that multiple people sound like one. For this reason, in the interest of staying on-brand, it can be a good idea to deputize just one or two people to manage the content marketing execution within your company—or call in outside help.

Need help staying on brand? We can help!

efelle creative is a Seattle-based web marketing firm that specializes in website design and development, website content management, search engine optimization, and other online marketing services. Since 2005, efelle has worked with hundreds of businesses to help them with their web development needs. Call us at 206.384.4909 or fill out our online contact form to get in touch with a custom web design specialist.

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