New research from content creation platform Lucidpress reveals brand consistency can have a significant impact on revenue. In fact, the firm’s new State of Brand Consistency Reportfound consistent branding can increase revenue by 33 percent—a 10 percent increase over the 2016 report.
While over 60 percent of brands believe maintaining a consistent brand is important when generating leads and communicating with existing customers, 81 percent of companies still deal with off-brand content, according to the study.
Your brand is what people will remember most about your company, so it needs to be representative, strong, consistent and instantly memorable if you want to make a lasting impression, the study reports. Consumers expect great design and consistent branding. For today’s customers, they are key components when evaluating whether or not they want to do business with you.
“Companies will continue to struggle with off-brand content as demand for content continues to grow with 50 percent of organizations creating more content this year than the year prior,” said Owen Fuller, general manager of Lucidpress, in a news release.
How to maintain brand consistency
So, you’re looking to keep your branding consistent at every stage in your customer’s journey. But how do you do that, and which elements should you focus on?
- Set branding guidelines for your company
Branding guidelines include details about your tone of voice, preferred professional terms and general code of conduct. Every business should have one, no matter their stage in the journey to perfect branding. But once you’ve created them, don’t let them slip. Treat these guidelines like the core of your entire branding activity. It’s a central document that all members of staff should use when creating marketing materials or representing your company.
- Give staff a branding masterclass
As soon as you’ve created your branding guidelines, you’ll need all members of staff to be onboard. You can do this by giving them a brand masterclass meeting, detailing everything they need to know about the business’ history, core values and tone of voice.
- Provide staff with branding resources
How can staffers maintain consistency if they need to create things for external use? By providing them with branding resources,which can keep marketing materials consistent and avoid confusing potential customers. Be sure to provide font names, logo variations, graphics and color palettes, as well as branded templates to save time and keep a high level of consistency.
- Think wider than your website
Many businesses assume that a logo and a website is enough to put the cherry on the branding cake. But the fact is, every stage in your customer’s experience should be branded in order to maintain consistency. So, think about the typical journey that your customer —if your branding isn’t consistent across the early platforms, a purchase is unlikely to happen. The same goes for social media: today’s consumers are savvy—if there’s an out-of-place tweet that doesn’t fit your brand, it’ll stand out like a sore thumb. People will wonder what is going on if you don’t have a consistent voice.
Read an overview of the research here.
Lucidpress surveyed over 200 organizations across a variety of industries to collect the survey results.
