If you’re reading this, chances are you think your brand can improve in the consistency department.
Perhaps your communications have a disjointed look and feel, or your messaging doesn’t feel uniform across every device and channel.
Creating and maintaining brand consistency is vital for building trust and recognition with your audience. It creates a cohesive and unified brand image, making it easier for customers to remember and recognize your brand. Inconsistent branding can confuse customers, dilute your message, and damage your reputation.
So, how can you ensure your brand is consistent across all channels? Learn everything you need to know below.
Note: Brands discussed in this blog were found during our online research for this article.
Why is a consistent brand important?
When you see the Golden Arches, you immediately think of McDonald’s. When you hear “Just Do It,” you know it’s Nike.
That’s the power of brand consistency. It creates a strong visual and emotional connection with customers, making your brand instantly recognizable and memorable. Consistency also helps establish trust with your audience, as they know what to expect from your brand and can rely on its quality.
In fact, 46% of consumers are willing to pay more for a product or service from a brand they trust. Consistent branding helps build this trust by conveying a sense of reliability and professionalism.
Another study found that consistent brand presentation across all platforms increases revenue by 10–20%. A consistent brand image helps solidify your positioning and makes it easier for customers to understand what differentiates you from competitors.
Our top tips to consider for a more consistent brand
With that in mind, how do you create a more consistent brand? Below are six key criteria for building and maintaining brand cohesiveness.
Understanding your mission
Your company mission should align with your overall brand strategy and influence every aspect of your branding efforts. It should serve as the guiding force behind your brand’s visual identity, messaging, and actions. Ask yourself:
- Why does your brand exist?
- What has it been created to do?
- Is everyone in your organization aligned on that mission?
- Does your brand’s purpose align with the needs and wants of your target audience?
It’s important to effectively communicate your mission to both internal teams and external audiences. Internally, it should be ingrained in company culture and reflected in daily actions and decisions. Externally, it should be clearly stated on your website, social media profiles, and other marketing materials.
Updating your brand identity guidelines and strategy
“Branding is the process of connecting good strategy with good creativity.”
— Marty Neumeier, author of The Brand Gap
Branding that is consistent across channels and devices increases its perceived value. In fact, the impression prospects have of your brand could make or break a deal before they even contact you.
A style guide helps set a standard for how your internal team uses your brand to achieve business goals. It’s the glue that holds your brand together and outlines the “dos” and “don’ts” related to how to best present your brand.
Your style guide must include these five elements:
- Typography
- Logo variations
- Imagery
- Color palettes
- Taglines
A visual identity that reflects your brand voice, personality, and values is key to standing out from competitors. Consistency in these elements helps create a cohesive and memorable brand image.
It’s also good practice to periodically review and update your brand guidelines to ensure they align with your brand’s current mission, values, and target audience. You can perform a brand audit to assess the consistency of your brand across all touchpoints, involving important stakeholders for comprehensive input.
Creating easy-to-use processes
A brand style guide keeps everyone in your organization on the same page about presenting your brand consistently. However, you also need to create processes that make it easy for your team to follow those guidelines.
One way to do this is by using brand management tools. These tools help streamline creating and managing brand assets, ensuring consistency across all channels and platforms. Some popular options include:
- Canva for creating on-brand visuals and designs without needing extensive design skills
- Brandfolder for centralizing brand assets and easily sharing them with team members and collaborators
- Jira for project management and collaboration on design projects
- Slack for quick communication and updates with your marketing and design teams
Detailed resources, such as branded presentation decks and business letter templates, keep people aligned on branding throughout the organization. But it’s also important to have regular meetings to discuss upcoming projects and tasks that require cross-team collaboration.
Regular marketing-design team syncs help:
- Get project stakeholders on the same page.
- Tighten up the look and feel of customer-facing materials.
- Group related projects together to achieve consistency.
- Ensure deliverables meet company standards.
Using branded links & QR Codes
Branded links have the same functionality as long links, but they’re shorter, cleaner, and keep your brand front and center. They help drive results, build trust, and reinforce brand consistency—plus, you can track and analyze their performance.
Similarly, QR Codes are an effective, visually appealing way to direct consumers to your content with a simple scan. Using a tool like Bitly Codes, you can design custom QR Codes with your brand colors and logo to ensure consistency with your other marketing collateral.
With Bitly Analytics, you can see how many clicks and scans your links and QR Codes receive, where those engagements are coming from, and even which devices your audience uses. This data can help you measure the effectiveness of your branded links and make adjustments to improve their impact.
Leveraging custom landing pages for your campaigns
With so many social media platforms and different channels for businesses to distribute their content, it can sometimes get a little noisy and disjointed. Rather than expecting customers to scroll through endless posts for a deal they saw mentioned a week ago, you can use customized landing pages to display your brand’s most current offerings and relevant content.
You can customize your landing pages to be a seamless extension of your brand, matching everything from your website color scheme to its font, messaging, and even your logo. Bitly Pages are simple, no-code, mobile-friendly landing page solutions that you can easily incorporate into your social media profiles—where you’re typically only allowed to share one link.
With Bitly Pages, you can create the perfect link-in-bio that’s unique to your brand and consistent with your brand experience to drive more traffic, engagement, and conversions.
Measuring brand consistency and its impact
The only true way to know if your brand consistency efforts are paying off is by tracking specific metrics. These metrics can vary from brand to brand but typically include:
- Brand recognition/awareness: How many people recognize your brand elements (logo, color scheme, fonts) when they see them? You can measure this through surveys, social listening tools, and search volume for your brand name.
- Brand engagement: How many people interact with your brand through comments, shares, and likes on social media or your website? This can show you how well your brand resonates with your audience.
- Brand sentiment: How do potential customers feel about your brand? Are they expressing positive or negative sentiments in their interactions with your brand on social media and other channels? To understand this, check customer reviews, social media comments, and sentiment analysis tools.
- Customer loyalty: Do customers consistently purchase from your brand over competitors? Track repeat purchases, customer retention rates, and brand loyalty programs to see how consistent branding may impact this.
Additionally, pay attention to how changes in branding and messaging impact these metrics. For instance, if you update your brand logo or colors, monitor how that affects recognition and engagement levels. If changes decrease customer sentiment or loyalty, it may be a sign that your brand consistency is being compromised.
Practicing cross-channel organization
The last step is to ensure that all brand marketing efforts are aligned across all platforms. This means coordinating messaging, visual elements, and tone of voice across every channel, including social media, email, web pages, and advertisements.
One way to achieve this organization is through a content calendar. A content calendar allows you to plan and schedule marketing campaigns, ensuring that messaging and visuals are consistent. It also allows for coordination between departments and teams, as everyone can see what is being promoted and when.
Regular team meetings, whether bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly, can also aid in cross-channel organization. These meetings allow teams to discuss upcoming campaigns and projects, align on messaging and branding, and address potential conflicts or concerns.
Challenges that could make brand consistency difficult to implement
Setting up comprehensive and consistent branding strategies can be challenging, and you may face some roadblocks, including:
Fragmented internal communication channels
Disjointed internal communication channels can lead to inconsistent messaging and branding, especially when teams are siloed and unaware of each other’s efforts. A centralized platform for internal communication can facilitate collaboration and ensure that all teams are aligned in their branding efforts.
It can also serve as a central repository for brand guidelines, ensuring everyone has access to the latest versions and updates. Excellent communication tools for team collaboration include Slack, Asana, Microsoft Teams, and Trello.
Rapid market changes
Rapid market changes, such as emerging technologies, shifting consumer behaviors and preferences, and global events, can challenge a brand’s consistency efforts. Brands must remain flexible and adapt to these changes while staying true to their core values and messaging.
Over the years, Coca-Cola has successfully adapted its branding and messaging to stay relevant and appeal to changing consumer preferences. From the iconic “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” campaign in 1971 to the “Taste the Feeling” campaign in 2016, Coca-Cola has consistently maintained its brand identity while adapting to evolving market trends.
Nike has also continuously evolved its branding to stay relevant and appeal to a diverse audience. In the 1980s, it focused on athletes with its “Just Do It” campaign, but as cultural attitudes changed, Nike pivoted to embrace diversity and inclusivity in its messaging.
In 2019, it released the “Dream Crazier” campaign, featuring inspiring messages of female empowerment and breaking barriers. Nike’s consistent branding message of determination and excellence has remained at the core, while its campaigns have evolved to reflect societal changes.
Limited resources or budget
When resources or budget are limited, it may be challenging to maintain consistent branding across all touchpoints. However, you can prioritize your efforts by focusing on cost-effective strategies that offer the highest return on investment.
Brand building on social media platforms and content marketing are two of the most cost-effective ways to maintain consistent branding. They allow businesses to reach a wide audience, engage with customers, and showcase their brand’s values and messaging.
To further maximize your branding efforts, leverage Bitly’s branded links to create trackable, shareable URLs using your custom domain name. This not only enhances brand visibility without significant costs but also provides valuable analytics to optimize future campaigns with Bitly.
Bitly Analytics provides insights into link clicks, geographic location of clickers, devices used, and other metrics for data-driven decision-making.
Fluctuating customer experiences
Inconsistent customer experiences, whether it be in-store, online, or through customer service interactions, can create confusion and tarnish a brand’s image.
Standardized protocols for customer interactions are crucial to maintaining consistent branding. This includes training employees on how to represent the brand and handle customer interactions and providing clear guidelines for online communication and social media engagement.
Surveys and direct feedback channels are invaluable in addressing inconsistencies in customer experiences. You can use Bitly’s branded links for feedback forms and surveys to ensure that even your feedback methods align with your brand’s identity.
This attention to detail across all touchpoints helps build trust with customers and reinforces the brand’s consistency.
Build a more consistent brand experience with Bitly’s tools
A consistent brand experience helps businesses establish and maintain a strong identity, build trust with customers, and drive success. Keep your branding efforts cohesive by prioritizing effective internal communication, staying adaptable to market changes, utilizing cost-effective strategies, and focusing on consistent customer experiences.
Bitly’s suite of tools, including branded links, QR Codes, and landing pages, provides valuable resources to enhance brand consistency and track campaign success. With Bitly Analytics, you can easily incorporate these Bitly products into your social media and content marketing efforts and gain valuable insights into customer engagement—using these insights to strengthen and inform future campaigns.
Discover how Bitly’s tools can elevate your branding efforts.