At ThinkQuik, our business is about branding. Our promotional marketing items enhance your brand by making your business more visible. But branding only works if it’s consistent.
When developing and then maintaining your brand, consistency will not only help differentiate your small business from the competition, but also ensure that you are recognized by customers. Here are five basic tips you can utilize to promote brand consistency.
Get Everyone on Board for Brand Consistency
Regardless of who is responsible for branding in your company, every employee should understand how to properly use company taglines, social media profiles, logos and other graphics, and whatever else may have an effect on the consistency of your brand.
Create a Branding Style Guide
To help with the premise above, your business should have a branding style guide to define how your brand and branding materials should be used. Your style guide should at the very least include the following:
- Business name
- Mission statement
- Slogan or tagline
- Logo design, including fonts, and rendition that’s appropriate in particular situations such as square logo for social media profiles
- Color schemes and how they relate to your brand
- Writing style and tone you utilize in all your marketing material
- Guidelines for capitalization and appropriate use of trademarks, disclaimers, and slogans
- Examples of poor brand usage, particularly when employees are inappropriately representing your brand.
Grant Full Access to Logos and Graphics
It’s important for those on your team who distribute branding material to have full access to official graphics and logos that can be used for publication. You don’t want someone attempting to create their own rendition of your logo or cut and paste it from an online source because they don’t know where to find yours. Place ayour logos on a drive that’s accessible to all employees. Make sure you include the branding style guide. That way they’ll know when it’s appropriate to use what. Don’t forget to include what you don’t allow such as corporate branding for personal use.
Assign a Team to Monitor Proper Brand Usage
In addition to being in charge of distributing brand materials and monitoring proper brand usage, an assigned team (usually marketing) can put together and maintain your branding style guide. You can meet periodically with them to determine what needs to be added or changed in the style guide.
Distribute Promotional Items
Once you’ve designed your logo and graphics, there’s no better way to get your name and brand out there than by sharing quality promotional products with potential customers. Not only will you be helping to grow your small business, you’ll also be promoting consistency in a tangible way.
A ThinkQuik, we’re brand specialists. Call us today for help on brand consistency.
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