It doesn’t matter whether you’re working on brand voice, UI design or brand elements, consistency is crucial for your brand.
Not only does it assist in your brand’s recognisability, but it helps to build loyalty and trust with your customer base. Consistency forms the foundation of a unified brand, and in turn that unification helps improve your brand’s experience with consumers.
A brand needs to be consistent through multiple touch points. From a customer’s first phone call to picking up a brochure, the better the consistency, the more reliable it will feel over time. Ultimately, your goal is achieving brand awareness, but it’s irrelevant if your brand is not instantly recognisable. If consumers can’t tell it’s you from the first second, you can’t instill the feeling of comfort and trust to leads them to choose you.
Luckily, achieving consistency isn’t hard if you set the right parameters from the start. Style guides, communication guides and cohesive brand strategies are the foundation of any long term plan. Your branding guidelines should be easily accessible, so that everyone in your business knows exactly what your brand is communicating and how they can assist. By having both a visual guide and communication guide, you are solidifying a cohesive brand experience.
Ideally, you want to evolve your brand to a point where if you stripped a marketing piece to the bare basics – even without a logo – consumers would still recognise it. Brands need to be distinct from competitors, standing out from the crowd in an otherwise saturated market.