In this guest blog, Christina from Goldfinch Marketing, shares her thoughts and experience on the importance of branding and gives three reasons why small businesses must make consistency a key part of their brand strategy.
Introduction
In the world of ecommerce, where competition is strong and consumers have so much choice, one thing remains essential: a strong and consistent brand identity.
Think of your brand as the face of your business. Now, imagine what happens when that face keeps changing. When your brand's identity fluctuates it can leave customers confused and uncertain.
When it comes to your branding, one of the most important things you can do is make sure you implement it consistently across your business. This includes all your customer touch points, from Instagram to your website, emails to packaging. And I don’t mean plonking your logo on everything you do.
What’s a brand anyway?
Before we dive into the reasons it’s important to use your brand consistently, I wanted to outline what a brand is, as it’s many things, not just your logo.
Your brand is:
- The language you use
- The products you sell
- Your business values
- A colour palette
- Your logo
- A collection of fonts
- Design details
- How you do things
- The photos you use
- Customer experience
- Social media
- Marketing messages
Visual elements of your brand are easy to implement consistently. They also speed up the decision making process by a mile.
Why you need to use your brand consistently
There are lots of reasons why it’s a good idea to use your brand consistently, here are my top three…
Number 1 – To build recognition
By using elements of your brand consistently in your marketing materials, website and packaging, you can build brand recognition.
For example, if you see the edge of a chocolate bar and it’s purple, chances are you know it’s going to be Cadbury’s. You will have made that assumption from the colour and possibly the style of the packaging alone without needing to see anything else. The same applies if you see a post from them on Instagram, you’ll likely recognise not only the colour but the style of their posts and the fonts they use.
This is brand recognition and even if you don’t have a big budget, it’s possible to build it amongst your followers/customers.
When you build brand recognition, your business starts to feel familiar to people and when you feel familiar to them, they’re more likely to buy from you.
Number 2 – It builds trust
When you use your branding consistently it builds trust with your audience. They feel confident at every touch point that they’re still dealing with the same business.
One of the things I see often is businesses who give off a completely different vibe on their social media pages compared to their website. This can be really jarring for potential customers. If they find you through your marketing activity, when they land on your website you want it to feel familiar. You don’t want them to question whether they’ve followed an incorrect link because it looks nothing like anything else they’ve seen from you.
The same with your order confirmation and marketing emails. Once someone has made a purchase, you want them to recognise your business in all the communications, so they feel reassured about their purchase.
Seeing the same visual cues repeated gives off the impression of a professional business, who can be trusted. It implies you’ve got your sh*t together, and that’s the kind of businesses people like to buy from.
Number 3 – To establish loyalty
Building a base of loyal customers who buy from you again and again is not only more cost-effective than constantly finding new customers but also a testament to the strength of your brand.
Loyal customers are more likely to make repeat purchases and become advocates for your business. They’re also likely to recommend you to their friends and family, leave a good review and engage with your content on social media.
These things not only boost sales (ya!y!) they also contribute to the organic growth of your business, which is what we all want, right?
More loyal customers = more sales with less effort = more money = yay
What if you don’t have confidence in your brand?
If you don’t have confidence in your brand it can impact everything you do. I’ve worked with lots of lovely business owners who have lost confidence in their entire business, just because they weren’t happy with their visual identity. They felt lost and it was reflected in everything they did (or didn’t do, because they were avoiding it).
Having a visual identity you love, is one of the best investments you can make in your business and you deserve to love it.
If you’re thinking you’d like a new visual identity, you can find out more about the branding services I offer on my website. Or come over to Instagram to take a look at my work and see how I implement my brand consistently.
Get in touch
If you’d like to have a chat about how I can support you with your branding, you can book a call directly on my website or send me an email.
