When you look at your website, social media and marketing as a whole – do they all look similar and instantly recognisable to your business or are they a bit all over the place? When your marketing efforts happen little by little, cohesive branding can often get forgotten.
Getting your branding right from the start doesn't always have to be complicated. Just making a few simple changes can really make a difference to the way people perceive your business. Don't let 'branding' scare you!
When you start your business you normally start with a business card or with a design for your socials that you love. Then when you create your website, you choose a different style and maybe different colours. When potential clients and customers look at all these things on their own, they may not think too much about it. But if they flow through your sales funnel from your socials or paid advertising, to your website then contact form and they are unrecognisable as you – what do you think their thoughts will be? That it is maybe a bit disorganized or unprofessional; or worse? Your potential clients may actually feel like they have been lead to another business entirely. That is why it is important to have cohesive branding across all of your marketing channels so potential clients and customers can instantly recognise you; as you.
Let’s look into the importance of cohesive branding and how you can use it across all your marketing platforms and customer facing touchpoints.
What is cohesive branding?
Cohesive branding is ensuring that your business branding is consistent across all visible and market facing platforms. This means using the same colours across your all of your print and digital marketing and ensuring your logo is used on all communications, in the same style.
Your branding will say a lot about your business and ensure that you are showing your business in a professional and streamlined way. It portrays that you are organised and trustworthy and will go a long way to help you to secure clients and your position within the industry.
Your branding should be consistent across your print media and communications, including business cards and mailouts. It should also flow across into your website and social media platforms and any communication you have with your audience.
What is the importance of cohesive branding?
You may be wondering why it is so important to bring all of your communications and marketing together and give it all a very look. What difference does it make to your potential customers? Well, it is actually a great way to showcase your business without cluttering your message with messy design elements. There are many benefits to using well designed branding for your business.
Let’s dig into the detail…
· Helps to give potential customers a good first impression
Let’s say you give a business card to a potential customer, they love the look of it and how professional it looks. They then follow the link and go to your website but the website looks completely different. There are different colours and fonts than those used on the business card. What are they going to think? Are they going to build a good first impression of you and your business or wonder if you have got your sh*t together? #letsbehonest
By having cohesive branding across the entirety of your business, they will be able to seamlessly go from your business card to your website without any second thoughts and any marketing you put out into the big wide world will be much more easily recognised and remembered, exactly what we want in life!
Potential customers are much more likely to build a good (or great) first impression of your business if it looks and feels the part.
· Shows your professionalism
A business that uses a well designed logo and brand style within their businesses marketing is always going to look more professional than a business that hasn’t synced all their marketing efforts together. A professional looking business is the business that is more likely to get the sale or convert the lead!
Being able to show your businesses professionalism and secure your position within the industry as a leader is a goal that all business owners should have. Your design and marketing efforts won’t go un-noticed (I promise). Potential clients and customers will notice the hard work you have put in to designing and styling your business without a second thought.
A lot of people think it doesn’t matter, but it is that subconscious decision that the customer makes to go with the better looking brand we all want and it isn’t hard to achieve!
· Reduces your stress and work load
How much time do you spend on your design and marketing, trying to remember which logo and colours you are using for which platform? By using cohesive branding across all your marketing platforms you can reduce the time that you are spending on that side of the business with minimal effort.
An aligned design across all platforms means that you are able to quickly and easily make changes, build new website pages and post new content to your social media channels with easy to use templates and brand guidelines that will become second nature.
A reduced work load can also help to relieve work related stress. Rather than getting stressed and spending hours on end trying to design new posts or pages, it can all be created quickly with the use of cohesive templates.
How do I ensure a cohesive branding approach?
Now that you have a little more understanding into the importance of cohesive branding, I am sure your next question is “how to I achieve it?”
Here are a few of my quick tips to help you to create the branding your business wants and needs to be able to succeed.
· Choose your colour palette
Take the time to choose the colours that you want to represent your business and then stick with them. Unless you are undergoing a full rebranding, the colours you have picked are there to stay. Make sure you write down the hex codes and create yourself a colour palette so you can easily refer back to it. Doing this also means you can easily give the palette and guidelines to any one who is helping you with your marketing and they can automatically use the correct colours to use and keep your branding aligned from the get go.
· Stick to one or two fonts
You don’t need a new font for each new project. Much like with your colours, choose your fonts and then stick with them.
Having just a couple of fonts that you use means that you are able to keep everything aligned and organised.
· Create different versions of the same logo
Not every platform that you use is going to be using the same size images. That is why it is a good idea to create a few different versions of your logo to work across all your marketing efforts. The same logo as the main event but look at how it is going to fit into the different image types. You may need a copy of your logo on a horizontal and vertical scale. Or a simplified version to use on social media.
It is a good idea to prepare your logo in both black and white or light/dark from the start as an alternative to be used sparingly when required.
Remember, have your colour palette and fonts with you whenever you are creating content and marketing materials to ensure it is all going to align beautifully.
Your branding will say a lot about your business. It is important to take the time to create branding that is going to stand out and help your customers remember you and show your professionalism within your industry.
A cohesive branding approach can help you to take your business to the next level.
