7 tips for maintaining top notch brand consistency

Are you finding that your brand is not as consistent as you’d like it to be? Want to know the secrets of how to keep your team all on brand across social and digital channels? In this article, we’ll share 7 tips to keep your brand more consistent.

Wait! Don’t even think about it – you know, getting that expensive branding agency to re-think your brand. The chances are your brand is actually pretty strong but it may be lacking consistency.

With a bit of tender loving care, some ruthless weeding and a bit of re-planting, your brand could actually be stronger than you think. And you can do this without spending lots on expensive agencies. No-one knows your brand, your customers and your journey more than you.

1. Clarify who your target audience are

Really knowing your audience will benefit you in 3 main ways:

• Enable you to consider consistent messaging and visuals for separate audiences
• Enable you to select the most appropriate language to describe your business
• Shape and consolidate existing brand materials

There are tons of resources you can use to identify who you’re really targeting. Here’s just a few:

Google analytics 

Speak to your web developer if this is not already set up. This is great for delving deeper into your website visitors. You can check visitor demographics, location and much more.

Keyword search

Great for checking which keyword terms are used for describing your specific business.

Facebook insights

Use the insights tab from your business page to get insights about your fans such as gender and age.

2. Evaluate your existing branding materials

Now’s the time to roll up your sleeves, get the team together and take a good look at the materials you already have. Pop them into folders so that you can easily refer to them as you go. You’ll need to have look at all:

• Internal communication tools
• External marketing tools
• Sales cycle tools
• Any support or retention tools

This will enable you to highlight the following:

• What materials have been created on the fly and do not represent your brand
• Which materials are missing
• Which materials need editing or replacing

3. Review your brand messaging and visual language

Reviewing your brand message and visual language will really benefit keeping your brand consistent in the following ways:

• Ensure you have the right brand assets for your target audience
• Provide a blueprint for all future brand materials
• Be pulled into a set of easy to use brand guidelines

Take a further look at your existing materials. Are the following consistent or is there room for consolidation? Pop all the variations onto one sheet and identify which ones are the strongest and most truest for your target audience.

• Your mission
• Your vision
• Your USPs
• Your logos
• Colours
• Fonts
• Icons
• Tone of voice
• Photography style

4. Weed out any inconsistencies

Are there any inconsistencies of messaging and visual identity? If so, don’t be afraid to chuck things out, just like you would a good garage clear out.

Make notes of inconsistencies with a view to editing these materials in the near future. Be brave. Be ruthless. Remember the big picture.

5. Create robust and shareable brand guidelines

This is where you can transform your guidelines into something a little more interactive. How about creating a web page with easy to access tips, descriptions do’s and don’ts? We’ve found these to be much more shareable, easy to find and engage with than a pdf.

A good place to start is to highlight all the 9 areas you’ve analysed in tip one of this blog; 1. Review your brand messaging and visual language.

6. Set up an approvals process

Yes! You’re proud of your new brand guidelines and why shouldn’t you be? They look stunning and have all the right messages. But how do you ensure they’re actually being used?

One way is to set up an approvals process for all new design and communication materials. Here’s some tools you could use (note we haven’t used any of these ourselves as we have our own approvals tool):

• Pageproof.com
• Approvaldonkey.com

7. Use a brand management system

Now this is a good one. And just being transparent about it, this is the whole reason for our business being. There is no true way (in our opinion) to remain and retain brand consistency without this. A brand management system enables you to have all of your brand assets in one place; including images, content, designs, guidelines, workflow and approvals.

Of course we would always recommend Meadow, our Brand Meadow flagship product which empowers your team to easily create, edit and approve on-brand marketing materials without the need for a designer, wherever they are. You can store images, send social posts and analyse the success of your designs too. But there are others on the market, depending on what your needs are and complexities vary considerably.

I hope you found these 7 tips helpful, and if you follow these, you’ll definitely be able to maintain better consistency for your brand.

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