How would you feel if you walked into a Starbucks outlet today to have your usual taste and choice of coffee served only to drink it and find out that the barista got it wrong? For the first time, it might not feel so bad, what if you tried another outlet the next day and got another wrong result?
Since the Starbucks brand promises to customize your beverage or coffee just the way it suits your palate and diet irrespective of how complex your order details are, do you think you would continue trying other Starbucks outlets? How many times are you willing to deal with this inconsistency before switching to another dealer?
The illustration above is a simple way to tell you how important consistency is when it comes to branding. Today the competition for customers in many industries is fierce. As a small business owner, it’s even harder when you’re dealing with other competitors who have been in the industry for a long time. Therefore, the need to build your brand consistently is never overemphasized as that is the key to getting yourself to stand out from the competition. While you’re trying you build your brand awareness, it’s also important to be consistent in a way that makes it easy for people to easily recognize your brand.
What is brand consistency?
Brand consistency refers to how a business or organization delivers its messages in alignment with its brand promise, core values, brand identity elements, and customer experience. It refers to how all your brand content is aligned to your brand guidelines and identity.
When your brand is consistent with its messages, contents, and services, it tells the customers and audience that your business brand identity is a strong one, recognizable and trustworthy. This and many other reasons are why consistency matters in marketing.
Here are the top 5 reasons why you must be consistent with your marketing;
1. Consistent Branding creates Brand Memorability
If you’re not conversant with the marketing rule of 7, it states that it takes an average of seven interactions with your brand for people to purchase products or services from you. So if you want people to memorize your brand in a way that they can easily recommend your services to anyone, then you must be consistent across all your marketing channels. Once you’re consistent with your marketing materials including the prints like flyers, business cards, etc., it’s easier to create a memory of your brand in people’s minds. When this happens, it’s easier for them to remember your brand when trying to decide who they should buy from.
2. Consistent Branding builds Brand Recognition
Have you ever seen a TV commercial, an ad online, or driven past a billboard on the highway and automatically knew the brand that owns the ad without seeing their logo or hearing the brand name first? Recognizing an Adidas or Emirates commercial from the beginning without hearing the name is an excellent example of brand recognition. This can only be achieved through consistent marketing by staying consistent in your message and deliverables across all your marketing channels.
From experience, most people feel safer buying a product or service from the brand they recognize when presented with different brands to choose from. Therefore, you must make sure to create a level of consistency with your brand marketing so you can build trust among your audience.
3. Consistent Branding creates Brand Awareness
One of the major reasons why big companies are never out of customers is because they’ve created a high level of awareness about their products by being consistent over the years. For example, there’s no way you can talk about soft drinks across the world without thinking of Coca-Cola. This is because Coca-Cola has remained consistent in its product quality or taste as well as brand messages across all its marketing platforms. Being consistent with your brand marketing creates awareness for your brand thereby increasing the visibility of your business even in a crowded niche. By doing this, you’ll open up your business to countless new prospects and always stand out from the competition.
4. Consistent Branding builds Trust and Credibility
If your friend regularly breaks their promises, broke your plans, failed to return your phone calls or important texts, would you have any serious faith in them? The same thing applies to brand consistency. If you’re not consistent in the way you market or present your brand, people would wonder what is at the heart of your business. Most consumers make their buying decision out of trust for the brand. So, if you want to get more loyal customers, you have to be consistent in your marketing as well as the quality of your products and services. Doing this over a long period will make your business trustworthy and credible in a way that your customers can easily recommend your brand to anyone.
5. Brand Consistency increases Revenue
Did you know that consistently presenting your brand with defined values can increase your revenue by 33 percent? The goal of every business is to grow and generate revenue and yield profits. Whether you’re mounting signages, billboards, sharing product flyers, business cards, or TV commercials and online ads, your message, and presentation format, tone and voice must be consistent. By the time people can memorize your brand, recognize it anywhere, become aware of it, and find it trustworthy, then you will have countless customers patronizing your business, thereby increasing revenue generation.
In conclusion…
Brand consistency is key to building a successful business. The likes of Emirates and Coca-Cola couldn’t be where they are today if they were not consistent with their marketing starting. As a small business or new startup, build a brand that is consistent with your marketing starting from your brand colors, logos, flyers business cards, signages, and online ads. To make sure that your printed marketing materials are consistent with your branding goals, use trusted online printing services like Printsouq. Choose your templates and design and be rest assured to have high-quality marketing materials delivered to your doorstep.