You’ve probably heard it before, but in case you haven’t: the most effective branding is consistent branding.

What does brand consistency mean?

Brand consistency is maintaining a consistent image, look and feel across all aspects of your brand. When establishing your brand, it’s important to start with a clear idea of what you want people to think and feel when they see your logo or hear about your service – and then keep repeating it in slightly different ways.

From a customer’s perspective, consistency helps build customer trust by making them feel like they know what to expect when interacting with your business. Consistency makes it easier for customers to associate the feelings you associate with your brand with your company when they see your branding. This can go a long way towards helping them decide whether or not working with you would benefit them in the long run (or not).

The benefits of brand consistency

• Increases customer loyalty by making them feel like part of something special
• You avoid confusion
• People trust things they know
• It makes your business make sense—and you increase your returns
• Consistency makes marketing easier

Why is brand consistency so important?

There are many benefits to brand consistency. It makes your brand easily recognizable, which can help you stand out from the competition. When people see a logo, they know what they’re getting and feel confident they’ll like it. This leads them to associate your company with positive feelings, which helps enhance its reputation in the marketplace.

Increases customer loyalty by making them feel like part of something special

Sort of like being part of an exclusive club where everyone knows each other by name (or at least by face). This sense of belonging is important for businesses because it leads customers back repeatedly — because who wants to go somewhere where no one knows their name?

Avoid confusion

The obvious reason is that your potential clients and customers are being introduced to you, and you want to ensure they understand. As a small business (in contrast to a well-known multinational corporation), make it easy for someone to remember you by being consistent with how you present yourself. 

People take notice of certain elements but can only sometimes remember all the details. For example, you meet a potential client at a networking event and give them your business card with a large, red, circular logo.

A few weeks later, that person thinks they may need your services, so they google your name and go to your website. They feel confident they’re in the right place if they see a large, red, circular logo. If on your website, you show your logo (even the same graphic) in green, they’ll need clarification and question whether this is indeed the same person and company they’d met previously.

People trust things they know.

The first example highlights the most basic type of confusion that can cost you sales. But often, it is more subtle than that. Every time a potential client hears your business name or sees your logo, it gets registered, even slightly, in their memory. The stronger a memory—and therefore connection—someone has to a brand, the more likely they’re to buy from your brand. Consumers are likelier to choose familiar brands because they seem known, established, and trustworthy.

It makes your business make sense—and you increase your returns

As a business owner, it’s your job to ensure consistency, even when you work with multiple platforms or vendors. For example, an entrepreneur who decides to hire a web development firm to create their website and another design studio for their printed work without having the two end products coordinated. In this example, you’ve paid for two projects, but rather than having those two pieces compounding your brand and building them exponentially, you may end up with two unmatched or poorly matched marketing tools. Therefore, the two pieces are less effective in building brand recognition than one coordinated effort.

Consistency makes marketing easier

When consumers recognize your brand from one medium (email newsletters) across multiple channels (social media), then there’s less work required on your end since everything already aligns nicely together visually based on those earlier impressions formed through previous interactions with this same content/message combination previously delivered via another channel such as print advertising campaigns where visual elements were used heavily throughout each ad copy paragraph explaining why consumers should use whatever product or service being advertised therein instead.

How to Create a Consistent Brand Experience

To create a consistent brand experience, you must first identify your brand values. These are the things that make up your company’s identity and personality–what makes it unique? Once you’ve identified these qualities, it’s time to choose a color palette and visual language that reflects them.

Visual brand consistency means:

• Using the same logo, and/or logotype. Typesetting the name and other elements in a fixed fashion.
• Choosing a couple of typefaces and using them all the time. Read these tips about working with fonts.
• Choosing a corporate color or color palette and using them as the dominant color scheme throughout your materials—printed or online.
• Using consistent visual elements across media. Some examples are: always using a certain style of photography, always setting quotations in Garamond Italic, or always having one large color block at the top of the page.
• Creating “lock-ups” for your elements. This means, for example, a certain way of setting the logo + tagline. These groupings become fixed.
• Creating design systems that are similar throughout all of your materials. Certain elements should always be the same from a business card to a website to an educational brochure.

Next comes creating messaging that aligns with those values (and vice versa). For example: if one of your core values is being eco-friendly, messaging like “100% renewable energy” or “plant-based materials” will help reinforce this idea in consumers’ minds when they see your products or advertisements.

Brand consistency in your language means:

• Using the same business name in your logo, in your social media handles and in your domain name.
• Using the same words and phrases when describing your product or services.
• Creating a tagline that summarizes your unique value.

The Role of Consistency in Branding

Consistency is important to branding because it creates a lasting impression and establishes your brand identity. Consistency also enhances your reputation, makes your brand easily recognizable, drives brand loyalty, and helps you stand out from the crowd.

Consistency is essential in branding because it allows people to recognize your business as soon as they see or hear about it. Suppose there are inconsistencies between different parts of your marketing materials (such as website copy versus social media posts). In that case, people may not be able to identify what they’re looking at as belonging together–or even know if they should trust what they’re seeing!

Final thoughts

Consistency is one of the most important aspects of branding. It helps your customers recognize your brand and know what to expect.

Consistency is also crucial for building trust, which is essential for the success of any business or organization.
Branding Compass has an easy-to-follow, step-by-step process for designing consistent branding. Start Branding Compass for free.