CREATING AND MAINTAINING YOUR BRAND
Your business’s brand is what makes you unique. With so many products and businesses out in the world, you need to set yourself apart and stand out from the crowd by utilizing your brand.
Many business owners fail to adequately brand their business which leads to an inconsistent online presence. When your online presence is inconsistent, customers will struggle remembering you and fail to come back to make purchases in the future.
On the other end, some business owners brand their business but make too many changes to their brand. By changing your branding regularly, you also make the mistake of showing an inconsistent online presence. This is why planning and sticking to your brand is so important.
You can achieve consistency by sticking to your branding guidelines. Full-service agencies like CAST Design Team can also contribute to your business’s consistency by branding, designing, and maintaining your brand across all online and print publications. Having your online and offline presence matchup means more customers!
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The Importance of Sticking to Your Brand
Customers won’t remember you just because your product or business is amazing. If they can’t remember your business name, logo, story, or have a way to find you, they will find somewhere else to purchase the thing they need, and you will miss out on a sale, and possibly a loyal customer.
By branding your business and sticking to your branding guidelines, you provide yourself with an invaluable opportunity to not only attract new customers but to keep existing customers coming back for your products. By changing the name, colors, logo, and messaging of your business too regularly you miss out on those returning customers (not to mention you waste a lot of time in the process).
On top of the fact that not having consistent branding may cause you to lose customers, it just looks all around unprofessional.
How to Stick to Your Brand
Sticking to your brand is easy! It’s as simple as making choices at the beginning that make your future decisions much easier. Keep these four things in mind when building and maintaining your brand:
Prepare in Advance
Before making any decisions, like building your website and creating social media accounts, sit down for a branding session. Decide on things like names, logos, colors, and messaging. Your future decisions regarding your business will come from this branding session.
Don’t Compare
Comparing your business to other businesses may cause you to want to change your branding. Stick to your guns and remember that your business and brand are unique to you! Don’t make branding changes because of other businesses. You decide what your business will be known for and your branding will go along with that!
High-Quality Consistency Across the Board
Be sure to use high-quality, professional photos for your website, social media, and other marketing assets. Use the same logo or profile photo on each platform to create continuity that your customers can expect and recognize. It’s easy to play with no fonts and colors but always make sure you’re using the same ones.
Build and Refer to a Style Guide
A style guide or branding guideline should be built at the conception of your business. This important document will help you make future marketing related decisions and ensure that your branding remains consistent across all platforms and in all marketing efforts, no matter who is doing it. A style guide houses the answer to any branding question that may arise.
Benefits of a Full-Service Agency
Don’t be afraid to ask for help during this process. Creating a brand and branding guidelines for your business is a big project, but luckily there are people out there who are poised to help you. CAST Design Team is a full-service agency that covers everything from branding to building your website to social media marketing, and more! While having a professional agency create your branding can add a ton of value on its own, continuing to work with the same design agency that created your branding on other projects can help ensure that your messaging is portrayed exactly how you would do it yourself and there are no inconsistencies in your branding.
Choosing a full-service agency to help with your business is the best decision a new business owner can make. CAST Design Team can handle any project you need covered while you focus on your business. Leave the creative problem solving up to the professionals and you will notice increased traffic and decreased stress. Contact our team today–we’d love to help you in the branding process!
