The way you present your brand should reflect the same amount of passion as the work that you do. Your image impacts very highly on how people interpret your business so it is important to maintain a consistent standard of presentation in not only your brand’s design but also your messaging and tone of voice. Consistently presented brands are 3 to 4 times more likely to enjoy brand visibility than those who are inconsistent.

Who are you targeting?

To get a better understanding of your business and brand you need to understand the audience you are trying to talk to. Target audiences vary and how you present your business will make or break the first impression. It’s best to create an “avatar” of your target audiences. If you’re not sure about how to define your target audience have a read of our past blog here.

Then create a journey of how they interact with your brand - map out every interaction. It’s essential to ensure all your communication, messages, and images are consistent throughout the journey, so you create a cohesive brand and give the right impression. Without a uniform look, the mismatched touchpoints can indirectly portray the business as disorganised.

If you can’t remember how to create a customer journey map, have a read here.

Developing some guidelines

Social advertising is a powerful way to amplify your efforts on social media and expand your customer base. Spending money without targeting the right audience isn't a smart move.

Most new brands will come with some form of a brand style guide. A rulebook containing specifications on everything that plays a role in the look and feel of your brand–colours, typography, imagery, and even tone of voice. It allows designers and do-it-yourself clients to know precisely how to present your brand.

However, not every brand comes with one of these handy guides, so we have provided a checklist of sorts to help you with the dos and don'ts.

• Make sure there is always plenty of 'breathing room' around your logo when used on any form of media - print and web. This empty space allows for the logo to stand on its own without being overrun with other elements. Background elements behind the logo are kept simple as to ensure the logo does not become lost.
  
  
• Keep your colour palette minimal. Too many colours and your brand will look busy and unfocused. It is good practice to stick to no more than five. Pick a range of tones or use complementary colours. A great example of colour use is NAWIC: check out their brand here.
  
  
• Use only two to three font families maximum. Simple easy to read fonts like Montserrat are perfect for both web and print media. An excellent source of free high-quality fonts is Google Fonts.
  
  
• Keeping your target audience in mind, create a suitable tone of voice for your written content. Find existing examples of writing styles you like and save them as reference. Using applications like Grammarly can also assist you in achieving your desired tone.
  

A great example of a well thought out brand style guide is Westpac, have a look at their guide for inspiration here.

Westpac's brand style guide is particular but thorough being an international brand. They have excellent examples of their tone of voice, being conversational, warm yet direct but not formal or 'bank-like'. Westpac detail all of their colours for print (CMYK and Pantone) and web (RGB and Hexadecimal). They have specified their fonts; primary and secondary, images do's and don'ts and even audio requirements. While this is considered overkill for most brands, it puts things into perspective on how important these documents are when presenting a brand.

Creating your own brand style guide can be easy using Word or Google Docs. Still, for extra flexibility, we recommend using Canva: a powerful and free to use (premium for additional features) online application used for creating social media posts, invoices, posters and brand guides too. Once you have all the details of your brand in one place, you can begin to work on implementing those specifications into every aspect of your business's brand.

Applying your new rules to your brand

Once you've created your brand style and usage guidelines, refer to them when planning all your content marketing efforts. When communicating as the brand through print media, your website, or social media profiles, it's essential to keep a consistent tone of voice across the board. Read more here on why brand consistency is important for your social media presence.

As stated above, Canva is a powerful program you can use for almost every aspect of your brand. They provide hundreds of templates you can use as a basis for your design or start from scratch. You can even create custom templates specifically tailored to your brand. Everything is autosaved on the fly and on the cloud, so you never have to worry about misplacing files or losing unsaved work.

Remember to keep brand consistency in the back of your mind when creating any content for your business. As our ability to create and send marketing communications increases, it becomes easier to make a few missteps when crafting brand identity. Take your time, and make the best of the brand you've worked so hard to establish.

Consistent look and feel plus a familiar personality equals a quality customer experience.

If you need any help with your database marketing, contact us.