This is a guest post by James Adams. I know I often say branding is not just about a logo, or website, or the visual materials. That said, all those things are most definitely a part of an effective brand strategy. And James offers 9 stellar tips to help you keep that image consistent, whether you’re a small two man operation, or a company that’s experienced massive growth.
Many people would agree that brand consistency is among the most important factors when you want to market your company, to help make it into a familiar household name.
After you’ve come up with that fancy image and after you’ve grown to a sizable amount of people, you may lose sight of the logo, or the large amount of employees may cause them to not become consistent in displaying the same logo, which plays an important role in overall brand image.
As someone in a position of power, you can help deter this kind of behavior and nip it in the bud before it gets too out of control.
Examine Your Letterhead, Electronic and Printed
Are they consistently the same format throughout your business documents? Is your company font displayed throughout all documents? Consider creating a Microsoft Word template that enables you to set a master letterhead, since this will also allow you to define various styles and fonts to use.
Examine Your Business Cards
When you have a large amount of employees, it is not surprising to see some so-called “rogue” copies of your logo to be printed across some business cards. Make sure all business cards undergo the same style of printing and maintain a consistent texture with all materials.
Examine the Cover Sheets for Your Faxes
Have an employee fax you a business document, cover sheet included. Determine whether or not you can properly read your cover letter, and ensure it maintains consistent with other images of your brand logo.
Examine the Templates of Your Email
Make sure you are always using the same colors, sizes and font styles. These all should be consistent with your other business documents – and like templates, it is actually very important to keep a consistent signature among your employees. Allowing them to create and personalize their own signatures simply causes inconsistency, and this is not your ultimate goal. Create and brand unity with defined signatures.
Examine Your Mailing Labels
Make sure to use mailing labels that are consistent with your united branding. This, of course, only applies if your business deals with shipping anything to the public, and this is provided you use labels for shipping. In a similar vein, you should also carefully examine the style and the size of every envelope you use, along with any of the pieces on the inside. The inside and the outside of the envelope should not just be a match – they should be congruent and identical.
Appoint Someone to Patrol the Logo
If you do not have someone for this job, you can still give it to anybody at the workplace. Add a description to the job of an employee that they must maintain quality control over the branding and the logo. In simpler terms, make it mandatory that they be in charge of approving any single document that proudly displays your company logo. This will end, in the long run, much hassle on your behalf.
Keep a style guide for your logo:
The same person who is left in control of patrolling all documents that display your company logo should also create a style guide. Inside this style guide, this person will carefully detail where the image should be displayed, what image is appropriate for using, and what kinds of other variations the employees can use.
Ensure this style guide includes exact, precise details, such as a description of the design, along with the proper color formulas for both the screen and for print, including Pantone, RGB and HEX code.
If all else fails, determine whether or not you need a service for managing marketing digital assets. There are several versions of management software designed to help you save hundreds of thousands of dollars by relying on the program to maintain true consistency throughout your company.
Thoughts, arguments and general hoopla is welcome in the comment section below. If you liked this post, please be sure to tell all your friends. And if you want a few ways all those materials might come in handy when marketing your business, be sure to read 31 Relatively Cheap and Easy Ways to Advertise Your Business Locally.