When it comes to marketing strategies for your own business, you need to think about what is the core of your marketing’s appeal? What should you focus on? Speaking to a customer’s direct needs? Highlighting the unique benefits of your products and services? Telling a story that gets them invested in the brand?
Whatever your answer is, one thing that your marketing should always be is consistent. Here, we’re going to look at why consistency in marketing is so important, and what you can do to make sure you keep it.
Why keep your marketing consistent?
It elevates marketing to the next level
When you first start marketing, you might feel that there isn’t much to keep your business relevant in the attention of your consumers. Without a strong brand, you might find that you have to focus specifically on the “cheapest” of options, such as discounts, deals, and other gimmicks. These can always work as part of a comprehensive marketing strategy but finding elements to stay consistent with your branding allows you to start thinking at the level above that. You can start thinking about things like your brand story and what kind of mental image you want your brand to be associated with.
It builds recognition and familiarity
One of the benefits of taking your marketing to the next level is that it’s going to start impacting your customers on more than an immediate level. Rather than simply having their attention captured by some deal or offer, they’re going to have a brand recognition moment. They’re going to start seeing your marketing and, thanks to the consistency between them, they’re going to think about your brand and the qualities that they associate with it. Build this up alongside good customer service and it can lead your brand to feel much more reliable. This leads to more loyal customers.
It stops the message from getting mixed
The most important thing about consistency in marketing is that it keeps your marketing simple. You can still have different goals for your marketing, such as driving sales for specific products or highlighting specific seasonal offers, but the core of the message is always going to look and feel the same thanks to the focus on consistency. This includes not just the visual elements, as we will cover below, but also deciding on the type of language that’s going to be used for your brand. Finding your brand vocabulary and the same benefits or focal points to keep returning to can make sure that the spirit of the message is always the same. On the other hand, inconsistency in marketing can lead to mixed messages and, as a result, your customers might not feel like they have a good grasp on the values or benefits of your business.
How to keep your marketing consistent:
Have a set style for your brand
So, now that we have outlined some of the benefits of being consistent with your marketing, what can you do to make sure that you stay consistent? One of the very best steps that you can take is, as recommended by Canva, to make a style guide for your company.
A style guide is effectively a detailed instruction manual on how your brand should be represented. It will include not just the logo, but things like color schemes to use, associated imagery, and even include elements like typography and vocabulary that should be used in text. That way, no matter who works with your brand, you can make sure that they have the tools on hand to represent it how you want.
Use your style across external and internal communications
It’s important to make sure that the style to decide on is used in every facet of how your business communicates. This includes adapting it to different mediums, such as making sure images are made to fit different social media platforms as effectively as possible. However, it also includes using the same styling in your internal communications.
Developing a stripped-back brand style that’s more professional for your internal emails and other communications can make your brand more resonant, but it can also create a sense of belonging and brand identity even in the workplace. Rather than winning customers over to your brand, you can help better integrate your employees into the team.
Work with the same partners across marketing efforts
A style guide can help professionals from different teams maintain some level of consistency between your marketing efforts. However, when it comes to making sure that everything is hitting the same message and driving home the same points, you should consider working with a marketing team that can handle more of your marketing efforts for you, rather than spreading them out between different providers.
Full managed marketing service providers like RSM Marketing can lend your marketing the strength of centralizing planning between the different arms of the campaign. That way, you can make sure that the different platforms you market on aren’t somehow competing with or undermining each other, and that every aspect of your campaign is driven towards achieving the same goals.
Got more questions about marketing and brand messaging? I’m happy to answer them!
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