Building a memorable brand is a lot like creating an ornate wedding cake. Like a pastry chef, a brand design agency combines different ingredients at the right time, to achieve something remarkable (and delicious!).
Creating the right brand drives sales, improves loyalty and sets your company apart from the competition. A brand design agency can manage the entire branding and marketing strategy. It’s their job to future-proof the image, so it stands the test of time. Think Ford, Chanel, Levi Strauss, or Coca-Cola.
Starting with the right strategy, an agency must implement it correctly and maintain consistency across all channels.
Brand Strategy is Crucial for B2C and B2B
If you think about it, a well-known brand is a shortcut for buyers. Customers don’t have to read every word on the label because they already know and trust the brand. B2B buyers prefer to purchase an established brand. It means he or she can buy with confidence. Purchasing an inferior product could potentially devastate the company’s reputation.
A brand design agency will help you build a strategy to create the right image. It will define everything the company stands for. It’s more than a slogan, logo, and color palette. The strategy involves the brand’s inspiration, purpose, values, and promise. The agency will advise you on the elements like:
- Differentiators and your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
- The architecture - organizing the different segments of a larger brand
- Personality traits or human characteristics
- Detailing the most potent emotional benefits
- The strategy implementation plan
- Positioning statements and the brand’s story
- Guidelines for all visual and operational requirements
Getting the right look and feel ensures your marketing success. The brand design agency will start the process by performing an audit.
Brand Audit – Recognize Strengths and Weaknesses
The audit is a snapshot of where the brand is now and where it needs to be. It’s the starting point of your strategy, and it will cover the essential factors, including:
- Target Audience
- Perception
- Promise
- Values
- Voice
- Positioning
Your branding agency will help you determine the right choices for each of these to create a uniform and memorable image.
Four Areas of Branding Design
Everything your customers see, read, or touch should remain consistent across your marketing environment. The brand design focuses on the customer and falls into four general categories.
1. Color Branding Capitalizes on Emotions
Using the right color matters because colors evoke specific emotions and can impact your sales even more than the products themselves. When surveyed, 93% of buyers responded that they focus on visual appearance. Almost 85% said the color is a primary reason when they made a purchase.
2. Content Branding Establishes Authority
A brand’s content has the power to persuade. A study by Salesforce reported that if the content is authentic, “80% of consumers said it is the most persuasive factor in their decision to follow the brand.”
However, branded content and content for branding are two different entities. Branded content is also known as sponsored content, like an advertorial. Content for branding is informational articles infused with your values, demonstrating that you care about your audience.
3. Logo Branding for Instant Recognition
A logo’s purpose is twofold. It differentiates your company or product, and it attracts potential customers. A brand design agency uses research to combine the best elements of typography, graphics, and color. Statistically, 95% of top brands use only two colors in their logos.
The brain processes images up to 60,000 times faster than words. Using a glyph or other visual in the logo makes it easier for people to remember.
4. Social Media Branding Promotes Loyalty
Social media is a tremendous brand-building opportunity for companies. However, the content must be more than just self-promotion. It’s about interaction and learning what customers want. 45% of people will unfollow a brand if it is too salesy in their messaging or disingenuous.
Consistency Makes the Difference
Why do people spend thousands of dollars on traveling to foreign cities, then end up eating at McDonald's? Besides being culinarily challenged, they feel comfortable with a recognizable brand. There are no surprises, and they know what to expect.
Like the Golden Arches, a consistent brand message works for all products and services, whether B2B or B2C. A recent consumer trend report revealed that 77% of consumers have stayed with specific brands for ten or more years sitting with trust and consistency as the reason for staying with them.
Reasons Why Brand Consistency is So Important
It's Marketing at the Highest Level
The value of developing a solid and consistent brand message is when a consumer sees your brand or logo; they already know what the experience of making a purchase or shopping with you is going to be like. Brand consistency is not just about the look and feel but about the experience, the consumer has when dealing with you.
If you look at some of the most popular brands in the world, they deliver on the promise of consistency. If you go to McDonald's, you know that the fries will taste the same no matter what restaurant you go to. This is a very powerful tool.
It Makes Your Brand Feel Dependable
When you first meet someone, your interactions with them help develop opinions, ideas, and assumptions about them. If their behavior is erratic, it can be hard to form an opinion of them. Now imagine instead of a person, it is a business you are considering buying from.
Let’s use the McDonalds example again. If every time you walked into a restaurant to buy some fries, they were different, sometimes crunchy, sometimes soggy, sometimes shoestring fries, and sometimes potato wedges. What about if the sign looked different, was different colors, fonts, and shapes. Would they be hard to find? What kind of impression would you have of them? You may think twice about stopping for a meal because they seem unpredictable.
Consumers Trust Brands They Connect With
Brand consistency is not just about logos and colors; it’s about helping consumers connect with your brand on a personal level. When a consumer is able to connect with your brand on a personal level, and that interaction is consistent, it helps support the long-standing concept that purchasing decisions are emotional ones. This helps them feel like they know your brand and that it can be trusted.
Let's use the McDonald's example one more time. Suppose a consumer connects with McDonald's because they value its convenience and affordability because it fits with their lifestyle. In that case, you build trust by consistently delivering on the brand promise they connected with. How would that person react if there were wild pricing differences from one restaurant to another or if only some of them had drive-thrus?
Photo Credit: Apple
