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September 1, 2023
In a world of ever-expanding commercial channels, there are innumerable opportunities for a brand to interact with a customer. The horizons have never been broader. But with this plethora of potential comes a potential snag. That snag is brand inconsistency.
We’ll look at why this can be a problem, and we’ll detail some methods you can use to combat it in order to achieve the best possible brand consistency across whatever channels you’re using. Before we get to that, let’s start with a definition, just so we’re all completely happy with what we’re talking about.
Imagine a donut shop. They pride themselves on selling the softest, freshest donuts in the business. Their staff gets the words ‘soft’ and ‘fresh’ into every interaction they can. The shop bristles with marketing slogans like ‘Softly does it’ and ‘Get fresh’. There’s no escaping the soft fresh vibe that’s being created here.
So, the shop does well with the soft fresh donut community, and another branch is soon opened for business. Things are still soft and fresh, but this new shop has branding that majors on the filling. ‘Fill that hole’ and ‘Hole lotta filling’ are the slogans here. Staff talk about fillings all day. Same donuts. But a different customer experience.
This experiential difference leads to a feeling of confusion over what the brand is really about. Welcome to the wild world of brand inconsistency.
A quick slice of history. Back in the day, a customer went into a brick-and-mortar merchant and experienced a feeling about the store. This feeling consisted of all the experiences that a customer had when they came into contact with the brand in question.
But there were a strictly limited number of ways this might happen. This included the store’s advertising, the shop window display, the layout within, and the staff behind the counter.
Flash forward to today and the number of touchpoints has exploded. There are an overwhelming number of ways that a customer can experience the feelings and flavours of a brand.
This includes, but is not limited to, websites, social media, email, mobile apps, print media, OOS displays, and that old-school brick-and-mortar site. Let’s cover why it’s important that you get consistency over this constellation of contact routes.
Here’s why it’s worth thinking deeply about getting your brand ducks in a row across all your commercial channels.
In a commercial environment that’s stuffed as full with competition as an amply-filled donut, you need a way to cut through to your customers. You can go down several routes here. One is to use the insights of B2B SEO agencies, getting your business super-visible in cyberspace. Another key strategy is securing a strong brand identity. A collection of different identities will weaken your core message, so you need consistency to punch through and reach the audience.
Get your brand message consistent enough, and you’ll achieve recognisability in an instant, which is priceless in the miasma of media messaging that you have to cut through.
When customers become attached to a brand, they want to carry on dealing with that same brand. They trust it and they want more of it. Crucial in developing this process is giving the customer reassurance that they’re dealing with who they want to deal with. An inconsistent brand can give rise to doubts over authenticity.
So, consistency of the brand heightens the customer’s feelings of security, thus encouraging them to want to carry out a transaction.
If you have a developed and strong brand identity, it shows what your business stands for. Whether it’s ethical sourcing or product toughness, it gives a narrative that tells a customer what you prioritise. If you have varied or even conflicting versions of this narrative on offer, then customers won’t know what you’re about. It can look confused or even cynical.
Maintaining a consistent brand message makes it clear what your business believes in. The more you stick to it, the more sincere the belief is.
Let’s look at what steps you can take to achieve brand consistency across all the touchpoints.
Sounds obvious, but this is a step that catches out far too many businesses. Before you even start thinking about how to achieve consistency, you need to decide on what it is that you’re wishing to remain consistent.
So, take a close look at what you’re doing. Then look at your target customers. Do these two areas mesh or is there a mismatch in evidence? To take a stark example, if you’re selling gear for extreme sports and your target customer is an extremely senior suburban gentleman, then you may have an issue. Unless you love being ultra-niche.
The next important step is to talk to your colleagues. Always remember that a brand experience comes from a sum of all of a customer’s interactions with a business. You can’t hope to be present at every one of these, so it’s crucial to ensure that everyone who is at a touchpoint is totally on the same page, brand identity-wise.
At this point, you can put your brand guidelines down in writing. To have a list of objectives and desired characteristics for everyone to refer to is a supremely helpful resource.
It should include concrete information on fonts and colours. It should also include core branding messages that should flavour conversations. Finally, there should be perhaps more nebulous mission characteristics that can be used to shape employee attitudes.
With the best will in the world, it’s possible for staff to veer off course a little. A brand guidelines document will bring them back on track and keep that brand consistent.
You need to share in the entire journey your customers take, so you have the complete range of touchpoints covered. So, set aside an afternoon and make like a customer. Take a step back and look at how your brand marketing is coming across. What story is it telling? Is it clear? Key question: is it visible enough? If not, try introducing elements of B2B SEO from accelerate agency or other such expert bodies.
Then move on to approaching the brand for an interaction. Don’t just do this via the website. Do it via socials too, check out the app route, as well as making a good old-fashioned call. Every step of the way, are you getting the same story or is there an inconsistency there?
Note down any areas that need addressing. It could be something relatively small, like a random font popping up out of the blue. Or it could be major, like a staff member not sticking to the guidelines in their interaction with a customer.
Here’s the thing you must bear in mind. The landscape of interaction is so huge now that it’s more than likely that brand inconsistency will arise at some point. You may achieve brand consistency at one stage, but things may go off-brand as time goes by. This makes your frequent embarkation on customer journeys possibly the most important aspect of strategically managing consistency across every brand touchpoint.
Whatever failing you find, you need to get the remedy in place as soon as possible, before any damage is done.
You can learn a great deal by pretending to be a customer. You can learn even more by talking to a real one. Customer feedback is like a river of molten gold that can, with the right approach, pour into your business and bestow enhancements throughout the entire operation.
Brand identity is very much a case in point. The vital component of this is that it’s experienced primarily by the customer. You can have a brand identity experience that is totally at odds with that of the customer. But guess what? Your experience counts for absolutely nothing. Doesn’t seem fair, does it? But it’s true. For brand consistency to work, it has to be appreciated by customers.
So, ask them how they’re finding it. How do you do this? You can use a number of routes. One of the most effective is an in-app survey, that pops up at key intervals in the customer journey. Or you can have a final interaction window generated on the website at the end of the transaction. Or you can have a follow-up personalized email sent out in the wake of a completed transaction.
Then, it’s a matter of carrying out analysis and looking for prominent and recurring themes concerning branding across your responses. These should give you a pointer as to where you can tighten matters up to deliver more consistent brand messaging across all your channels.
Customer feedback is a win-win. Customers feel valued (and if you throw in a small reward they’ll be even more inclined to share their thoughts). Businesses reap the rewards of the insights given by the most learned experts in brand identity in the business: your customers.
For lots of reasons, it’s important to keep your branding consistent across the entire range of interaction routes. Thankfully, the steps we’ve covered to bring this about are fairly straightforward to achieve.
By being self-aware so that you know what you’re doing, by getting your workmates all singing the same tune, and, most importantly, by turning to the key experience - that of the customer - you will see to it that your brand is as constant as the northern star. And just as bright and clear to all.
