How-Tu Tuesday: Maintaining Your Brand Identity
Like any marketing tool, it is important to remain consistent in the way you portray your brand and the way in which you choose to voice your message. With so many channels of communication and platforms (both online and offline) to establish a presence on, it can be difficult to maintain a strong identity. Nevertheless, it is extremely important for customers to be able to instantly recognise your brand and not be confused by the different or contradicting brand messages.
In order to deliver consistency and an easily identifiable brand, there are a few simple guidelines you can follow:
- Brand Voice
When creating your brand identity, one of the most important steps you can take is determining your brand “voice” and using that “voice” in all social media posts and communication with the customer. Based on your target audience, you should decide what will appeal to them most; a playful or serious tone, informative or chatty? This determines how people perceive your brand and the type of people you are attracting. It is important that your target audience can relate to you and the image being portrayed is not alienating or turning potential customers away.
- Humanise Your Brand
Brands who show their human side are more likely to attract customers to their company; people like to know that brands care about more than just the profit they are generating.
Put yourself in the shoes of the customer and think about what you would like be communicated to, and the messages you would prefer to receive. Replying to reviews and other messages left by consumers is also another way to illustrate your human side as it shows there is a person behind the screen. However, remember to remain consistent in your responses and never contradict or give an unclear response as this only confuses the customer and gives the impression that the brand is unsure of its own business.
- Know Your Customer’s Persona
As well as knowing your own brand identity, you should also have a clear idea of your customer’s persona. This includes knowing their morals, values, likes and dislikes, demographic make-up and what they expect from your brand. This allows you to create targeted posts and be much more bespoke and effective in the messages you communicate.
Knowing the buyer’s persona also allows you to establish your brand’s niche within the industry and maintain it through the various customer touch points that have been created.
- Be Authentic
One of the most common downfalls brands face on social media is being fake and not true to their brand identity. Being authentic and true to the company’s beliefs and values will instantly make your profile more attractive to the consumer. Thus, creating unique and original content will also boost your social presence and support your identity as you are not duplicating content, which could resemble another brand in the same industry.
You can update or refresh previously published content, but it is important to be both consistent and creative in the content you produce as consumers will then look to you for originality and a unique perspective.
- Remain Active
The danger with creating a streamlined brand identity is not being consistent and keeping it updated. As most brands have a presence on more than one social platform, it can be a common mistake to let one slip or the focus to be spread unevenly.
That said, if your customers are more active on a particular social network then it may be more effective for the company to pay that channel more attention. However, it is important not to neglect any of your social platforms as someone discovering your brand for the first time may come across your out of date or abandoned profile, and this is an instant turn off for consumers as it implies you don’t communicate well and you don’t have anything interesting to say, subsequently creating a very unimpressionable brand identity.
From the points above, it is clear that consistency is key; stay consistent in your brand message, the tone of your voice, the way in which you respond to consumers and the level of activity across the platforms. This will give you a clear and easily identifiable brand, which your customers can quickly relate to and form a relationship with.
