The Importance of Marketing and Branding Consistency Across Platforms

Talk to any marketer and they’ll almost certainly reiterate the importance of consistency in your marketing and branding.

If you want to maximise the performance of your marketing campaigns and successfully get your message across to your prospects and customers, it is critical to make sure that all your channels sing the same tune. 

In short, it’s about making sure that things like your website, social media channels and promo emails all work together to collectively help achieve a common goal.

A bit about branding

Branding is at the heart of this topic. For any business, your brand is almost certainly one of your most important assets.

While many different things contribute to the overall success of your brand, consistency is one of the main factors in terms of delivering a clear message and influencing how customers perceive your offering.

A brand is much more than just a logo – or the colours used in a fancy advertising campaign.

Branding is about the overall experience and impression someone has of a business based on the various touchpoints they encounter when interacting with it. This includes your website, social media channels, marketing emails, and more.

In reality, branding incorporates everything from the visual identity of the business (logo, colours, images, etc) through to written content, product design, customer service, core values and much more.

Of course, the brand must be carried through to what is delivered to the customer. For example, if your visual identity and messaging is all about quality and luxury, you better make sure that the end product, packaging, ordering process and customer service fully delivers on those promises.

Why is marketing consistency so important?

You probably use many different channels to communicate with your prospects and customers. So, just imagine how confusing it would be if they were all saying different things – or had a different look and feel.

Cohesive branding and messaging across all platforms means your customers will be able to more easily recognise and understand what you are all about. It’s about creating a strong brand that is instantly recognisable to your target audience and delivers a clear, coherant message.

Without consistency, you’ll struggle to remain at the consumer’s top of mind. What’s more, your prospects may be unsure about who you are or what you stand for.

By ensuring all your channels and campaigns are consistent, you’ll be able to increase awareness, boost the performance of your campaigns and, ultimately, make more sales.

Apple is a great example of a highly consistent brand. From its website through to its TV advertisements, physical retail stores, packaging and of course the products themselves, everything has been designed to deliver on the attributes the brand is most famous for – like high-quality design, ease-of-use, technological innovation, etc.

Top tips for marketing consistency

To build a strong brand, all your marketing channels and campaigns should:

• Deliver a unified message
• Convey the same values
• Be consistent both in terms of visuals and language

You might find it helpful to create brand guidelines to help you plan and stay on track.

1. Use the same visual identity across different channels

Visual identity is a huge part of brand equity, so it’s important that all channels and marketing materials have a similar look and feel. This means using the same logo, colours, fonts and images on your website as you do on your social media channels. 

Just think about famous brands like Amazon and Tesco. Their consistent use of visuals means there’s a good chance you’d be able to recognise one of their marketing campaigns, even if the actual brand name was removed.

2. Create consistent messaging and tone of voice

Messaging is concerned with what you say, while tone of voice is all about how you say it – or how the character of your business is communicated in your words. For example, car brand MINI has quite an informal and friendly voice, inviting customers to “live for adventure.” Alternatively, Mercedes Benz is all about quality and excellence, with the use of the tagline “The best or nothing.”

Again, it is important that both the messaging and tone of voice is consistent across all touchpoints. If you brand is friendly and fun on Twitter, be sure that this language is also reflected in your website copy. Likewise, you should communicate a unified message and brand values. 

3. Allow for brand evolution

A strong brand will change over time, adapting brand visuals, messaging and marketing assets to suit changing customer trends, beliefs and missions.

To stay consistent and create a cohesive message, you should plan for this evolution and regularly update guidelines to reflect the changes and decisions you make.

Final words

Staying consistent across all your marketing channels can be a real challenge – but it is critical in building and maintaining long-term success.

Need some expert marketing advice? Talk to our friendly team today.