Maintaining brand consistency can be hard after a rebrand. But it is important for the staff, clients, and brand assets to have no confusion. Like applying the new elements in their day-to-day activities.
Everyone in the business, who are working with you will need to be on board. With the new set of rules and guidelines. Around 86% of marketers agree that it is important for the brands to be represented consistently on various platforms. Especially, where they might encounter potential customers.
It will be difficult to maintain a clear identity. A poor brand message and confusion amongst both staff and clients will create reduced recognition in the industry.
If you have recently gone through a rebranding or are about to, continue reading. To find out four action steps that will help you be consistent. And quick in ways to recharge your brand with new brand assets.
Publish brand guidelines
You might be contemplating a lot before rebranding. You might also be confused with different fonts, colors, templates, sizes, and numbers. But whatever you choose the key goal is that everyone is on board with the idea of rebranding.
The process is tedious and requires patience. The first step you should do is publish a central set of brand guidelines. It will help staff to follow up on the rebranding.
The guidelines should include fonts, tone of voice, and logo patterns. Make sure that the central guideline file is set on DAM (Digital Asset Manager) with a cloud platform. So that the marketing and in-house sales teams can access them whenever they are needed.
Make these guidelines easy to put in place
Accessibility should be key when guidelines are made and set for others to use and for future reference. You might be left with a brand identity that will be difficult to access using different platforms. Or unique fonts that need to be downloaded separately. Or every time or the logos only can be viewed using advanced software
The easy solution to this is to store the files on a platform. So, that all the staff can access the updated files from different departments be it the marketing or sales team.
Create on-brand templates
Rebranding can be difficult and stressful. And waiting on designers for their input can be more time-consuming.
An interesting way to engage the employees with the brand asset is by asking them to make their own templates for the content. Templates can include features like logos, fonts, shapes, and colours, with space to add text for sales and marketing.
This will allow the employees to be creative. And create more sales and marketing collateral, and not wait for the designer.
Lock down those key brand elements
Once the designer creates the custom templates for the brand, the only thing you have to make sure of is that the templates are editable. But not fully customizable. Every member of the team will have access to the templates to edit. But you will have control over their permissions.
This means telling the designers to lock essential elements of the designs. The sales and marketing teams will still be able to change some of the content used in these templates. But locking down key brand elements like logos and fonts will ensure consistency.
The extra mile
Now, the quick ways to recharge your brand with keeping the brand assets in mind are to use branded links. For example, you can customise the long URLs by putting your brand name. And on the show with each link by sharing and also making it short and snappy with different names.
These links are proven to increase click-through rates by as much as 39%. This means that a lot more people visit your website from something as simple as using a custom URL.
Investing in visuals is one way to show off the new branding and to spill the word about the rebranding. Visuals can make your new brand more appealing to your audience. On-brand templates can be used for social media posts. For example, quotes, testimonials from customers, and texts from blogs. Then, provide your teams with quality pictures to use when they are customizing the templates.
Appointing a brand champion, meaning someone from the team will take responsibility. For educating the other members about the importance of brand consistency. The brand champion will also track the use of the new branded assets. And aim to make it easier for everyone to follow the guidelines.
Rebranding is a tedious process. That is why you have to ensure that brand consistency is the same. Across all communication platforms to avoid confusion among consumers.
Although it is not easy to maintain brand consistency. There are practical ways you can use to ensure the company’s brand image. For example, using cloud-based design software and creating awareness of the new identity using eye-catching visuals or creating on-brand links.