It can have a powerful effect on both your workforce and on your customers’ perception of what it would be like to buy from you.

Most assume that only larger organisations with big budgets enjoy high visibility, and, although that is one way to do it, it can be argued that the consistency in which it is seen plays a much more important role than budget.

7 tips to revealing your inner brand superhero

1 – Take ownership

Ownership is always a tricky conversation. To get real consistency across your brand, it comes down to who you choose to give the ‘superpowers’ to manage how it is controlled and applied. When it’s no one’s job to own it, you have no chance of getting any consistency!

Where possible, ownership should come from the top down. When leaders support it, it sends a clear message that the brand has value, it’s worth investing in and protecting from harm. Think about the number of people who can create or modify both internal and external communications in your business.

2 – Create and apply guidelines

It’s not uncommon to have guidelines, but, the question is, how well are they applied?
Are they detailed enough to cover all the activity you want to do?

Guidelines should be just that, they should help you control the standard and provide clear boundaries to everyone in your organisation. However, you need to enforce them to get a consistent representation across all communications.

3 – Communications planning 

Many of you are used to creating a communications plan which lets you understand all the touch points you have with your marketing messages, how they are seen across multiple channels and when.

However, have you applied that same process across your customer journey, operational documents and your internal communications that sometimes fall outside of your control? So, who is guarding your brand identity when it comes to ongoing transactional communications?

4 – Mapping customer touchpoints

It’s important to understand the customer journey. Knowing all the touchpoints a customer will experience throughout their lifecycle with you will let you understand where you need to apply brand control. That may include phone, letters, emails, online purchasing, customer experience, reviews and interior/exterior branding.

5 – Create consistency

Strong, consistent and visible brands generate greater loyalty. They are less affected by price sensitivity and commercial advances by competitors because of the confidence customers have in them.

Flexibility is important in brand identity. However, inconsistencies will creep in. Many will be done because of urgency and with the best of intentions, but the results usually diminish or weaken the perception of the brand.

Enforcing guidelines helps drive consistency, but there are other aspects of branding guidelines that also come into play, such as how:

• current they are
• easy they are to find
• easy they are to comply with

6 – Don’t miss the social opportunity

Often the first place people turn to, to talk about your brand and their experience is social media. Even if this isn’t a primary channel for you, it is for them and you should consider investing in monitoring as a minimum. Knowing what people are saying about you and then being able to visibly address any issues is a great way to build purchaser confidence.

7 – Stay visible

Whatever elements your plan consists of, keeping your brand visible is the first step to growing ‘brand equity’.

If you want to unlock your ‘superbrand’, get in touch to find out how we can help!