Cohesive branding is the consistency of your brand everywhere you interact with your customer. As the leader of your organization, you must look beyond the visual image to the emotional connection and how you connect at every step of your customer’s journey. Understanding this connection and your customer’s journey is central to developing a strong, cohesive brand that is clear and consistent in how you engage your customers at every touch point, as well as being understood throughout the company.
Consistency in messaging and communication
Many people relate to a brand by how they recognize it visually. That visual image comes with an emotion. The emotion is formed by how your brand shows up and the impression it makes on the people you engage with. There is also a psychological effect of how your brand shows up and is recognized.
You can control the way your brand shows up and the impression it makes by sending a consistent message and communicating that message clearly. But understand that to have control of the narrative your visual brand develops, you cannot wait to figure out your message and communication along the way. Without cohesive branding, you’ll struggle to grow because the customer will not know what to rely on you for.
While your logo and colors are important, it is not the only way your brand shows up. Your brand shows up in the appearance of your brick-and-mortar store, products and services, and marketing. It also shows up in the appearance and body language of your employees. Additionally, people see your image by how your company presents itself through maintenance, care, attentiveness, etc. Details matter.
In evaluating how your company shows up, think about what message you are sending out into the marketplace. For cohesive branding, you and your team must send the same message and give consistent and clear communication to your customers about your brand identity, who you are, what you sell, and why people should do business with you.
Implementation across all customer touch points
Cohesive branding is important to build customer loyalty and trust. Cohesiveness helps your customers feel like they’re dealing with the same brand in every interaction and experience. It helps them recognize you from the crowd. This becomes the appealing reason why they do business with you.
In addition, your stakeholders, employees, customers, and the community must clearly understand what your brand stands for along with the goals of your company. In other words, for your brand to be cohesive, your brand strategy must be implemented everywhere with the same messaging and purpose for communication.
You cannot rely only on your website and social media to deliver your brand message. You also need to ensure an incredibly consistent experience at every customer touch point and for every aspect of your business.
To stand out and generate more business, you need to present a unified brand message that can be carried throughout your company and beyond to your customers. For example, think about a story that compels people to do business with you and then expand that story into every way you do business.
Ways to create cohesive branding
As the executive and leader in your company, it’s up to you and your team to encourage cohesive branding within the company. Some of the ways to do this include:
- Develop a brand story that is clear and consistent.
- Write a company branding guide that dictates how your branding is to be used.
- Provide employee training to emphasize important elements of your entire brand.
- Audit your brand assets regularly.
A strategic branding specialist like Natasha E. Davis can be a powerful partner on your team when developing a strategy for cohesive branding that is clear, consistent, and well understood. Schedule a Power Chat today.