The Importance of Cohesive Branding for Your Business

Today’s consumers are flooded with countless messages from different brands across multiple communication platforms. In order to stand out from the crowd, and most importantly your competitors, it’s not only important to have a strong brand, but also to adopt a cohesive approach to your branding. This means that, whether your customer comes across your branding via a business card, ad in the newspaper, blog article or social media post, they’re instantly able to recognise your business.

Branding, in essence, is a set of elements which, when combined, distinguishes a business and its product or services from those of its competitors in the eyes of its customers. This could be everything from your logo, slogan and chosen colour palette to your marketing materials, signage and packaging. Read on for five reasons why it's important to ensure that your branding has one theme on every platform, every time.

1. First impressions count

Brand cohesiveness can pay off big time right off the bat. People are naturally taken in by something that is visually pleasing; therefore, by choosing a logo, font and colour that is both attractive and legible, you’ll have a greater chance of catching their attention when they’re coming across your business for the very first time.

In addition, when there’s synergy between these and other brand elements, such as your tone of voice for example, it speaks volumes about your professionalism and business’s credibility by showing prospective customers that you take your business and its offerings seriously.

2. Differentiation

Other than your unique selling point, branding is one of best ways to separate your business from its competitors. Over and above the obvious differentiation in appearance, branding can visually communicate your business’s unique purpose and can even evoke emotion among your customers. Branding that successfully evokes emotion is the most powerful of them all as it ultimately impacts the thoughts and actions a customer takes in relation to that business.

"Brand is the promise, the big idea, the expectations that reside in each customer's mind about a product, service or company. Branding is about making an emotional connection." - Alina Wheeler

3. Recognizability

Let’s talk about the popular fast food chain that uses the colours yellow and red and focuses its happy and cheerful messages towards families and the youth.

Without even mentioning the name or supplying the logo, did McDonalds come to mind? If so, this is the perfect example of cohesive branding in action. By speaking with one voice and using a specific set of colours, fonts and image layouts, consistently, your customers can instantly recognize your business even when your logo or business name isn’t present.

4. Memorability

A strong brand helps your prospects and customers to form a clear mental picture of your business. Because of the strong visual clues conveyed by your branding, they’re not only more likely to take note of your brand in the first place, but they’re also more likely to remember and recognise it when they come across it again.

5. Increased Efficiency

Investing resources into your branding during the initial phase can save a great deal of your time and energy in the long run. How so, you might be wondering? Well, by having a set of standard branding elements and advertising templates, you don’t have to sit and come up with something new each time you want to advertise somewhere new. You can simply work off your agreed-upon branding style guide.

Here are some tips for creating a cohesive brand:

• Partner with a talented graphic designer who understands your vision and is able to advise you on, and create, the best possible branding elements and templates for your business.
• Any designer that’s worth their weight in salt will also be able to draw up a branding style guide which can be used by anyone who’s commissioned to work with your brand in the future.
• Ensure uniformity across your businesses stationery, from your business card to your letterheads, notepads, corporate folders and more.
• Always maintain consistency in your chosen colour palette, font, brand voice and a common theme for your marketing messages.