While it’s certainly an important piece of the puzzle, successful branding goes beyond simply creating an eye-catching logo for your business. These days, it’s crucial to not only capture the attention of potential customers with that memorable logo, but to also carry that excitement throughout the buyer’s journey by crafting a cohesive brand identity across your digital and traditional marketing efforts. This means that your brand is immediately recognizable no matter where a potential customer interacts with your business, whether digitally via your website and social media or through tangible marketing such as print advertising, flyers and brochures.

But why is cohesive branding so important? It’s simple: Your branding sets the tone for your business; it’s the first impression for potential customers, whether by visiting your website, following you on social media, or receiving a piece of marketing collateral in the mail. It’s important that your business comes across as professional and consistent no matter which avenue a customer takes to reach you.

This consistency not only establishes brand recognition, but it also builds trust with consumers and creates a loyal customer base that can help generate your desired ROI. In fact, according to Forbes, presenting a brand consistently across all platforms can increase revenue by up to 23%.

So where do you start? When building a brand identity, it’s important to break down all of the pieces that form your overall branding, including fonts, graphics, color palettes, tone of voice and more. Here, we’ve highlighted 5 tips to help you create a cohesive brand identity for your business.

In many ways your logo is the face of your business and is the first entrypoint a person has with your brand. Remember what we said about first impressions? An important marketing statistic to remember is that it only takes 10 seconds to form a first impression of a brand’s logo, so make sure it packs a punch. Your logo should connect your customers to your brand without them ever reading your company name, and on the flip side, your company should be fully recognizable by only its logo.

Once you have a standout logo in place, the next step is to pull complementary colors for your branding. These colors will be used across all marketing materials, including your website design, social media graphics, marketing collateral and more. Color is more than a simple aesthetic consideration when creating your brand identity, the color of your brand is an essential character in your brand’s story. Think about it: UPS built its entire brand story around the question “What can brown do for you?” In addition, colors can evoke emotions and add personality to the logo, which also helps to build your overall brand identity.

Fonts aren’t just fancy lettering for your packaging, fonts and typography are essential to how people respond to your branding. The typeface you choose will help deliver the brand’s voice and impact the way people react to your brand because many will experience it through words, whether on an advertisement, your website or elsewhere. Fonts also enable you to create a particular personality for your brand, whether it’s modern, vintage, romantic, bold or playful, and are typically chosen based on the specific type of business. For example, luxury brands are known for using very clean and thin fonts.

It’s important to be mindful of the general tone and level of formality in all of the writing associated with your brand. Be sure to choose a writing style that meshes well with the image you’d like to portray and the demographic you want to appeal to — then use it consistently. Don’t overlook grammar and good writing. Consider hiring an editor to proofread all written materials to ensure that spelling, grammar and style are consistent throughout.

Brand guidelines communicate a variety of things about your brand, both internally to your organization and externally to the general public, and generally contain standards for the brand identity (mission, core values, tone, etc.) as well as your brand assets and the appropriate use of them (logo, color palette, fonts, etc.). Your brand guidelines are composed of rules on how to use your brand’s visual elements to keep your brand consistent across all mediums. In order to create cohesive branding, take time to create brand guidelines and then stick to them.

If you have questions about creating a cohesive brand identity for your business, or if you’re interested in learning how a digital marketing firm can provide additional assistance, contact Veugeler Design Group today for more information.