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Originally Posted On: https://thriftychap.com/how-to-keep-on-brand-with-everything-you-do/

For anyone with even a glancing interest in running their own business, it should be pretty clear that branding is a hugely important part of the experience. A business is only really as successful as its brand, and whenever a business might be in trouble, very often simply going back to the drawing board on the brand is all that needs to happen – or at any rate, it can’t hurt.

If you’re curious as to how to make your brand work for the business, a big part of that is ensuring that you are keeping on-brand as much as possible in everything you do. So let’s discuss some of the essential aspects to that right now.

Gaining Clarity On The Brand

Before you can even hope to keep on-brand throughout your business, you first need to gain some clarity on the brand itself – including what it is, how it should appear and function, and how you can know whether you are on-brand or not in any particular action or any moment. What does this mean? Mostly it’s about making sure that you and your colleagues are fully aware of the brand, what it’s made up of, and where its limits extend to.

Just ask Elon Musk about the importance of a logo for a brand – in some respects, it’s the main visual representation of it. But that’s not to say it is all there is to the brand – absolutely not. A brand is primarily a character, or perhaps a feeling associated with an image, that you are keen to project into minds in association with your business and its dealings.

So you might need to spend some time putting heads together and trying to gain clarity on your brand as best as you can. You should find that this leads you inexorably to a much better place.

Knowing You Are On-Brand

So how can you be sure when you are on-brand, and when you might not be? This is the question that you really need to get clear on, and fortunately it might be simpler and easier than you think. Generally, there are a few key tests you can rely on to try and determine whether or not you are acting in a way that is coherent and consistent with your business’ branding.

For instance, it is always worth checking whether you are keeping in line with the general overall style of the designed brand – from your signage to your packaging. This is why most successful businesses have style guides to follow – it helps to bring about a certain consistency across the board, and a brand really is only as powerful as it is consistent. As long as you have such a style guide in place, you are always happy to check in and see whether you are being consistent with the style of the brand.

That is only one way to check you are on-brand, however. There is also the matter of voice, because a brand is not only visual as we have already discussed. If you are making use of social media, you will probably have gained first-hand understanding of how important the voice really is – again, it’s all about keeping in line with the character of the brand as best as you can. So that is another thing that you can check to help ensure that you are keeping on-brand as best as you can.

Another really strong sign that you are branding well is when your audience can succinctly summarize your brand, or your business’ appearance, in just a few words. Every now and then, it’s worth carrying out some market research of what people associate with your brand; the resulting word cloud made from that data should indicate whether there is cohesion here or not. Ideally, it will produce three or four words that are much larger than the rest. If not, something is probably wrong somewhere.

Those are just the main ways to know that you are on-brand, and they are worth bearing in mind.

Opportunities For Branding

As well as that, it’s a good idea to keep yourself open to what opportunities for branding there might be along the way. If you are keeping your eyes peeled for these, you will genuinely find that they are everywhere, and you’ll simply need to make use of them in whatever creative way you think is best.

Of course, there are some examples that you might want to be aware of in particular. Any product that you are putting out into the world is a prime opportunity for branding. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a pencil case, some personalized hamper baskets, t-shirts, or whatever else – the important thing is to make use of them in displaying your brand as big as you can.

It’s not only products that you can brand in this way. You should also make use of any communications that you are publishing. That can be an email newsletter, a pamphlet, some social media updates, or even an internal company magazine. Wherever it is and whatever it is, be sure to make use of it in putting your brand on it somewhere.

As you do this, remember that it is often just as useful to be subtle as to be bold. Most people are hyper-aware of when a brand is trying to be forced onto them, and a very normal human response to this is to turn away from that thing. Obviously, it makes no good branding sense to frustrate your audience, so bear that in mind here as best as you can.

Those are some of the main things you can keep in mind if you are keen to keep on-brand with everything you are doing in your business. If you can remember these simple points and ideas, you should find that it leads to much greater ongoing success with your business, and a much brighter future for it as well as for your customers and clients too.