How to create a strong and coherent brand | SiteMap 38
Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2025 9:00 am
Hello everyone, we are back with another SiteMap, your guide to digital marketing.
In the last 2 programs we presented you with some recommendations to follow to achieve an effective website and what to do to not waste the SEO value of an old website when creating a new one, an extremely important process.
But in addition to a good website and a search engine optimization strategy, when a company wants to start or increase its digital marketing efforts, it is quite likely that it will want to include other tactics, such as social media marketing , email marketing and online advertising . The problem is that many brands often end up communicating inconsistently and sometimes even contradictorily across different channels.
WHAT IS A BRAND?
A brand is what remains of the set of manifestations of a part time data company, product or service, the set of associations and sensations that people have when they come into contact with these manifestations, whether they are concrete or fictional. The lack of multichannel coherence generates noise in communication and noise confuses the receiver , which makes it difficult to create strong brands.
THE IMPORTANCE OF MULTICHANNEL COHERENCE IN BRANDING PROCESSES
Building a brand requires time, strategy and communicative coherence at each of the points of contact established with customers or potential customers, i.e. multi-channel coherence. A careful brand management process ( branding ) can make a very positive contribution to shaping the set of attributes associated with it, promoting awareness, increasing credibility and generating trust in the customer or potential customer.
But be careful, it is a mistake to sum up multichannel coherence as visual consistency. Consistency in the use of the logo, colors or font on the website, on the company card, on the envelopes or in the campaign creatives is important, of course, but we are also talking about the brand's tone of voice, the emotions it wants to convey and the terminology used. The coherence we are looking for is at the level of the message, which is made up of all these elements.
WHAT TO DO TO COMMUNICATE YOUR BRAND CONSISTENTLY
There is no point in having very strict guidelines in terms of graphic standardization if the brand's communication at different touchpoints is not aligned with the company's positioning in the market and its brand promise .
Obviously, this implies, upstream:
Rigorously define a brand strategy and its positioning
Have a brand identity and a tone of voice that reflects it
Unfortunately, this is exactly where things usually start to go wrong.
Downstream is important:
Create and disseminate a visual identity manual internally
Provide the appropriate person with the instruments /materials to be able to apply it
Involve competent professionals (from the company or an agency) in the branding process
One final note to emphasize the following: brand coherence cannot be an obstacle to innovation . Ideally, each part should contribute to the whole, leaving room for creativity whenever it is justified. This is exactly why marketers today prefer “coherence” to “consistency” , which refers to a more compulsive adherence to a more rigid model.
In the last 2 programs we presented you with some recommendations to follow to achieve an effective website and what to do to not waste the SEO value of an old website when creating a new one, an extremely important process.
But in addition to a good website and a search engine optimization strategy, when a company wants to start or increase its digital marketing efforts, it is quite likely that it will want to include other tactics, such as social media marketing , email marketing and online advertising . The problem is that many brands often end up communicating inconsistently and sometimes even contradictorily across different channels.
WHAT IS A BRAND?
A brand is what remains of the set of manifestations of a part time data company, product or service, the set of associations and sensations that people have when they come into contact with these manifestations, whether they are concrete or fictional. The lack of multichannel coherence generates noise in communication and noise confuses the receiver , which makes it difficult to create strong brands.
THE IMPORTANCE OF MULTICHANNEL COHERENCE IN BRANDING PROCESSES
Building a brand requires time, strategy and communicative coherence at each of the points of contact established with customers or potential customers, i.e. multi-channel coherence. A careful brand management process ( branding ) can make a very positive contribution to shaping the set of attributes associated with it, promoting awareness, increasing credibility and generating trust in the customer or potential customer.
But be careful, it is a mistake to sum up multichannel coherence as visual consistency. Consistency in the use of the logo, colors or font on the website, on the company card, on the envelopes or in the campaign creatives is important, of course, but we are also talking about the brand's tone of voice, the emotions it wants to convey and the terminology used. The coherence we are looking for is at the level of the message, which is made up of all these elements.
WHAT TO DO TO COMMUNICATE YOUR BRAND CONSISTENTLY
There is no point in having very strict guidelines in terms of graphic standardization if the brand's communication at different touchpoints is not aligned with the company's positioning in the market and its brand promise .
Obviously, this implies, upstream:
Rigorously define a brand strategy and its positioning
Have a brand identity and a tone of voice that reflects it
Unfortunately, this is exactly where things usually start to go wrong.
Downstream is important:
Create and disseminate a visual identity manual internally
Provide the appropriate person with the instruments /materials to be able to apply it
Involve competent professionals (from the company or an agency) in the branding process
One final note to emphasize the following: brand coherence cannot be an obstacle to innovation . Ideally, each part should contribute to the whole, leaving room for creativity whenever it is justified. This is exactly why marketers today prefer “coherence” to “consistency” , which refers to a more compulsive adherence to a more rigid model.