How to Stand Out from Competitors with Branding
In a saturated marketplace, your branding plays a critical role in quickly articulating your business’s distinction. Since a modern brand speaks directly to your target audience, focuses on purpose, and drives innovation, it naturally develops a cadence with your customers.
Simply put, branding can distinguish your business from competitors and help you win over your audience.
The Importance of Your Logo
A business’s logo is one of the most important aspects of your branding.
75% of brands recognize a brand by its logo
For example, do you recognize this logo?
Without consuming content, we all recognize Apple’s logo at first glance. While the logo has evolved over the years, reflecting Apple’s growth and innovation, you can recognize its content and products simply by seeing the iconic apple.
Does your logo have the same recognition in your market?
Even if you’re not competing at the scale of Apple, you are still actively in a contest against your competitors targeting specific audiences. It’s key not to overlook your logo’s importance in standing out from the competition.
The Importance of Your FULL Branding
Yet, in the grand scheme, there are numerous other components to a successful brand. Even if you have a strong logo, it will fall flat if you don’t have the visual and verbal brand standards to back it up.
Can you identify your brand without the logo?
Consumers are 81% more likely to recall a brand’s color than remember its name
B2B consumers are 2 times more likely to buy from a brand that shows personal values rather than business ones
Full branding should also include:
- Color palette
- Fonts and typography
- Images and visual elements
- Messaging and brand story
- Voice and tone
- (And more)
Pro Tip: Brand standard guides are tools for defining and controlling branding in all marketing and communications (both internal and external). They outline all aspects of your brand’s identity, visual, and verbal rules. Brand cohesion always starts with developing a brand standard guide.
What is Brand Cohesion?
Brand cohesion, also referred to as consistent branding, is the process of cultivating and sustaining a unified brand identity across all platforms and customer interactions.
This means that anytime a customer, partner, or employee sees or reads anything produced by your business, it needs to reflect your brand distinctly. Each impression matters:
Brands need at least 6 to 7 impressions to produce brand awareness
As mentioned above, that goes beyond just your logo. It includes every aspect of your brand. Brand cohesion ensures consistency across:
- Services or products
- Website
- Social media
- Digital content
- Email signatures
- Sales collateral
- Print literature
- Employee swag
And lots more! True brand cohesion controls uniformity for every touchpoint, both big and small.
Why Brand Consistency is Important for Business Growth
With a strong brand, your business has the potential to stand out from the competition and initiate new opportunities leading to growth. Yet, without consistent branding, you will lose traction. No matter how great your services are or how beautiful your website is, if your customers can’t recognize your brand from one platform to the next, you are unable to build brand recognition, which is critical to growth.
60% of companies reported that being consistent in branding added 10% more to 20% of their growth
We can break it down to a simple equation: Brand cohesion = Brand recognition
That matters because brand recognition leads to the following:
- Trust: Trust must be earned, and the first step to growing trust with your customers is providing authenticity and authority. A customer must recognize your business to start building an emotional response.
- Credibility: Repeat touchpoints give merit to your brand in the market. Your audience views your business as a leader in the space because they associate your brand with the target services or products.
- Loyalty: When you’ve built trust and credibility with your customers, they will remain loyal to your brand. They recognize and have experienced the quality your business provides, considering your brand as better.
Your competitive edge starts with brand cohesion.
Are You Confident in Your Brand Consistency?
Brand cohesion is not an easy task. There are numerous visual and verbal elements that go into every business, sales, or marketing touchpoint. You’re not alone:
Almost half of brands publish off-brand content at least a few times per year
Feeling overwhelmed and wondering about the next steps? Don’t worry, we are here to help! Evolve Systems is a full-service agency, meaning our branding services can help you refresh or create your brand to jumpstart consistency. We can also help you develop and execute marketing content that ensures cohesiveness at every step.
Get in touch, and let’s talk about your brand!
