Speaker 1: When someone is ready to buy a service or product, what you ideally want is for the first brand that pops into their head to be yours. Now, how can we increase the chances of that happening? Well, one answer is to be consistent with your branding. And today, I've got five tips for you that will help you out. Tip number one is to create some brand guidelines. Now, what these will do is these will get down on paper how your logo should look, how your logo should be used, fonts, colours, typography, and in some instances, your brand guidelines will include examples of posters, advertisements, social media graphics, and so on. Now, I don't want to use too much of this video today talking about brand guidelines because I've actually created a video previously that you can watch on my channel. Tip number two is to involve your entire team. Make sure that everyone knows your brand's core values, your purpose, your vision, and your mission. Everyone in your team should also be fully versed with your brand guidelines. Now, we don't all have staff. Some of us outsource services to other people. So it's even more critical that any subcontractors or freelancers that you use are aware of how your brand should be put out there to the public. By having brand guidelines, you can make sure that you have a set of rules and guidelines that they have to follow whenever they're creating any marketing or branding materials for you. Tip number three, have a plan. Many of the problems that I see today with brands is that they don't have a marketing plan. How can you expect someone to think of your brand when they're ready to buy if all of your messages are different? The visual style's different, your tone of voice is different. There's nothing there that when they see something, they think, oh, that's by brand X. I've seen something by them before. It's quite similar. I remember. By planning out your marketing, planning out campaigns, you can make sure that there is a thread which runs through all of your branding materials. It may be a simple message, it may be the use of colour, it may be where you place your logo. There has to be something there that allows the viewer to connect the dots between all of your marketing efforts. Number four, consistency on all of the platforms that you're on. To some, it may seem obvious, but again, I've seen brands who are on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, print ads, and they all look like different brands. It's like different people have been put in charge of each of these areas. You need to have guidance, you need to have uniformity with your branding. As we know, different platforms do have slightly different audiences and do require changes in how you put your brand forward. But you can still do that and have consistency of brand. It doesn't mean that you have to do something completely different. Using tools like Canva or Adobe Spark, you can create social media graphics and adverts that look consistent across all platforms because they use the same visual style and tone of voice. Both Canva and Adobe Spark allow you to upload some brand assets, various versions of your logo, and also your brand colours. Having these quick to hand in these platforms makes it easy to create your graphics and again, ensures that you're using the same elements of your brand in everything that you create. Now these rules also apply to things like TV advertising and radio advertising. You still need to keep to your brand guidelines so that your visual style and your tone of voice come across exactly the same way that they do on other platforms. Tip number five, have a brand guardian. Now obviously, if you're a one person band, that brand guardian is you, so it's pretty straightforward. There will be people watching though who have very large teams. So you may want to delegate a person or multiple people who are in charge of making sure that any branding or marketing materials that are put out there follow your brand guidelines and are completely on brand. By being completely clear and consistent with your branding, it comes across as confident to your prospective audience. When someone is looking to buy, they're going to go with the brand that to them appears the strongest. That confident one, the one which is clear about its message, clear about its purpose, and offers the answer to their problem. You can't achieve that without consistency. So that's five tips from me on how to increase your brand consistency. None of them are really that hard. A few are common sense, others are about communication. Following these simple tips will elevate your brand above those who are still a bit of a mess, not entirely sure what they're doing from one advert to the next, one campaign to another. If you're consistent, then you will see results with your brand. For more tips and advice, make sure you check out my other videos on the channel, give this one a like, and if you haven't yet, make sure you subscribe. I also have a Facebook group called Rock Your Brand where I and fellow group members discuss branding tips and advice on a regular basis. So why not hop on over to this URL and join the group? Until I see you next time, stay creative, folks.