Does branding really matter? Can it impact sales or isn't it just fancy logos and colors?
Each time you communicate with your targeted audience of buyers, you have an opportunity to build trust. It is your moment to communicate value and expertise.
Have you ever thought of calling a company or buying a product and something just didn’t match up? We've all been there. Perhaps there were two addresses listed for the business and one was a closed location or inconsistent phone numbers. Maybe it was a customer service experience where you emailed and no one got back to you. You called and left a message but it was not returned. Perhaps they rebranded the company and the logo was different from the website to their business card and then to the logos on their shirts.
According to the Journal of Neruoscience, it takes only 7 seconds for us to judge a person. There was a really great article in Time Magazine about this. If you have a website, we have even less time to make an impression. It's called the "blink test" and we have less than 5 seconds to make an impression. On the web this is all we have before a visitor judges us chooses if they are going to stay or go. There is more research that shows that we can have even less time!
Consistency is key and the time you have to make an impressions is shorter than you probably thought.
Here are a few key items you should focus on to create branding consistency. Try this marketing audit and see where you stand:
1. Are you using the same name, logo, address, phone numbers (unless you have unique numbers for ad tracking) and emails across your marketing channels? Let's be honest here, have you checked lately?
2. Logos - are you using consistent logos? Does your design translate from the web to print? Let’s make sure you have a format that works. One client had a great logo but the font would be too small on the masthead of the website. It was beautiful on a business card but didn't translate to web, so we advised they redesign.
3. Taglines - do your taglines make sense for your customers? If you asked a stranger would they understand what you do?
4. Colors - are you using the appropriate colors for your business? If you are not familiar with it, you may want to explore the psychology of color. I remember there was a gluten free bakery, who chose a color that represented satiety. They had this color at the farmers market, on packaging and in their physical location. Come on, let’s get hungry! We can do this through adjusting our color selection.
5. Typography - are fonts easy to read? What about on mobile, on tablet and on desktop. Have you checked multiple browsers?
6. Page design - are your website pages cleanly designed and do they load quickly? 7. Cross device optimization - have you created experiences that are optimized for mobile and tablet?