5 Strategies To Build Brand Consistency

Branding has one goal: influence preference so that people are more likely to spend their money with you than your competitors.

And to do that, your branding has to be consistent.

But that’s incredibly hard.

Most companies end up with marketing saying one thing, sales another, and customer support hasn’t even heard of branding.

It’s a mess.

Your brand becomes fragmented. Customers don’t know what to expect. Confusion sets in. And customers can’t prefer something that confuses them.

Aligning every department is the only way to make your brand clear, consistent, and trusted at every touchpoint.

Here are five strategies to help you create brand consistency across your organization.

1. Understand That Branding Is Company-Wide, Not Departmental

A common misconception is that branding only lives in marketing.

But, branding happens across the entire organization.

Every customer interaction—whether with sales, support, or even finance—affects how they perceive your brand.

And a brand is how customers think and feel about your company. They don’t feel one thing about marketing and another about customer support.

For instance, a customer might see your ad, talk to your sales team, and receive an invoice. If these interactions feel disjointed or inconsistent, your customer gets confused. They don’t know what to think of you. It confuses them.

And confusion decreases preference. It hurts your brand.

Every department plays a role in shaping the customer’s brand experience, and they must understand how their actions influence perception.

Action Step:

Determine all the ways your company interacts with customers. Create guidelines to ensure every touchpoint stays on brand.

2. Get Buy-In From Department Heads Early On

Brand consistency starts at the top.

When your department heads buy into your brand, they become champions of the brand and guide their teams to stay consistent.

Too often, branding gets created in one department and then delivered to the rest of the company. And then some departments just don’t buy in. They aren’t fully onboard. Their efforts are half-hearted.

They’re likely to stray because it seems like something another department forces them to do. And they’ve got other stuff to worry about.

Without buy in, you end up with different departments telling different stories—and that leads to confusion for your customers.

When leaders buy-in, the potential for a unified customer experience increases.

Action Step:

Actively involve department heads in creating the brand. Make them co-owners of the branding process.

When people take an active role, they’re more likely to believe it.

As a bonus, you gain a broader customer perspective to get deeper insights while building your brand.

3. Keep Communication Simple: Don't Overload Staff With Details

One of the biggest mistakes in maintaining brand consistency is overwhelming your teams with too much information. When people feel overwhelmed, they don’t know where to start, often leading to inaction or misinterpreting what they should do.

When I create a Brand Playbook for an organization, it’s a large document. It has to cover every decision a company could ever make.

A brand is multi-dimensional and complex.

But every person in the organization doesn’t need to know everything about the brand.

They don’t need the whole Brand Playbook. They just need to focus on a few things that are relevant to how they can impact current business goals.

This isn’t to conceal anything from them but to give them clarity about their work.

By keeping things simple, you reduce the chances of miscommunication and allow employees to execute brand strategies efficiently.

Take customer service, for example. They don’t need to have a detailed competitive analysis. However, they need clear, actionable guidelines to reflect the brand’s tone in customer interactions.

Action Step:

Determine what each team needs to succeed. Give them only the relevant aspects of the brand they must focus on. And provide regular feedback about how well they’re staying on-brand and how to improve.

4. Clearly Align Business and Brand Goals for Every Team

Clarity is key when defining goals. It’s not enough to have a general idea.

Yet many companies have vague goals that are open to a wide range of interpretations. They don’t make it clear what success looks like.

For branding to be effective, you need to be clear about two types of goals: business goals and brand goals.

And they should overlap.

Your branding goals should alter customer preference to improve the success of your business goals.

Too often, companies have branding goals that are separate from business goals.

There will be a goal like “increase brand awareness” without any indication of how that should affect the business aside from increasing awareness.

You could increase general awareness, but if changes in general awareness don’t affect buying behavior, your awareness isn’t contributing to a business outcome.

Instead, suppose you have a clothing store and have a business goal of doubling your newsletter subscribers because you know your newsletter subscribers spend 25% more than customers who don’t subscribe.

And you know that you have few subscribers among women’s shoe shoppers, but you also have some of the highest review ratings for your women’s shoes.

You might set a brand goal to increase brand awareness of women’s shoe shoppers by 15%.

And also measure the impact on newsletter signups so you can use it as a guide for future awareness efforts.

Action Step:

Start with a clear business goal. Then, develop a branding goal relevant to a department that helps you achieve the business goal. Monitor both goals to make sure the branding goal helps make progress toward the business goal.

5. Hold Regular Meetings With Department Heads To Maintain Alignment

Branding isn’t a “set it and forget it” task.

Once you have buy-in from department heads and clarity around your goals, you need regular check-ins to ensure everything stays on track.

It’s easy to think you’re staying on track. Then, realize marketing and sales ended up on different tracks, headed in slightly different directions.

The longer it takes you to catch it, the harder it is to get both departments headed in the same direction.

These meetings allow you to catch any misalignments early and course-correct before they impact your brand experience.

They allow leaders from each department to share how they’re implementing the brand strategy and address any challenges they face.

When everyone is consistently aligned, the customer experience remains seamless across all touchpoints.

Action Step:

Schedule a recurring meeting among department heads to discuss their branding efforts, progress towards goals, and any roadblocks. Use this time to ensure everyone is still working toward the same goals.

Onward

Branding—Influencing customer preference—doesn’t happen overnight.

It requires ongoing effort and alignment across all departments.

Using these strategies will help you get the whole company working in the same direction to increase brand preference among your customers:

1. Understand That Branding Is Company-Wide, Not Departmental

2. Get Buy-In From Department Heads Early On

3. Keep Communication Simple: Don’t Overload Staff With Details

4. Clearly Align Business and Brand Goals for Every Team

5. Hold Regular Meetings With Department Heads To Ensure Alignment

P.S. If you need help making branding a company-wide effort, reply to this email, and I’ll help you get started.