The Psychological Reason Why Brand Consistency is So Important

People are always preaching that when it comes to branding: “consistency is key!” But why? What’s the big deal about brand consistency?

First and foremost, brand consistency is about trust, and establishing it works like this:

👉 In order for people to trust you, they have to feel like they know you
👉 In order for them to feel like they know you, they must be aware of you, recognize you, and remember you
👉 In order for people to recognize and remember you, you must show up in a way that’s consistent

In order to understand why it works that way, we need to step back and take a look at how the human brain remembers things.

First, a pop quiz:

Have you ever lost your car keys and had to retrace your steps to find them?
🙋‍♀️*raises hand*

Or walked into a room to get something and instantly forgot why?
🙋‍♀️*me… constantly*

Ever visited a Blockbuster Video and had someone walk up to you and say, “hello!” with such familiarity that it frightens you because you have no clue who they are?

*record scratch* Blockbuster Video? Wait… am I old? 🤭

We’re not losing our marbles. This happens because we tend to forget things when we’re removed from the original context. It’s called context-dependent memory.

So if you want to become recognized and remembered (in order to earn your customers’ trust), you must show up in a way that’s consistent so you can be put back into context. 

In other words, consistency helps you avoid the “why did I walk into this room?” equivalent of your marketing messages — which might be something like, “who is this again and why are they in my Facebook feed?” — and shortcuts the process of building brand recognition and trust.

Why Brand Consistency Matters

In order to understand why brand consistency is important, we need to dive deeper into how your customers make the decision to hire you or make a purchase.

A big mistake people make is thinking that marketing is a process of getting in front of as many people as possible where a percentage of them are sure to say, “yes, this is brilliant, where do I sign up?!“

While it’s natural to want people to buy whatever you’re selling the instant they see it, you know it just doesn’t work like that. You know that’s not how buying decisions are made because that’s not how you make decisions.

When people don’t know you yet, they’re not sure whether they can trust you — it doesn’t matter how brilliant your first impression is. They’re going to go out and consider a few more options, or maybe wait a little longer until the time is right…  for whatever reason, they’re just not ready.

It’s not a “meh, not for me”... it’s a “huh, maybe!“

It takes time and repetition for customers to go from becoming aware of you to remembering, trusting, and considering you.

Awareness is a process. It might take them seeing you in their field of vision 15 times before they’re really super-awesomely aware.

So, you’re gonna need a way to get in front of those people a second, third or fifteenth time so you can prove to them you’re credible, trustworthy, and the best option from all the others they’re considering.

This is marketing. This is communications.

Where branding fits in is to provide the glue of consistency in your message (both your words and visuals) and that has the power to speed this whole trust- and awareness-building process up.

Brand consistency is the glue that helps people put you back into context

What is Brand Consistency?

Right now you might be wondering what you need to do specifically to create brand consistency. Before we get to that, let’s start with an example of how it works in practice…

First, think about the people you “know” online — influencers, authority blogs you trust, people you recognize when they appear in your inbox (even though you’ve never met personally). Maybe you love their blog content and never miss it, or maybe you became aware of them on Twitter and decided to join their Facebook community and then a few months later they offered a free webinar and you signed up.

Whether you’re aware of it or not, you were in their marketing funnel all along. They were nurturing your trust and allowing you to get to know them slowly.

Months may have passed between that initial first impression and you signing up for their course, or hiring them for a consultation.

What happened during that time? Was their message all over the place? Did they change their avatar, colors, fonts, and visuals 500 times?

Or were they showing up time after time with consistent visuals and brand messaging?

If you’re clear who they are, know what to expect, and you trust and like them, they’ve “branded” an impression through consistency — specifically, with their words (their tone of voice and personality, their overall message about the problems they help people solve, etc.) and their brand visuals — logos, graphics, profile photo, etc..

You see them post something on Facebook and you know it’s theirs and you pay attention to it? That’s branding.

Brand consistency helps put you back in context so people are more likely to remember you. It’s not a magic trick or some silly rule brand strategists invented, it’s how the human brain remembers things.

Let’s look at a typical customer journey to see consistency in action

Say somebody sees an attractive graphic you’ve created for Pinterest: it’s blue and has flowers on it and the fonts are feminine and classy. They click on it and land on your website.

There, the visuals on your website are exactly as they’d expect — it’s blue, there’s a floral theme, and the fonts are the same — feminine and classy. Perfect!

They want to hear more from you, so they follow you on Twitter so they can get more of your content and get to know you a little better.

A few days later they see something posted in their Twitter stream and it’s red with a typewriter. They have no idea who it’s from and they’re busy, so they scroll on by.

But what if it were blue, with flowers, and feminine and classy fonts? Huh? Huh? Ya get me? *elbow nudge* 

How to Create Brand Consistency

Words and visuals are the two pillars of branding and you need consistency in both — one without the other means “the other” will have to work a billion times harder. Why you wanna work so hard? 

You’ll want to create a consistent visual style for everything people see wherever they interact with you. You’ll also want to be mindful of what you say (what’s your brand message? what do you do and why should people care?) and how you say it — your brand tone.

Visual cues are incredibly powerful for brand recognition, so let’s start there…

Create a distinct visual brand identity

I know everybody’s always saying that design doesn’t hold a candle to copy, but if you want to get noticed and be remembered, you actually need both.  When it comes to context-dependent memory, copy doesn’t hold a candle to brand visuals. *score one for design, at last!* 

Having inconsistent visuals makes the process of nurturing trust and becoming remembered a nightmare. You’ll be introducing yourself to them for the first time every single time. 

If your brand visuals start to feel a little repetitive and boring for you, that means you’re doing it right

Believe me, I know how tempting it is to burn your brand to the ground every time you discover a new font or visual style you fall in love with,  “Gosh, I wish I had branded my business like this! Maybe I should start over, it’ll be more me!”

---

Related:
How to Create A Strong Brand Identity
How to Create A Brand Guide

---

How you use words should be approached strategically too, so…

Establish consistency with your brand voice and message

Branding is not just about using your logo on everything and sticking to the same fonts and colors. Your brand message must be consistent too.

The idea is that you want people to recognize you not only from your visuals but the words you use and the way you use them. Your words are what ultimately determines whether people will feel confident trusting you with their hard-earned cash-money money.

To create consistency in your tone of voice, you’ll first want to determine your brand personality. This will help you figure out how casual, formal, clever, humorous, edgy etc. your copy should be.

(To determine your brand personality, take the free quiz.)

All of these personality qualities should shine through in your marketing messages; people should be able to recognize your brand just by reading your brand copy.

You’ll also want to be clear when you describe what you offer, who it’s for, how you do it differently and why anyone should care. This is the foundation of your brand message and you want it to be easy for people to “get.”

If they don’t get it, they won’t remember it, and they won’t know it’s for them.

---

Related: 
Read Clarify Your Brand Message With These 5 Simple Questions
Check out The Brand Story Blueprint to help you clarify your brand message and write essential brand copy
Work with me to create your Brand Message Foundation

---

How Does Rebranding Affect Brand Consistency?

There are legitimate reasons for rebranding but proceed with caution. Don’t do it because you have brand envy, or because you get bored looking at your own stuff — you’ll lose all the “memory equity” you’ve built up when you do it.

Those “maybe someday!” customers are out there and they may not be at the stage of awareness where they’re able to remember you by name recognition alone.

Now if you’re one of those people who does your own visual branding because you enjoy the hell out of it (ain’t nothin’ wrong with that!), DO NOT keep changing up your graphics because you get pleasure out of trying on new visual styles and colors and fonts…

I repeat: don’t do that. You’re hurting your business. Design is not art, it’s not “you expressing who you are through font choices.”

I say this all the time and I’ll keep saying it until the whole world hears me loud and clear:

Design is a business tool, not art. It’s either helping you make money or it’s not.

Tapping into the power of design means using those visual devices to burn an impression into people’s minds and to help them remember who you are. You just can’t do that if you keep experimenting with pretty fonts and colors and graphics styles all the time.

“I’m being consistent with my brand but what I’m doing isn’t really working, should I change it up?”

Maybe. I see a lot of poor visual branding out there and I know it’s not doing people any favors. If it’s not hitting the mark, a new brand visual style might be needed.

But! People tend to make rash decisions when things don’t work overnight.

>> Have you stayed consistent with your visuals for a long time?
>> Are you showing up day after day and month after month but nobody’s paying attention?
>> Are you unable to raise your prices because you’re not in-demand enough yet?
>> Are you taking your visual brand seriously?

If not, you might benefit from a brand refresh. You probably intuitively know whether your visual brand is in alignment with the quality of what you’re offering.

I’ve rebranded my own business and tweaked along the way because I’ve gotten clearer about my customer, my strengths, the services I want to focus on, and what I want people to know most about me. What I was doing before wasn’t in alignment with any of those things. Whenever I made changes, though, I did so knowing that I was going to lose traction.

Sometimes pushing the reset button on your brand is necessary,  but the sooner you can settle into consistency, the sooner you’ll begin to see results.

You’ll attract the right people to you, begin growing an audience, and start (the sometimes long process of) nurturing the “maybe someday!” peeps.

Maintain Brand Consistency by Creating Branding Guidelines

Consistent branding is easily achieved when you first create rules to follow.

I’m a huge believer in branding guidelines. As a designer, I work with them a lot — most especially when I’m designing something for a larger organization. If they’re working with lots of employees and contract designers, they want to make sure that their logo, fonts, imagery, and messaging are consistent no matter who is producing it.

If you’re not working with a designer, you can create your own brand guidelines and I’ll tell ya — it makes your life a lot easier if you’re creating all of your content and graphics on your own. And as your business grows, who knows? Maybe you’ll need to outsource some of your design tasks, and you’ll want the people you hire to maintain your consistency.

A brand guideline should include such things as:

• How your logo should be used (and how it should not)
• Your color palette
• Your brand fonts and how they should be used (headlines, body copy, callouts, etc.)
• Patterns, textures, icons, photography graphic styles
• Brand voice/messaging — the phrases you use, the tone, and personality of your message
• Rules (templates) for creating social media sharing graphics

You don’t need to get fancy about this. If you want to create a beautiful brand board for your business, grab my free template for Canva. It’s a quick drag-and-drop exercise and it’ll help you think through how you’ll create visual consistency. (You can also check out how to go about creating a brand board in this post.)

Or, you can take an even easier approach and just put this information in a Google doc so you can refer to it when you’re making social media graphics, advertisements, and documents your customers will see. You can grab my template for Google Slides…

Do you need to be more consistent in your branding efforts?
Have you ever considered using branding guidelines?
Let’s talk about it in comments!