The Power of Brand Continuity

Har­ness the pow­er of brand con­ti­nu­ity in 2016! Many of our clients come to Nicte Cre­ative Design seek­ing to cre­ate, strength­en or recre­ate their brand­ing. And now is a great time for it!

The dawn of a new year is full of oppor­tu­ni­ty, fill­ing us with a sense of refreshed moti­va­tion and new per­spec­tive. The world seems a lit­tle qui­eter as every­one recov­ers from the hol­i­days and focus­es on what’s ahead — so Jan­u­ary nat­u­ral­ly becomes a great month for reassess­ment and goal setting.

Harness the Power of Brand Continuity

Since our process is to work with our clients in an in-depth way, one of the first things we do to is to help them assess their com­pa­ny and ser­vice or prod­uct identity.

We see brand con­ti­nu­ity as three fold: 

1. YOUR VISUAL IDENTITY 

Your logo, col­ors, typog­ra­phy, pho­tog­ra­phy, pat­terns, tag lines, mas­cots or characters/spokespeople.

2. YOUR DIGITAL PRESENCE 

Com­mu­ni­cat­ing with your clients online — from your web­site to social media to blog posts, ads and articles.

3. MARKETING CONTINUITY 

Car­ry­ing your brand into the world with con­sis­ten­cy, across all on-site visu­als to print­ed col­lat­er­al to posts on your social media plat­forms.  

Once you have your visual identity set, the other two elements need attention.

Whether your web­site is well estab­lished or you are cre­at­ing one, we ask:

• What do you do/offer cus­tomer? Is that clear on the top of the land­ing page?
• Is it easy to know what to do next? Is there an obvi­ous call to action but­ton to buy, book, get more info or con­tact us?
• Is your con­tact info – email, phone num­bers, address — CLEAR and OBVIOUS, on the top and bot­tom of the “fold”?
•  Do the drop down menus clear­ly illus­trate what a cus­tomer may be look­ing for? Are they easy to nav­i­gate or do they have to dig? Are terms too ambigu­ous? Can a user get to what they want direct­ly by using them?
•  And — key for SEO — are you adding valu­able con­tent of some kind each month?
• Do you have the icons that hyper­link vis­i­tors to your social media plat­forms? And are they clear and easy to find and click?

Here are two great exam­ples of com­pa­nies who do that well.

We love work­ing with PetsBest.com, a pet insur­ance com­pa­ny. Their web­site is easy on the eyes and makes it sim­ple to do what you’re there for — find more infor­ma­tion on what they do, get a quote, or con­tact them.

Their bold col­ors are appeal­ing and iden­ti­fy­ing: navy and teal on white, with calls to action high­light­ed by a deep orange-red. Notice how they have their phone num­ber list­ed both above and below the fold. And at the bot­tom, siz­able icons hyper­link to their four social media platforms.

Social media is where the brand con­ti­nu­ity ball often gets dropped. Learn­ing to max­i­mize it as a busi­ness mar­ket­ing tool has become, for many, an essen­tial pro­fes­sion­al skill.

The good news? Social Media mar­ket­ing is low cost, poten­tial­ly far reach­ing, and offers some­thing extreme­ly impor­tant that’s often over­looked: one to one con­tact with your cus­tomers. Not to men­tion that you have total con­trol over your posts and how your com­pa­ny inter­acts with the public.

• Which you choose depends on your prod­uct or ser­vices. But DO choose plat­forms — usu­al­ly two for most— that best reach­es your tar­get market.
• Focus on get­ting con­tent up on a reg­u­lar basis.
• Com­mit to at least one post a week every month. (If this is a chal­lenge don’t let the ball drop. Find some­one who can help you with con­tent and scheduling).
• Your brand­ing con­ti­nu­ity should car­ry across your social media plat­forms just as it does to your web­site. If this is a prob­lem area, Nicte Cre­ative Design can help.

The Flat­bread Com­pa­ny is a great exam­ple of brand­ing con­sis­ten­cy that excels across the board.

The graph­ics they use are imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able and the com­mon thread in all they do, along with their theme of great food at great prices, com­mu­ni­ty and phil­an­thropy (from giv­ing 10% of all pro­ceeds each Tues­day to neigh­bor­hood caus­es, to serv­ing much of their healthy fare from local farms, to hav­ing local entertainment).

Each of their 14 loca­tions also has its own Face­book page, with con­ti­nu­ity of graph­ics, menu, and mis­sion through­out… yet each express their own per­son­al­i­ty, which is shaped by the loca­tion –again, part of the brand­ing. So the one in Maui and Hamp­ton, NH, are surf ori­ent­ed, the one in Whistler, B.C. reflects the ski area, and so on.

As you take a look at your own brand­ing and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, study com­pa­nies sim­i­lar yours who reach out to the same mar­ket as you and are doing a great job of it to inspire ideas that we at NCD can help you execute.

Now is a per­fect time to do this! Con­tact Nicte Cre­ative Design and let’s talk about how we can part­ner with you to har­ness the pow­er of your brand’s con­ti­nu­ity and make 2016 be your best year yet!