In a world where change is the only constant, it’s more important than ever to ensure your business is keeping up. But what does that mean for your branding? How can you be sure you’re doing it right and not causing confusion? In this article, we’ll explore the meaning of brand continuity and provide you with questions to help you determine whether you’re doing a good job with brand continuity and what you can do to improve it. So grab a café or drink of your choice and read on!
Why Brand Continuity Matters
Brand continuity is essential for connection — how will your audience know it’s you if your brand keeps changing its look and message every week?!
About half of consumers reach out to a sales rep or purchase a product after seeing branded content 3–5 times or more. Being memorable in the minds of your audience requires visual consistency and intentional, cohesive messaging.
But when we talk about brand continuity, it involves your whole picture, from visual identity to the digital presence and your marketing outputs. The clarity of your brand development is easier for your ideal audience to identify, connect with, and build trust in it.
Here Are 3 Ways To Check Your Brand Continuity
Checking for brand continuity can feel overwhelming, but you don’t have to do it all in one day. The longer you are in business, the harder it may be to audit your brand because you naturally have more content to review. However, your hard work will pay off.
To get you started, here are three key areas to audit for continuity: your visual, digital, and marketing.
1. Your Visual Identity
Most of the time, the visual identity is an area where most people fail to create brand continuity. The more content you create, the harder it becomes to stay consistent. We’ve seen it, and we’ve helped our clients manage it! You shouldn’t waste hours using 50 different templates and constantly switching your brand message because it doesn’t feel right!
When you have entirely different designs that don’t work as a system, you will cause overwhelm and confusion.
However, when you plan and define the purpose of your content with supporting branded templates, you ultimately elevate your brand continuity.
Audit your brand identity and consider the following:
- Have you established branded templates for sales promotions, quotes, testimonials, services, or product features?
- Are you using assets that are inclusive and diverse?
- Have you established how color psychology influences your audience’s perception?
Every element in your brand helps you tell a story. Too many different narratives will confuse.
2. Your Digital Presence
The magic behind creating digital content is how fast we can make it. Unlike print, if we catch an error, we can just delete the post and reshare. While digital gives us so much flexibility, we shouldn’t be rushing to post without checking for consistency.
When reviewing your digital presence consider the continuity behind the following:
- Is your language consistent throughout your website, blogs, social media, videos, virtual meetings? Or do you show up chill and wild on social but calm and tucked down for business matters.
- Do you have checklists that help you cover all your bases and mitigate errors across your multi-platform brand communication?
- Do you have brand guidelines that provide the language to use or avoid?
Your digital presence isn’t like acting — you don’t want to show up as one person in one space and a completely different person in another.
3. Your Marketing Continuity
The way we market our brand is just as crucial as our content to support it. Marketing helps you carry your brand strategy out and tells your audience about your products or services. With so many avenues for marketing your brand, it can be easy to lose consistency.
As you plan your marketing strategy, consider doing a quick audit on the following things:
- Are you handling your brand with consistency across all your marketing avenues? Or just jumping into platforms as they come?
- Is the message you share on social media cohesive from one platform to another? Or does it morph and take on a different life depending on the platform?
- What is your biggest challenge with consistency in this area, and how can you alleviate that?
As you go through these brand audits, remember you can’t achieve this in one sweep. Split this up into manageable goals over a designated time. If you envision a brand that walks their talk and attracts brand-loyal customers that understand your brand vision thanks to clear, accurate messaging, we have you covered in this process! Grab our brand continuity workbook so you can navigate these steps without winging it. This workbook will help you create a more polished and professional representation of your company and customers.
Let's connect
