By Monique Craig
If you believe that the only employees responsible for maintaining brand consistency are your marketers and PR experts, you’re highly mistaken.
The truth is that every instance of a company’s communication with external subjects—from clients and employees to partners and investors—should emulate the brand’s primary values.
To maintain brand consistency, you must make sure each and every employee is on the same page about what to say and how to say it.
Here are top industry strategies to maintain brand consistency with the help of the whole team of your employees.
Establish a Brand Consistency Team
First of all, you’ll want to have a small group of workers who create your branding strategy. Those are usually marketing specialists with a knack for creating and maintaining brand consistency.
Have them brainstorm and establish some basic rules of communication that will be followed by all employees, regardless of their position in the organization’s structure.
Work On Your Voice
This team will be there to follow the company’s social media discussions or client feedback and contribute to the company’s overall communication campaigns.
They will decide what kind of voice will be used in the company’s communication channels, starting from obvious ones such as social media, but also regulating the standards of email communications.
Should your employees refer to themselves as “I” or “we”? Should they write in a formal or informal style?
Set up a characteristic greeting that will be used by all workers and make sure they all realize that every email directly represents the company—polite tone and lack of typos or grammatical errors are a must!
All this will need to be subject to a standard policy—this way, whenever a client reaches out to you, he’ll receive the exact same message, which will make your brand image resonate stronger.
Email Communications and Visual Consistency
Make sure all employees have coherent signatures set up in their mail boxes—featuring the company logo, as well as its address and telephone.
Documents, such as reports and quotes sent to clients, either electronically or through traditional mail, should always be composed on company paper with logos, watermarks, and contact data.
This will create a sense of visual brand consistency, essential to be recognized and remembered.
Set Up a Special Branded Orientation Plan
Both new and veteran employees should be well aware of the strategies for delivering on the brand promise. All should have a firm understanding of the brand’s priorities and values that need to be communicated.
Make sure all new employees have at least one thorough meeting with your brand team.
Hire With Brand in Mind
When preparing to hire new employees, make sure they share the attitude you’re promoting and engage with the brand.
Finding new hires that fit perfectly your company culture and pass on your brand is just as important as assessing their skills and other qualifications.
Some companies find it effective to hire people who are already engaged with the brand—for instance, those following it on social media.
Keep Up With What’s Being Said About Your Brand
With access to many online tools for social listening, analyzing what’s being said about your brand is easier than ever.
Make sure to regularly check your Facebook and LinkedIn pages to see how users are engaging with your brand.
Keep up with the current advertising campaigns and other public events supported by your company.
Set up a Talkwalker alert that will let you know when a news piece that mentions your company name is published.
Don’t Forget About Marketing
Keep in touch with your marketing team to stay connected with your brand strategy. Set a good example yourself, too.
You need to have a firm grasp on your company’s values, mission, brand attributes, brand promise, and its history. For example, do you know who came up with your company’s logo and why?
Help Everyone Stay on the Same Page About Branding
Before every team meeting, gather some interesting brand data—updates from marketing, your TV, digital and prints ads, or any other relevant information.
Spend at least a few minutes with each team discussing the brand and the role of branding strategies in their everyday activities.
Keeping brand consistency with the help of your employees can certainly be complex and time-consuming, but at the end of the day, it’s simply worth it.
The power of branding is certain to affect the future of every company.