What A Brand Guideline Can Do For You

● A great responsive website- Check

● A well-crafted marketing strategy- Check

● Impactful content- Check

● Well-designed graphics-Check

Does your brand tick all the boxes? Even if it does, here’s what might be holding back the success of your business- Not Having A Brand Guideline!So you’ve got a business yet it is totally lacking a real style guide? Oh well, without further ado, we are here to answer the most commonly asked question “How do I go about with branding”? Imagine a business without a brand- what a sad lifeless illusion that would be. Moving to the very first question, “what is a brand”? In the simplest words, it is a visual impression or image that forms in your mind instantly whenever you hear someone talking about a certain brand, and that my friend is the real power of branding! A lot of people still can’t stop confusing branding with a brand logo. What we’ve realized after a good number of experiences in online marketing and branding is that it involves more than just designing logo, deciding on color palettes, font styles and sizes and themes for website design. We know this part might be a little exciting for you to work on! However, it requires an incredible amount of well-thought ideas that go with the business.

First of all, you need to lay down some basic ground rules that you’ll be following conscientiously both online and offline. What defines & differentiates your brand from the rest? This will help you get your branding done right in the long run. To begin with, draft a set of standard brand guidelines that is easily accessible and can be referred to at any point in time. This should entail the color scheme you’ve chosen for your brand and of course the overall vibe of the brand elements. For instance, you’d never see “Facebook” logo in red, green, etc.

They help you explain and specify the usage of brand elements mainly. Besides, it elucidates the basic rules on how a business interacts with its target audience.

One of the many reasons you need a solid brand guideline is that it is mandatory for building a strong and recognizable brand so that it doesn’t lose its recognition and popularity easily. We are well aware of how much patience is needed in order to build a positive image of any business and brand guidelines play a major role in representing your business on all levels. It helps in maintaining the quality and integrity of your image.

Speaking of consistency; isn’t it the key to almost everything desirable in life? In order to create your brand identity you’ve to be quite consistent and active. This includes developing a really strong communication between your business and users/audience.

Let’s take the term “Apple”, what is the first thing you visualize upon coming across this word? Whether it’s their half bitten apple or the latest iPhone you’ve been eyeing on for a while now, that’s the true essence of successful branding. Yes, you can thank for mind for an incredible memory to recognize things but you’ll have to equally appreciate their branding efforts for making their brand stand out from the crowd in terms of easy recognition. If a user is able to recall and identify your brand in a jiffy then certainly your brand is on the road to immense success, without a doubt.

Emphasizing on strong and consistent branding through brand guidelines will help your audience recall and recognize your brand even when they’re deep asleep (pun intended). Another relevant example could be of ‘Google”. Even when you come across the four basic colors used in their logo; you’ll figure out instantly who you’re dealing with. That’s due to Google’s meticulously crafted brand guidelines that define what four colors represent ‘Google”.

For almost 75% of businesses, this part is easier said than done. Ever pondered upon what makes a brand successful? It’s the PEOPLE working for that business. The web & graphic designers, IT guy, content team, each and every team member has to be on the same page to reach new heights of success. The graphics and content are aligned in a way to send out the same cohesive message on every medium. This is why a “brand style guide” is necessary in this modern world making sure the voice, tone and imagery used are all in the right places.

Being the business owner, you can’t always spare time for explaining brand guidelines to every new hire. Of course, an on-going business keeps on adding more and more employees as needed. For that purpose, preexisting brand guidelines could be handed over to save time, efforts and resources. This will help them understand what your brand should look like, using the right font style & size, using the right shade and how the logo should be etc. Brand Guidelines help clarify the purpose & personality of your business as well as what your brand promises to deliver. They aid in maintaining an image of professionalism. For instance; an educational institution or NGO will most probably opt for a specific tone of voice, perhaps the one that is friendly yet not cheeky or inappropriate to its audience. Voice, tone, color scheme, fonts, logo should remain constant online and offline to ensure professionalism. Your logo on social media can’t differ from the one on the website or stationery. This leads to inconsistent branding and it simply doesn’t appear professional at all. From your logo to your chosen color scheme, every single thing should be on point. Your brand guidelines speak on behalf of the business and working on them certainly leads to increased recognition. Clueless about where to start with your branding? Reach out to our design team today and find out how we can help your business.