A brand guide - why you need one and why we love them!

In a fast-paced online world, it is more important than ever to ensure you present a consistent and recognisable brand to the world! Digiday announced that a whopping

“43% of social media users don’t know where the stories they read originally appeared”

Ensuring your audience can recall your business beyond the post, website or advertisement they see is crucial in standing out in an ever-crowded digital marketplace. 

Brand consistency is at the centre of your business’s identity. It encompasses all aspects of your marketing— from design to writing. Reinforcing  your brand consistency builds trust, loyalty, and credibility with your clients and customers. Providing a cohesive brand experience and lasting connection.

How can brand consistency be achieved, even if you’re not creating the content yourself? Introducing your Brand Guide! 

A brand guide, brand book or style guide is a document that outlines how your business’ brand will be presented to the world. Brand guides are commonly put together as a PDF document. This guide is a key resource that provides a consistent brand experience to your target audience, even while several different people create content for your brand.Your guide will contain two key features: 

• Your Brand Story (mission, vision, audience, brand voice and values etc) 

• Your Visual Identity (logo, colour palette, typography, imagery etc)

A brand guide is an important resource for marketers, copywriters, graphic designers and web developers, ensuring that your brand is kept consistent across print and digital media.

An effective brand guide won’t limit creativity, but keep your brand identity consistent, recognisable, and ownable. 

Creating your brand guide

You may already have a brand guide from your logo designer, but if you don’t here’s how. The best brand guides always begin with your target audience in mind and the key factor of a brand guide is that it should be kept as a living document - as your brand grows and changes so should your guide! 

Before you create or update your guide, you need to know your brand and identify your mission statement, vision, target audience, tone of voice and core values. These are the most important things needed to establish your brand identity because they guide how your brand will be presented.

All the other parts of your brand guide are tangible elements that communicate those key components through design such as your logo, fonts and colour palettes. 

The length of the document depends on how much content you have and how specific you need your guide to be. For larger companies, a longer, more detailed style guide may be needed to encompass the brand fully. For smaller businesses, a few pages may be all that is needed.This also doesn’t have to be something you do solo – you can involve your team in putting it together.

Why is a brand guide important? 

Professionalism 

Simply put… when everything looks different, it looks like you don’t know what you’re doing.When people hear different messages or have different perceptions about your brand, it confuses them about your business, its services and offerings. Furthermore, if your content doesn’t follow the same colour schemes, tone of voice or design elements it can significantly weaken the impact of your content, no matter how relevant or strong it may be!

Your brand guide will ensure you build trust with your clients and customers. When they lose trust, that’s when they start looking elsewhere.

It saves time! 

A brand guide can save time when working with marketing agencies, designers and web developers during the onboarding process.  A brand guide streamlines the process of creating and producing branded content, allowing work to not only be created faster but ensuring high-quality work that is reflective of your brand. 

Expectation 

It’s time to outsource some of your marketing, previously you’ve been creating, writing and producing all your businesses content. You know your brand off by heart, you embody the brand and your brand is an extension of you! A brand guide ensures a smooth transition and that the design and marketing collateral you outsource is representative of your brand and aligned with your expectations. Since we all are creatures of habit, we are more likely to make purchases from brands that become familiar over time.  Your Brand Guide will keep your marketing consistent, which will lead your business to reach its target audience/s and goals! 

Don’t know where to start, need help pulling together your brand guide? Talk to our team and book a free consult with Sammi