Cohesiveness: The Missing Piece to Make Clients Choose Your Small Brand.
Stay ahead of 81% of brands that get it wrong.
It might seem like most businesses know the importance of cohesion in branding. However, according to a study by Marq (formerly Lucidpress), 60% percent of brands believe maintaining a consistent brand is important when generating leads and communicating with existing customers, yet 81% of companies still go off-brand.
Every business believes it is unique. However, most businesses struggle with creating a lasting or any impression at all on the consumer.
One might think capturing attention would be the answer but capturing attention once is not enough.
Familiarity is where the magic happens, and you can achieve that through cohesiveness.
Think about iconic brands like Coca-Cola or Apple. Their consistent visual style, messaging, and brand experiences have established strong recognition and trust among consumers.
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According to the same study, businesses have increased revenue by 33% through consistent brand presentation across all platforms.
Understanding Cohesiveness as a brand.
It is important to understand what cohesiveness means in the context of branding.
Cohesiveness is the harmonious integration of various brand elements, including visual identity, messaging, tone of voice, and customer experience.
When these elements work together seamlessly, they create a cohesive brand identity that is instantly recognizable and memorable to consumers.
Cohesiveness is not just about having a consistent logo or color scheme; it’s about reinforcing who you are across every touchpoint with your audience. From your website and social media presence to your product packaging and customer service interactions.
Every touch point has to be cohesive to the point it creates familiarity. Familiarity makes us as humans feel safe, it breeds trust and creates association.
That is, customers can associate your brand with certain attributes. These associations influence brand preference and can be subconsciously or consciously formed.
How to Establish Cohesiveness to build familiarity
Here’s how you can achieve cohesiveness:
1. Be clear on what your brand represents.
Start by clearly defining your brand values, mission, and unique selling proposition (USP).
What sets your brand apart from competitors?
What do you want to be known for?
Use this foundation to form your messaging and ensure that every copy reflects your brand’s essence.
2. Know Your Audience Inside and Out
This sounds like common knowledge.
However, Conducting thorough market research, creating detailed buyer personas, and using data to gain insight into your audience’s demographics, preferences, and behavior are important.
However, to apply the info from your research towards familiarity, you need to know what feeling is associated with solving the pain-points of your audience.
Then ensure all your touch points have that particular feeling tied to it.
3. Develop a Unique brand Voice
Your brand voice is the personality and style that shines through in your messages. Whether it’s playful and whimsical or authoritative and professional, your brand voice should reflect your brand’s identity and should resonate with your target audience.
Take the time to define your brand voice and ensure consistency across all communication channels.
4. Create Branded Content
See everything that comes out from your brand as content.
Your label, your packaging, that blog post, the announcement etc.
No matter how insignificant you think it is, make it branded i.e make sure it aligns with your brand’s values, messaging, and tone of voice.
Use storytelling techniques to weave a narrative that showcase your expertise and solve customer problems. Whether it’s through customer testimonials, origin stories, or behind-the-scenes glimpses, storytelling humanizes your brand and makes it more relatable to your audience.
Your content should evoke strong feelings and create memorable experiences for your audience.
5. Visual Branding
Ensure consistency in visual elements such as logos, color schemes, typography, and imagery across all channels and platforms.
A visually cohesive brand identity creates easy recognition and makes your brand more memorable to consumers.
6. Optimize your content to reach the right people.
Incorporate SEO best practices for each platform into your strategy to make sure you are talking to the right people.
Remember you want to create an impression on the right people and make those right people remember you when they need your services.
7. Partnerships and Collaborations
Collaborate with other brands, businesses, or organizations that are complementary to your own.
By forming strategic partnerships, you can leverage each other’s audiences, resources, and expertise to increase mutual visibility and reach new markets.
8. Influencers and Brand ambassadors Partnerships
Work with influencers and brand ambassadors who align with your brand values and target audience.
Partnering with influencers can help increase your brand’s visibility, reach new audiences, and generate authentic endorsements that resonate with consumers.
9. Localized Marketing
Tailor your marketing efforts to specific geographic regions or local communities that reinforce your brand values.
For Instance, Let’s say you’re a brand committed to environmental conservation and fair labour practices, collaborate with artisans or cooperatives in developing countries to source materials and share their stories through your marketing channels. Highlight the positive impact your brand has on supporting fair trade practices and empowering marginalized communities.
You can also target areas where your audience has a huge presence. Participate in local events, sponsorships, or partnerships to establish a presence.
10. Consistent Customer Experience
From the initial interaction with your brand to post-purchase support, create a memorable experience for your customer. It must not be exaggerated but you can focus on easing or totally solving one pain point.
Consistency in customer experience helps build trust, loyalty, and positive word-of-mouth referrals, ultimately contributing to increased visibility and growth for your brand.
In conclusion, mastering cohesiveness can help you build familiarity, forge strong connections and build lasting loyalty with your target audience. Remember to stay true to your brand values throughout your journey.
In summary, here are action points to begin.
- Be clear on what your brand represents
- Know Your Audience Inside and Out
- Develop a Unique brand Voice
- Create Branded Content
- Visual Branding
- Optimize your content to reach the right people.
- Partnerships and Collaborations
- Influencers and Brand ambassadors Partnerships
- Localized Marketing
- Consistent Customer Experience
