The Challenge of Consistent Brand Management

With the modernization of marketing technology and ease of getting your message to the public comes the reality that with speed comes new challenges...

  1. chevron left iconThe Challenge of Consistent Brand Management
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Douglas EldridgeMay 23, 2017
  • Content Management
  • Digital Marketing

With the modernization of marketing technology and ease of getting your message to the public at an all-time high comes the reality that with speed and ease comes new challenges and dangers. While brand consistency is vital to building and retaining customer loyalty, brand management is more challenging than ever before, with a globalized audience consuming your content from a variety of platforms. Adding to the complexity is the fact that today’s consumers expect a personalized experience and two-way communication -- both of which must be consistent with your public message and identity.

How do you ensure each person and channel in your organization delivers the right brand experience - regardless of a customer’s location and engagement preferences? A multi-pronged approach to educate your team, devise clear processes and consolidate technology ensures customer expectations are met and brand messaging remains clear.

Education and protocols

Consistent brand management begins with educating and training employees to deliver a seamless message. A brand’s message might appear in obvious places like social media and print marketing, but also extends to off-the-cuff interactions between employees and customers in the real world. Consider a potential customer attending a trade show who hears a message at a demo that conflicts with a blog post published on your website just a week before. Every single instance needs to convey the same core message of what makes your organization unique.

Brand education sets the foundation, but specific processes help mitigate errors and remove guesswork from the equation. Does your organization have two logo variations? Establish crystal clear protocols for when each logo is used in certain situations. Develop step-by-step workflows for marketing processes and make these resources available to all. Keep in mind someone outside the brand team will inevitably need the same information - sharing resources across different teams and establishing clear branding rules for everyone top to bottom boosts consistency and saves time in the process.

Centralized technology

Yet education and better processes only reach their true potential if a single technology platform is leveraged for every moving part to establish a more consistent brand. Imagine implementing and tracking your brand’s message to customers across dozens of social media platforms and email campaigns - let alone accounting for wrinkles like multi-language marketing. The average company uses dozens of software platforms (each with their own learning curves and workflows) to needlessly repeat tasks which could be done together on a single tool.

By centralizing marketing processes with one software platform, the ability to roll out consistent initiatives and ensure everyone is on track changes from a pipe dream to a reality.

Future-proof success

The bottom line is that a single software platform for brand management comes full circle and addresses both the education and workflow elements of a successful marketing strategy. First, efforts to educate become exponentially easier when the brunt of digital marketing efforts are handled by a single tool. Second, the tool also makes it easier to establish and track processes imperative to sending a consistent message to customers around the world. All three actionable ideas, when implemented together, builds a future-proof roadmap for branding success.

Download our whitepaper Delivering a consistent brand experience for more information about consolidating marketing efforts to achieve better control of your marketing.

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Douglas Eldridge
Doug Eldridge has worked in marketing and communications for fifteen years, with experience in marketing agencies and software vendors, he’s written for CMSWire, eContent Magazine and various industry blogs. Doug is based in Denver, Colorado, is an alumnus of censhare US and while he is not writing, he is a typical Coloradan, which means a lot of time in mountains and breweries.

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