The 7 essential marketing elements that must be consistent all the time, everywhere and for everyone
Marketing isn’t fluff. You don’t do it for fun. It’s there to drive your business forward.
Getting marketing right starts before you begin thinking about strategy and tactics. It is fundamental to the way you run your business – it’s the foundation on which you build everything else.
There are seven key elements your business must nail down to create coherence in your marketing and support your pursuit of meaningful growth.
1. Messaging
Clear messaging means being consistent. Your brand needs to be saying the same thing to everyone or you risk confusing your audience. Of course, you can adapt it to different groups, but the purpose and meaning of your communications must always be aligned.
Consistent, clear messaging is the anchor point for all your activity.
To put it bluntly, if your messaging isn’t clear and consistent, your marketing will probably fail.
2. Values
What do you believe in? Does everything you do and say reflect them?
The way you conduct yourself must reflect the values you communicate. The statements you put out about what your business believes in aren’t there to give audiences a warm fuzzy feeling.
You need to live by the principles you say you stand for.
This must be led by and lived from the top. If your leadership team doesn’t embody the company values, or the staff aren’t in tune with your ethics and beliefs, cracks will appear. Your brand will be pulled in different directions. Teams will become demoralised and, once customers get wind of it, your credibility (and potentially your retention rate or new sales) will plummet.
If you can’t live up to your values, it’s time to get back to basics and do some hard self-reflection.
3. Logos
Logos should be unique and immediately recognisable, identifying your business specifically. To do that you can’t muck around.
Not matter how beautifully designed, it does your brand no favours when you don’t control it. Unless you make an effort and keep that effort up long term, you can soon have a grab-bag of bastardised logos, straplines and icons.
Logo drift happens when well-meaning people tinker – a tweak to the strapline here, a creative twist on a typeface there. It’s amateurish and looks disorganised.
Be on your guard for drift not just in your logo but across all your branding, because when you lack a strong identity, you will lose connection with your audience.
If it happens in your business, stamp it out.
4. Colours
Just like logos, brand colours are powerful identifiers. After all, there’s only one Ferrari red, Tiffany turquoise, and IBM blue.
Colours should be developed alongside your brand design, not in isolation. They have meaning, connect to emotional reactions and are not just to make things look pretty.
Brand colours can bring your customers with you as your business evolves – Microsoft Windows has updated its logo many times, but the bold primary colours are the consistent thread.
Remember: “nearly the right shade” is the wrong shade. It creates visual dissonance and could even create brand confusion with a competitor.
If your colours are even slightly off, your brand identity is weakened instantly.
Define the right palette once, then stick to it.
5. Customer experience
Wherever your audience encounters your brand, the experience must be the same – not just the feel of it, but the quality.
The customer must feel they are dealing with the same company, no matter where they encounter you, or with whom they deal.
From the salesperson to the payment team and the delivery drivers, if your customer feels underwhelmed, confused or disappointed, those feelings are easily transferred to their overall satisfaction. Your sales can take a dive and your reputation be undermined.
6. Voice
Consistency in your brand tone is a key part of effective communication.
Your tone of voice reflects your brand personality, influences perception, and creates affinity with your audiences.
How you speak must be mindful, deliberate, and appropriate to your audience – then, kept under review, and under control, as you move forwards. Because, if your lexicon changes, tone varies and your language shifts and drifts, it is perfectly possible that your followers will pull away.
A disengaged audience that doesn’t feel as you are talking to them in their language is an audience who won’t buy, won’t stay, or won’t return.
Create and perfect your tone of voice, then use it everywhere.
7. Customer commitment
Your customers need to feel important – VIPs who are central to your world, and the focus of your purpose.
Brands sometimes evolve their targeting to pursue an audience who offers a new opportunity.
When poorly planned, this practice can leave long-standing customers under-served and pretty pissed off.
If your target market has shifted, as it may as you grow, then you must create a different engagement strategy for legacy clients. Consider what matters to them. If you decide to wind them down, then you need a strategy that leaves them feeling valued, not rejected.
Customers can never feel you wavering in your commitment.
Consistent marketing matters
Getting your messaging, brand and customer experience right are not negotiable for effective marketing. They are essential.
We offer messaging workshops, brand refresh strategies, and overall marketing direction and strategy support, and can help you get everything in line.
If you want to get all your marketing ducks in row, get in touch.