As your business grows and you introduce new marketing tactics, your logo and business brand are represented in new places in different ways. This creates potential for inconsistency, particularly if you work with different people on the various aspects of your marketing.

If one of your aims is to charge higher rates so that you can make more money, make sure that your business looks professional by having consistent branding.

Now is the perfect time to review the different aspects of your marketing to make sure that your branding is consistent.  To make the process easy for you, branding wiz Angela den Hollander of communic8 design provided the tips below.

Follow this three step check for your business branding.

1. Get a copy of every item that represents your brand and lay them out next to each other.

Print out the things that are generally viewed online.

• Business cards
• Website
• e-Newsletter, including the header and “sign up” forms
• Stationery – Letterhead, With Compliments Slips, Envelopes
• Email Signature
• Flyers / Brochures
• Signage
• Invoices
• Proposals and other document templates eg for ebooks and reports
• Powerpoint templates
• Facebook page
• Twitter background

2. Check the consistency of your brand across all the items.

• Are the exact same colours used on each item?
• Has a high quality version of your logo been used every time? (with no fuzzy edges)
• Are the logos that represent your qualifications and memberships used consistently?
• Is the same font used?
• Are all your contact details (address, phone number, email etc) up to date and correct?
• Have you used the same tagline consistently?

3. Write a list of everything that needs updating plus any irregularities that need fixing, and create a plan for making the updates.

Depending upon how important the updates are, if printed items need to be changed, you’ll need to make a decision about whether to use up your existing stocks or get a re-print straight away.  But, at least you’ve identified what needs to be done so that it won’t get overlooked when the time is right.

With the growth in importance of social media, it’s also a good time to check if you’ve included your Twitter, LinkedIn and/or Facebook accounts as part of your contact details, along with your website and/or blog.

Honour the brand you’ve created for your business.

Brand Consistency = Professionalism = Charging More = Making More Money!

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Melinda, generally known as Mel, is half of the Grassroots team. She is a Google Qualified Advertising Professional and a SEO Web Copywriter. Mel's aim is to make the web world a better place.

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