For creative business owners, it can be tempting to frequently change or play around with your branding. You’re the one who encounters your branding the most — of everyone in the whole world. That means even when you feel jaded and tired of your brand, you should stay the course.
Of course, change is required when you’re not achieving the results you desire. However, when it comes to the importance of branding in marketing, consistency is more important than novelty.
Just a logo isn’t enough: why you need brand design as a piece of your marketing strategy
Whether you associate design with marketing or not, the importance of branding in marketing is huge. And your logo is only one small piece of the bigger picture: your brand identity. I would go so far as to say that your logo isn’t even the most important piece of that identity.
So, what is the most critical part of your brand identity?
As a brand designer, I have to say that your underlying brand strategy is the most important, most foundational aspect of your brand identity.
When you start with strategy — understanding your customer, what motivates them, and how your product or service makes them feel, then you’re able to speak to their deeper frustrations and aspirations.
Your logo is a piece of that strategy, but not the whole.
In this blog, we’ll look at a few visual examples of the importance of branding in marketing and discuss:
- The emotional aspect of brand design
- The basic psychology of branding
- The key to effective branding
Speak to the emotions of your buyer
While we’re talking about the importance of branding in marketing, it’s essential that we recognize the emotional aspect that drives brand design.
People buy from brands that they feel a connection with. Brand designs communicate messages — often subconsciously — that resonate with particular buyers.
Sometimes this communication comes from the logo, but it’s often more subtle. It’s the personality of your brand fonts, the feelings your color palette stirs up, and, the tone of your website verbiage that make a meaningful difference.
Do you use playful, hand-drawn icons on your website? Or do you use simple line icons with a gradient? These little details are what convey who you are to your customers. Add up lots of little details that all speak to the same emotions and values, and you’ve got yourself a consistent brand identity that speaks to your ideal client.
Don’t make them work to understand who you are
We’re bombarded with information all the time. Our brains are constantly looking for patterns or for shortcuts that hint at something’s meaning without having to consciously process information.
Yes, before a potential customer ever reads your social media caption or digs into the services page on your website, they’re scanning for clues to tell them whether your brand has enough to offer them to pay attention.
Do you see why a logo alone can’t accomplish this?
Your brand’s personality needs to be apparent at a glance and across all the mediums you use to market yourself — print or digital. To serve your overall brand strategy, it needs to be consistent and intentional.
Brand Consistency is Key
It’s not enough to apply your logo to everything. If your logo is the only thing that remains the same, but your color palette and typography are constantly changing, the brand recognition your logo carries is less effective.
Bringing all those aspects of a brand identity into harmony in your marketing materials, and doing so consistently, allows your clients to recognize you immediately.
Again, people are looking for small clues — they aren’t really paying enough attention to figure out that these images all represent the same brand:
When you look at these three designs, they all evoke different feelings – even though they have the same logo. While there’s nothing wrong with any of these designs, they aren’t cohesive, and the logo alone doesn’t do enough to tie them into a single impression. That’s the importance of branding in marketing.
Now, let’s compare that to a business that uses its brand design consistently:
You can see from these examples how the logo is just a small part of the overall impression — and how it’s the overall impression that really matters.
It comes down to the importance of branding in marketing and the foundation of thoughtful, consistent brand designs. You shouldn’t be discouraged from using a well-made logo, but you should be mindful of how you use it.
Discover how Parson Lane can help you elevate your brand with thoughtful, custom brand designs today. Book your free 15-minute brand design consultation!
