The Role of Brand Guidelines: Why Every Small Business Needs Them

More than anything, consistency matters in Branding. Every new business that steps into the market wants to be recognised by its values, its deliverables and its unique value proposition. But ask yourself this – 

Do customers remember every brand that launches in the market? 

What makes a brand memorable? 

It’s brand guidelines.

Brand guidelines contain the rules that help establish your brand. It’s where businesses define all the elements, colours, typography, imagery style, etc and work alongside it to keep brand consistency across all touchpoints. The rulebook is important to create brand recognisability and memorability. 

Let’s see why the brand guidelines are a must for every new business entering the industry. 

What are Brand Guidelines?

The brand guidelines are the rule book for your brand’s online and offline presence, which covers everything starting from logo placement and colour palette to graphics, imagery, typography, as well as other brand identity elements. 

Every brand needs a rulebook so that it can maintain consistency in the brand’s tone of voice across various marketing channels, including social media, website, product packaging, etc.

Importance of Brand Guidelines for New Businesses

You must remember, even with the best logo design, brands fail. For example, A brand cannot win with the best fitness centre logo; it needs more than that. All the brand identity elements combined form a coherent brand image. 

• Brand guidelines are important for every new brand entering into market to maintain consistency across all the digital and offline channels. You need to establish clear standards in the brand guidelines so that you can ensure that every customer interaction, whether it’s made through product label, social media, post, or an announcement on your website, stays consistent with unique brand elements. 
• For example, every branding material, like a flyer, poster, web announcement, social media post, etc, should carry the brand’s colours, typography, slogan, and core message in the brand’s voice and tone to maintain a unified brand identity and foster brand recognisability. 
• The brand guidelines are important to create a professional image of your business. Suppose you walk into a retail store where you see inconsistent logos placed at different corners, mismatched signage and inconsistent uniforms of staff members. You will never know what the brand highlights and what it stands for. 
• Being a customer, just imagine, could you ever trust a brand which is not maintaining consistency with its physical and digital brand assets? For most customers, the probable answer is No!
• Maintaining brand consistency through brand guidelines helps business owners create a credible and polished image. This is the reason why customers prefer buying products from a brand they can trust and are familiar with rather than going to new options.

Bottom Line

There is utmost importance of brand trust and familiarity in influencing decision-making of the customers. The customers remember the brand from its interaction on social media and website. This is precisely where VerveBranding steps in and helps businesses build a coherent brand image. 

The designers and brand strategists at the top logo design company Chicago, VerveBranding, emphasise developing a brand guideline rulebook that consists of different brand identity elements to foster brand memorability. So don’t wait for the customers to get to you; build an irresistible brand that everybody remembers and wants to be a part of.