Keeping your business on brand

In the early days of setting up a business, many owners don’t consider branding, perhaps thinking it’s only relevant for a ‘cool’ venture, such as a fashion company or a trendy bar. But every business has a brand. 

‘Brand’ isn’t just those things we see, such as corporate colours and a logo, it’s actually a combination of things, including the experience customers have when they ‘meet’ your business.  It’s linked to the impression or even the feeling you leave people with and is both practical and emotional. 

Nowadays, for example, there are myriad coffee shops on the high street, ranging from national chains to individual outlets. The latte and pastries from each could be fairly similar but as ‘brands’ they all look different and make us ‘feel different’ too. Even if you have created a brand which you’re happy with, the tricky part nowadays is maintaining it, as your business is now likely to have a presence across a number of channels – including your website, social media channels, a physical building and perhaps an app. 

In earlier times, creating your brand might have been as simple as opening a shop, putting a sign over the door, providing things people want to buy and ensuring great customer service. Today you need to maintain the integrity of your brand across all the various platforms where you have a presence. 

Somebody who visits your High Street shop, for instance, should experience the same customer experience and branding as another customer who is buying from you online. Wherever your business has a presence, then your brand needs to feel the same, ensuring you gain trust and build brand loyalty. If all your channels don’t deliver the same brand, then it’ll just lead to customer confusion. 

When we spoke to Matthew Sankey recently about the website Target Ink developed for his restaurant and retail business in Kent, he explained the importance of a consistent image across multiple platforms. 

“It’s really obvious that some businesses use separate design and web teams as their website doesn’t reflect the design across the rest of the business,” Matthew said. “With Sankey’s our brand is consistent wherever you see it – from the menu on our tables to the website - and that’s thanks to Target Ink.”

When it comes to website design, brand consistency can be lost in two ways – either the designer might work on templates and your brand will be expected to slot into these templates or the designer might pull out all the ‘bells and whistles’ and want to create something new and exciting, which ends up being a million miles away from your existing brand.

At Target Ink we always spend time talking to clients before embarking on a new website design, considering your branding and where it exists already. 

The most important thing is that all our websites are bespoke, so we never expect clients to fit into a template. We guarantee that anyone visiting a Target Ink designed website will get the same feeling about that brand than they would ‘meeting’ it somewhere else, whether that’s in a shop or an office, or on one of the company’s social media channels.