Brand
Your website is a key brand touchpoint and one of the most visible for an organisation’s customers and future employees – it’s the first thing people will look at when looking for a service, product or new job. If your brand is not reflected in the right way through your website, then you will lose customers and revenues to other competitors who have a better online brand presence. You will also put off talent looking for employment to a competitor, which also has impacts on costs as you’ll need to work harder to find talent as opposed to them organically coming to you directly.
A lot of senior business leaders and marketing professionals focus purely on the website needing to be a lead generation engine. While it is important for a website to generate leads, often you find the tactics used to acquire leads has a long term negative impact on the brand value because its focus is purely KPI driven, often with a 12 month financial target. This results in poorly executed landing pages, content and digital marketing activity that neglects the core fundamentals of what the brand stands for and what the long term objectives are for the business.
Some short term tactics can cause inconsistencies in messaging, what people’s perception for what the business stands for can be skewed and in turn actually slow the growth opportunity of a brand.
Where Herd can add a lot of value is by making sure we can get the balance right between helping the business achieve its short term objectives impacting the overall long term objectives. This is due to our combined expertise in brand and technology.
Consistent Brand Identity
One powerful tool to manage brand consistently is a content management system (CMS). By utilising a tailored CMS, which is specifically engineered to ensure brand consistency, site managers can give admin rights with confidence. This will also allow admins to deploy content whilst ensuring a unified brand representation that effortlessly aligns with brand guidelines. This will also reduce the risk of brand guidelines being compromised, as the CMS encompasses essential elements such as a restricted colour palette including brand-specific hues, appropriate fonts, icons, and cues.
Manage Brand Seamlessly
In order to ensure a consistent brand we can create features that allow admins to adhere to brand guidelines. The template within the CMS is preconfigured, eliminating the need for decision-making and streamlining the content creation process. Predefined hierarchy tags and colour schemes are implemented to maintain consistency and compliance with established guidelines. The CMS encompasses comprehensive guidelines to instruct content managers on the desired tone of voice, enabling them to produce content that resonates with the brand’s identity. We can also provide audience specific messaging to support the design so you are looking and saying all the right things to the right people. A library of preloaded icons further enhances brand representation. Even error pages, such as a 404 page, can be customised to reflect your brand. Also, the CMS can be customised to provide prompts to guide content creators in aligning their work with brand guidelines. These prompts include how the content should comply with the brand’s requirements, including instructions on matching the appropriate tone of voice for a cohesive brand experience.
Consistency is a key thing, so we would look to ensure every interaction from both the customer (site visitor) and content manager (employee) has a positive, yet on brand experience at every angle.
Optimising for Brand Performance
Optimising for brand entails considering various elements, including the interactivity of menus and its impact on user experience. The manner in which users interact with a menu reflects the essence of a brand. For instance, a luxury brand may prioritise a simplistic menu design to align with its overall brand strategy. By incorporating intuitive navigation we can shape the brand experience, ensuring that each user interaction resonates with the brand’s identity and reinforces its unique value proposition.
If you are interested in ensuring you can easily manage brand to maximise growth let’s have a chat.
