Your Brand Is Either Building Trust or Breaking It

There are two main purposes to a visual brand: creating trust before a customer or client buys, and maintaining trust after they do. 

Does your brand look the same everywhere it shows up? And by “same” we mean the same logo (without any weird tweaks or distortions. That might sound obvious, but OMG, it isn’t), same colors, same fonts, same patterns and visual cues? Does it have the same overall feel, whether it's on your website, your social media, a proposal you send to a client, or a direct marketing piece you hand out at an event? And if you have a brick-and-mortar storefront or office, is the design of that physical space coherent with your online presence as well? 

And again, when we say “same,” we mean “consistent.” Are you being consistent with how your business is presented on every platform and touch point, because inconsistency in your brand is what interferes with building trust. 

And trust is what builds business.

Here’s a story to illustrate this point. A few years ago, we had a conversation with a business owner, a high-end cosmetic health industry service provider, who was interested in redesigning her website. Being that her business was both high-end and cosmetic/health-related, trust was of utmost importance, perhaps the single most important aspect of selling her services.

In assessing her website, we immediately spotted a few glaring details that would instantly create a trust gap with a prospective new client: 

• While providing a service based on cosmetics, she used stock imagery on her website. There were no photos of actual clients and their results. But there were before/after photos on her Instagram feed.

• The logo looked different on the website than it did on her Instagram profile.

• The color palette and design elements on the website were completely different than the aesthetic of her office. When we brought this up, it turned out that she was still using photos of an old location. The images she was presenting weren’t even representative of her current space.

Each one of these examples on their own create a barrier to trust. In combination they would cause a potential new client to have enough question marks to click off the site and look for a different provider. And if the client did follow-through and book an appointment, imagine the confusion of walking into a space that looked entirely different from what they saw on the website.

People do judge a book by its cover

Brand is what gives customers a reason to believe and to trust before they even meet you. How do you decide which bottle of wine to buy when you don’t know what it tastes like? Well, you might just buy the one with the prettier, more intriguing label, because all things being equal, what else do you have to go on?In a sea of businesses offering the same kind of services as yours, unless you’re a personal referral from someone, you’re an unopened bottle of wine.

Mess with the logo, and you cease to be you

When you present your brand differently across different touchpoints (a slightly different shade of your brand color here, a stretched logo there, a different font on one document vs. another) you're not just being inconsistent, you're eroding the recognition you've worked to build.

Think of it this way: every time someone encounters your brand, they're building a mental picture and an unconscious emotional/visceral profile of who you are and what you’re about. That picture gets stronger and more trustworthy the more consistently it shows up. Every inconsistent variation chips away at it. 

So if brand creates enough trust to get someone new to come though the door, showing up the same way over, and over, and over again, keeps them coming back because they know what to expect, and that they can trust you.

The Mickey Mouse Principle

Here's a big, fat corporate example to put this further into perspective. You cannot change the colors of Mickey Mouse. There are specific, defined colors (exact Pantone Matching System values) that make Mickey Mouse Mickey Mouse. If you change the red of Mickey Mouse’s shorts to a slightly different red, it's no longer the same thing. It no longer carries the same cache, the same recognition, the same trust. As far as Disney is concerned, that ain’t Mickey Mouse any more.

Of course, Disney is a multi-million dollar brand with entire teams dedicated to protecting that consistency. But the principle isn't reserved for brands of that scale. It applies just as much to the small business owner, the independent consultant, and the local service provider.

Your brand colors are your brand colors. Your logo is your logo. You should not be using a different shade of blue. You should not be stretching or distorting it to fit a template. You should not be swapping it out for something that's "close enough." Because close enough, repeated over time, or even one time, means it ceases to be the thing that it is.

Why business owners underestimate this

It's easy to treat brand consistency as minutia, the kind of detail that feels fussy or overly precious when you have an actual business to run. What difference does it really make if the blue on your Instagram post is slightly different from the blue on your business card?

Trust is built through repetition and recognition. Every consistent touchpoint reinforces who you are. Every inconsistency introduces a small degree of doubt.

And for small businesses, where you're often building relationships one person at a time, that trust is everything. You don't have the luxury of brand confusion. You need people to see you, recognize you, and remember you, every single time, and not get distracted because something just seems off.

Brand consistency in practice

Here are few practical anchors:

• Know your exact brand colors: not "a navy blue" but the specific HEX, RGB, or PMS value that is your navy blue. Write it down. Use it every time.

• Have one version of your logo that you use consistently, and guidelines for how it appears on different backgrounds. Never stretch your logo, change the colors, add or subtract anything to it.

• Create a simple brand guide: even a single page, that anyone creating content for your business can refer to.

• Audit your touchpoints periodically: look at your website, your social profiles, your email signature, your documents. Do they all look like they belong to the same brand?

Brand consistency isn't about perfection for its own sake, like everything else about branding, it’s a communication tool. And whether it’s used consistently or with haphazard variations, builds or erodes trust with both new and returning customers.

Your brand is your blueprint. If anything in this blog turned on a lightbulb or popped a question mark above your head, then let's talk. 

P.S. We offer a free Brand Clinic to ask your branding questions and learn from other business owners. Sign up for our newsletter to receive announcements for upcoming sessions.

We hope you take some of our learnings (and reminders) to help you take inventory of your own marketing. What’s working well? What has fallen through the cracks? Where could you use a tune-up? Is it time to try something new: a new approach, a new marketing channel, or setting up a new system? As we often say, marketing is a team sport, and we’re here to help. If you have thoughts or questions that you’d like to run by us, set-up an introduction call, OR pop in to our monthly Brand Clinic to pick our brains on all things branding and marketing.