Using a Style Guide to Create a Cohesive Brand Identity

A style guide is like the north star for your brand. It details the visual and verbal standards your brand must abide by in order to reach customers more effectively. Style guides also guarantee that all your content—whether a blog post, video, or graphic—represents the established tone and aesthetic of the company. 

In short, it gives you a brand identity. 

Brand identity refers to the collection of all elements that a company creates to portray the right image to its consumers. It’s more than just a logo or graphic design; it encompasses a range of aspects, including:

• Logo and design elements
• Brand voice and messaging
• Product and packaging
• Company culture and values
• Customer experience and interaction
• Consistency

In this post, we’ll look at why your brand identity is so important and how you can use a style guide to create one that’s truly effective. Let’s get started. 

Why Is Having a Brand Identity So Important?

Your brand identity is the essence of your company, reflecting its values, mission, and the promises it makes to its customers. This identity plays a critical role in how a company is perceived, both in the minds of its consumers and in the marketplace at large. 

Here’s why it’s so important to have a strong brand identity: 

1. Create a recognizable presence in the market: In a world where consumers are bombarded with choices, a well-crafted brand identity can be the deciding factor for a customer choosing one product over another, setting a business apart from its competitors. 
2. Build trust and credibility with consumers: A consistent and professional brand image reassures customers of the quality and reliability of the products or services offered. Trust is a valuable commodity in business, and a consistent brand identity is one of the key ways to secure and nurture it.
3. Align internal culture and external perception: Communicating company values to employees is just as important as it is for customers. This internal-external alignment ensures that employees understand what the brand stands for, enabling them to deliver a customer experience that is consistent with the brand’s identity. 
4. Establish a connection with your audience: According to Stackla, nearly 90% of consumers say authenticity is a key factor in brand selection. Brands that communicate an authentic story and values create an emotional resonance with their customers. This emotional connection can turn customers into brand advocates who are more likely to remain loyal and recommend the brand to others. 

Now, let’s look at the two types of style guides you need to create a truly strong brand identity. 

The Two Types of Style Guides

Style guides encompass various elements such as logo design, color scheme, typography, and messaging, all of which come together to create a distinctive and recognizable brand image. For example, Apple’s minimalist design and innovative messaging have become synonymous with quality and forward-thinking, distinguishing it from competitors.

Style guides are typically divided based on the two most prevalent media types used by brands—editorial and visual. Between these two types, you can create all the content you need to keep your marketing material in line with your brand identity.

Editorial Style Guide

Your brand’s personality can be seen in the tone you use across your marketing efforts, including content marketing, digital and internet marketing, and even email marketing.

Guidelines for editorial style typically include the following topics:

• Voice (active vs. passive, first vs. third person)
• Tone (casual vs. professional)
• Grammar (spelling, grammar, and punctuation)
• Brand preferences (terminology to avoid and contraction rules)

Many organizations follow the general principles laid down in published style guides like the Associated Press Stylebook or Chicago Manual of Style, while others choose to create their own.

Visual Style Guide

A visual style guide is invaluable for creating and maintaining any number of online assets, from websites to social media profiles to advertisements.

Corporate visuals should be consistent and unified across all publications. Therefore, visual style guidelines determine how the brand will appear.

Visual style guidelines outline the parameters for logo use and modifications:

• Design aesthetics (minimalist vs. abstract vs. contemporary vs. vintage)
• Brand colors and white space
• Typography (font families, widths, and line height/spacing)
• Layout (element placement on a page)

Brands also need to grapple with the impact that generative AI is having on the graphic design and video space, with these tools giving everyone the ability to generate high-quality visuals. 

Thanks to a style guide, your company’s marketing efforts will profit greatly from having a unified style. Leaving the visual portrayal of your company up to individual judgment will likely provide extremely divergent outcomes. With a plan in place, your company’s marketing efforts will have unity, purpose, and clarity.

The company’s visual and journalistic identities are defined in exhaustive style guidelines that foster brand cohesion. We advise using a visual and journalistic style guide to maintain cohesion in your company’s branding efforts.

When your company is consistent, customers know what to expect from you whenever they connect with you. This will foster future patronage and brand identification over time.

Best Tips for Crafting a Cohesive Brand Identity

Any company that wishes to stand out, connect with consumers, and convey its values and objectives must first develop a unified brand narrative and identity. But how can you maintain this level of coherence and clarity over all your platforms and contact points?

Define Your Brand Purpose and Voice

You need to know what your brand represents, what sets it apart, and how you want your target audience to see your brand before you can begin building your brand identity. This is your brand’s personality and mission; use it to shape your tone, visual identity, and communications. 

The Golden Circle model, the Brand Archetypes framework, and the Brand Personality Spectrum are all useful tools for defining your brand’s purpose and personality.

Know Your Target Audience

Your brand is the vessel you’ll use to deliver your message to your target audience. In order to do so, you need to learn about your target market’s wants, likes, and dislikes to develop a brand identity that hits the mark.

Customer personas are one of your best assets for developing a strong brand identity. They give you a fictional version of the real people with whom your branding and messaging need to resonate. 

Focus on the Core Values of Your Brand

Your company’s identity—from its visuals to social posts to ebooks—should reflect its values and culture. Younger consumers, in particular, are much more likely to buy from brands that align with their beliefs. 

The outdoor clothing and gear producer Patagonia is recognized for its commitment to environmental and social responsibility. Its logo and other promotional materials are designed to appeal to environmentally conscious consumers since the company shares these values.

Make a Logo That Stands Out

Create a logo and visual identity for your company that stands out with its own logo, color palette, typography, and other visual elements. For example, Airbnb’s branding is simple, memorable, and welcoming, encapsulating all the best aspects of travel in a single icon. The company even has promotional content spelling out exactly how the icon was developed. 

Establish a Consistent Voice for Your Product

Your company must have a unified tone across all its many communication channels.

Dollar Shave Club, which stands out in the cutthroat grooming sector with its humorous and irreverent brand language, and MailChimp, which makes email marketing accessible to small businesses, are two examples.

Make a Catchy Slogan

A memorable slogan or tagline may help communicate your brand’s ideals and personality to consumers. Ultimately, the most effective phrase for your brand will depend on your product, audience, and niche. For example, Slack’s “Where Work Happens” is simple and to the point, while 6Sense’s tagline, “Know exactly who’s ready to buy…(…before your competition does),” is developed to motivate immediate action within a specific audience. 

Maintain Consistency in All of Your Channels

Integrating your company’s online and offline marketing activities consistently can help you build a stronger brand. That means using the same phrasing, icons, color scheme, and messaging across all content. For example, monday.com’s diversified strategy has embraced brand consistency across its web, social, and physical assets. 

Craft a Brand Story

Connecting your business ethos to your target audience’s wants, fears, and dreams is the ultimate goal of crafting a compelling brand story. A brand story is more than a collection of catchy phrases; it’s an organized and interesting explanation of who you are, what you do, and why it matters. 

The StoryBrand framework, the Hero’s Journey archetype, and the Pixar Pitch formula are all useful tools for crafting a compelling backstory for your business.

Create a Visual Identity for Your Company

Visually conveying your company’s background, values, and character is the job of your brand’s identity. The various components of your visual branding include:

• Logos and icons
• Color scheme
• Typeface
• Graphics, symbols, and patterns

Basic design elements, including contrast, alignment, hierarchy, and balance, should be used while crafting your brand’s visual identity. Tools like mood boards, style guidelines, and brand kits may help you maintain cohesion and harmony in your marketing materials.

Notion is a great example of a brand that’s created a distinct identity within its niche. The workplace collaboration tool doesn’t just drive adoption through its genius template strategy—it’s also cemented itself as one of the most recognizable brands in SaaS. 

Use a SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis may help you understand your business and its surrounding environment. It’s a framework for strategic planning that allows you to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats facing your brand and company. 

The term “SWOT” describes evaluating your brand and business’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as the opportunities and threats to long-term success. Taking a detailed analysis of your brand through a SWOT analysis will help you develop a brand identity that highlights your company’s strengths, facilitates opportunities, and mitigates weaknesses and threats.

Common Pain Points in Creating a Brand Identity

There are a few obstacles that you’ll need to overcome when developing your company’s brand. Successfully communicating your principles and resonating with your target audience requires addressing these issues.

Here’s a list of the most prevalent ones and concrete steps you can take to address them:

Getting Started

Developing a unique identity for an entire company can seem like a daunting task, especially for startups. Sometimes, the hardest part is just taking the first step.

Researching the market, developing customer personas, and creating a brand manifesto will give you a good brand identity outline that you can fill with finer details. A brand’s “about page” is often a great place to find examples of the information you need to create your identity. 

Lack of Strategy

Ensuring your brand identity is consistent and powerful requires a well-thought-out brand strategy. Create a strategy encompassing your brand’s backstory, aesthetic components, message, and distribution methods.

In the SaaS space, companies like Hootsuite, Gong, and Confluent provide great examples of incorporating social media to drive brand awareness and consistency while driving business outcomes.

Limited Budget and Lack of Design Expertise

When first getting started, many small firms and startups don’t have the resources to invest in a memorable brand identity. Startup owners who lack design expertise may struggle to develop a memorable logo or other visual representation of their company.

With the help of skilled designers and low-priced tools, you may establish a credible brand identity without breaking the budget. Generative AI tools like DALL-E and Midjourney are also great tools for creating graphics at a lower cost. 

Standing Out from the Crowd

It’s tough to be noticed in a crowded marketplace. Your brand is competing with thousands of other companies and millions upon millions of content creators to gain customer attention. 

One way to set yourself apart from the competition is to zero in on and effectively communicate your brand’s unique selling proposition (USP). Another more literal way to stand out is by creating striking visual branding. 

Adapting to the Market’s Needs

Your brand is an ever-evolving representation of your company’s values and a critical link between you and your clientele. Pay attention to what others say about you on social media, and don’t hesitate to start a conversation with them. Your brand’s image and voice should evolve as your clientele does.

For instance, the popular corporate travel company TripActions decided to rebrand itself as Navan. This strategic choice helped the company reach new customers as it expanded from travel into the larger business expense industry.

Make sure your brand identity changes as customer preferences and preferences shift.

Dealing with Cultural Differences

Branding strategies for businesses with global ambitions must take into account cultural differences. Success in international markets sometimes comes from tailoring brand messaging to target consumers’ tastes.

For instance, SaaS companies like Asana and Airwallex implement international SEO into their brand strategy to reach international audiences. 

Consumer Opinions and Brand Reputation

The trust and loyalty of your customers depend on your brand’s identity being consistent with their expectations. Perceptions may be managed by consistently asking for and responding to consumer feedback and concerns.

Crises and bad press may erode even the most solid brand identities. Reputation may be safeguarded by creating a crisis management strategy and implementing an appropriate response.

Evaluation of Brand Success

It might be difficult to figure out how to measure your brand’s performance. Monitoring key SaaS marketing metrics like brand recognition, consumer loyalty, and net promoter score (NPS) may provide useful information.

While the impact of branding is often tied to the more surface-level metrics on the web and social media, like impressions, traffic, and engagement, these numbers do help indicate whether your brand identity resonates with customers to a certain degree. 

Balancing Creativity and Practicality

Finding a happy medium between showcasing individuality and addressing audience needs is difficult. Finding this sweet spot might be aided by working with designers and marketers conversing in your field and customer base.

Tasks that were formerly costly and time-consuming are now simple and inexpensive. If the quality of your product images is low, for instance, you may want to look into product retouching services to fix the colors, swap out the backdrops, remove or replace unwanted elements, and so on.

Why Does It Matter That Your Brand Is Consistent?

Consistent branding enables marketers to distinguish their products, provide critical messages, and build loyalty by generating authority and confidence in their product or service. Marketers may influence customers’ opinions from the start of interaction to a purchase decision by maintaining a unified brand identity.

Long-term brand awareness is also aided by maintaining cohesion throughout your marketing materials. Research has demonstrated that consumers often attribute human traits to brands to conceptualize businesses. And because we’re all creatures of habit, we tend to stick with brands we’re already acquainted with. 

Keeping a consistent brand while building up your audience will also help you determine whether you have achieved content-market fit—which is crucial to gaining a competitive edge through content. 

The Proper Method of Rebranding

Rebranding may be a great approach to breathe new life into your company’s identity by fusing it with contemporary design principles. A refreshed look has the potential to win over customers in both established and emerging regions.

However, if changes are introduced improperly, you risk alienating your current and future clientele. It’s important to assess the possible gains from altering a well-known brand’s image against the potential losses that may result.

To see how industry-leading SaaS brands navigate a rebrand, check out our case studies on Navan, Miro, and Carta.