How To Ensure Brand Continuity Across Multiple Customer Touchpoints

May 23, 2017 at 9:23 AM / by Todd Rickenbach

Todd Rickenbach

Continuity is one of the most important factors to consider when sending your message to your intended audience, no matter what medium is chosen. Many people focus solely on brand consistency which is a big part of brand marketing but continuity is equally important. Brand continuity is essential for success because it helps businesses reinforce their image. On average, a person needs to see a message or image about seven times, delivered in various ways to retain the message or image of an advertising campaign.  It is important to realize that those seven different times your advertising message reaches your intended person, the message needs to be similar enough to be associated with those other six times they saw your advertisement. Brand continuity ensures that your business gains the market visibility, reliable image and competitive edge it needs.

Brand Continuity Customer Touch Points

To make sure your message is translated correctly and categorized, you (as the advertiser) need to make sure that your brand and marketing messages are being pushed to all the digital screens and banners at your business. The messages need to be relatable to the advertisement that brought them through the door in the first place. The initial ad may have been a radio spot, TV spot, website banner, social media or newspaper ad, and congratulations - it worked! Your first attempt at reaching your audience was successful and they've turned into a potential customer. Now, look at your in-house adverts. Are they clearly continuing the message and story you started on the TV commercial, web banner ad or other advert that initially caught their attention?

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Many times the answer is no, the marketing graphics and messages you have strategically positioned around your property appears to be a completely different message than what your potential customers were expecting.  This is where consistency comes into play. You will need a unified branding approach to ensure your brand's styling, colors, images, typeface and more are the same on all printed, digital and online mediums.  

One way to attack this "lack of consistency" problem when producing television commercials is to use the same motion graphics/animated content originally used in your digital signage marketing and integrate them into the TV spot. This is often called "re-purposing" content. You can use film footage (b-roll) and photos from the establishment/property/venue that can be re-purposed for several different ad campaigns by adding motion graphics to complete the spot.

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It is also paramount that the experienced motion graphics artist chosen to put all the pieces together understands the company's goal for each piece of artwork created and where it is going to be seen. 

The main benefit of taking this route for the advertising campaigns is consistency of the message to the audience. The added bonus is the reduction in overhead for labor and money for the establishment by only spending once to get a professional video and photography group to take footage. By saving money through re-purposing content, it can be reinvested into better and more frequent TV spots on specific channels where the target audience will be watching. Then, when they do come to your business, it will be obvious to the viewer what they should do (call-to-action). There will be a seamless story for the viewer to see and experience so it will be easy for them to take the final step and purchase your product or service.
 

 

Topics: Promotional, Digital Signage Content, Branding

Todd Rickenbach

Written by Todd Rickenbach