Boring can be a virtue. That is, if you define boring as “consistent, unchanging and dependable.”
When it comes to your visual brand, the more “boring,” the better.
Your prospects and your customers are processing a lot of marketing messages every day. When yours come through looking and sounding consistent, it’s one less thing they have to process.
On the other hand, if they look at your materials and don’t recognize your business, there’s a chance you’ll lose them. They’ll throw out your mailer, surf away from your website, or unsubscribe from your emails.
How a Brand Style Guide Keeps Your Customers Engaged
Make your marketing job easier (and more effective) by building a simple brand style guide for your business.
It can be as simple as making a note of your branding decisions as you make them. Refer back to this master document every time you create a piece of marketing for your business.
Use the fonts, colors and messaging noted in the document consistently over time. Your customers will recognize your business, and will learn to trust your messages.
And your marketing job will be easier, because many of the decisions will already be made!
Do You Have a Brand Style Guide?
How about you — do you use a style guide? If so, where do you keep it? Let me know in the comments.
And if not, will you create one now? I want to hear about it!
10 thoughts on “Boring is Best: How a Brand Style Guide Builds Your Business”
Thanks, Pam. We often forget a Style Guide makes marketing easier, not just more effective. I store mine in Dropbox, so I can access it from anywhere.
Great idea, Darlene! Another option would be to create it as a Google doc that you can share.
How timely. For some reason I had never created style guides in the past when designing websites. (terrible i know!) but I’ve totally been getting in to them and boy is it so much easier! I have been creating mine in Photoshop. I’ve also begun an HTML/CSS style guide for my company using the WP theme at https://pea.rs/
Thanks for this resource, Marianne.
And I agree: it’s soooo much easier to have a style guide when you’re designing something. That’s why I wanted to talk about them here, because they’re not just for large organizations. Small (and solo) businesses can benefit from them, too.
Thanks Pamela – I have thoroughly enjoyed these tips, and plan on practicing what you teach. I appreciate your work!
Thanks so much, Beca. That’s great to hear!
LOVE this, Pamela and will be sharing it on our FB page as part of Make-Magic-Mondays! Honest admission: I don’t have a brand guide but your video’s inspired me and I’m going to get started with it. Thank YOU!
Good luck with it Prerna. And thank you so much for sharing! I so appreciate it when people help to spread the word about my business. 🙂
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