How to Create Digital Brand Guidelines

What is Digital Branding?

Digital branding utilizes a combination of traditional branding and digital marketing to tell your brand’s story and establish a presence on the internet. This becomes the visual identity and voice of your company.

Brands that presented a consistent brand image increased their revenue by 23%. 

Imagine scrolling through Instagram and a bull terrier with a signature red target over its eye pops up. Instantly, your mind goes to the company Target without ever seeing the name. 

Or picture seeing the signature golden arches appear as part of an advertisement on Hulu and instantly knowing the brand is Mcdonald's.

These brands created a consistent and cohesive identity that allows them to be easily recognized and distinguished from competitors. 

Whether you’re looking to take your marketing online and set up a new identity or expand the online presence you already have, digital branding can help you develop a memorable online presence.

How to Create Digital Branding Guidelines?

On average, it takes about 10 impressions for consumers to remember your brand. That’s why it is important to create a style guide and establish a set of rules that your marketing efforts will adhere to. The experts from Creatives On Call will work with you to develop a detailed set of guidelines that will clearly lead the way for all your advertising campaigns. This will ensure efficient and consistent brand distribution across a variety of platforms.

Start by introducing your brand mission statement. Then determine your values and target audience which will help you establish your long-term strategy.

That leads to creating your brand personality. 

• What is the tone you want to convey to the world? 
• Are you looking to be quirky? 
• Casual? 
• Professional? 

Our digital branding consultants use a holistic approach to create a powerful brand for your company. 

We can help you establish and identify a brand mission statement and brand personality so you can use them to create a guidelines manual. 

This will essentially become a how-to for marketing the brand. It will produce consistency across all platforms and will convey your core message reliably. 

Steps to Build Digital Brand Identity Guidelines

Research indicates that 85% of companies have brand guidelines. However, only 30% enforce them. This means that 77% of marketing campaigns create off-brand content. 

It's critical that you establish brand identity guidelines to ensure that you have a cohesive and consistent online digital brand presence. 

Logo

This graphic element is a simple and efficient way of branding every piece of marketing content you produce. 

Your brand guidelines should define the correct ways and incorrect ways to use the logo. 

The pros from Creative On Call will develop a thorough overview of the applications of the logo, including exact colors, sizing, fonts, relationship to other elements, and graphic depiction. 

Typography

It’s essential to specify the fonts that are acceptable for all company materials. 

A great example is to include an outline of what fonts should be used for headings, subheadings, and body text. This will create consistency in your branding. 

Colors

It is important to choose colors that will make your brand easy to identify. Our consultants can help you determine what colors will complement your logo and address your marketing strategy. 

Iconography

If you’re looking to relay complex information fast, icons are an incredibly useful tool. Visual elements can be helpful to highlight specific topics relating to your brand or explain statistics by simplifying complex ideas and presenting messaging more effectively. 

Think the iconic blue bird for Twitter or the large colored M for Gmail. These companies effectively use icons that immediately register in a user’s brain what company it is without ever needing prior information to identify them. 

You can also use icons to help users navigate through the various pages on your website. 

Imagery

The human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. That’s why inserting images into your marketing materials is vital to showcase your brand.

Our consultants know how to help you create images that will reflect both the mission and personality of your brand. 

Voice

It is important to choose a tone for your brand identity to have consistent digital messaging. There are many different ways you can create a tone:

• The positive and inspiring route similar to Nike.
• A proud and exclusive voice like Ford.
• Convey a tone of functional and expressive, similar to Starbucks.
• Or genuine with a splash of dry humor such as Mailchimp. 

This will help to set your company apart from the competition and ensure your target audience easily comprehends your brand message. 

Why Should You Create Digital Brand Guidelines?

Traditionally, brand guidelines came in the form of pdf documents or a book format. Now that more companies are utilizing digital platforms to store business documents, branding guidelines have also started to move in that direction.

Whatever format you choose, it's important to create a brand hub where you will keep all the branding guidelines in one place. This can increase your brand value by:

• Creating fast company recognition.

• Offering everyone on your team access to necessary branding elements, brand mission statement, and do’s and don’ts for marketing the brand. 

• Giving your employees the ability to communicate your brand consistently and efficiently without any discrepancies or inconsistencies.

The consultants from Creatives On Call can help you create a brand hub that will ensure you have instant access to brand guidelines so that your brand image can stay consistent. 

Why is brand identity important?

Brand identity is vital if you’re looking to set your business apart and increase awareness. 

• Customers prefer to buy products from recognizable businesses.

• Brand identity is the image of your company. This is how you will convey your mission to the world.

• Consistent brand identity helps customers easily identify your marketing messages. 

Brand identity can make a huge difference for your company in saturated markets where competition is high. It is an authentic representation of your brand that drives a connection with your target audience. 

The best way to achieve this connection is with consistent branding guidelines. 

Next Steps

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