In today's highly competitive business world, brand consistency is critical for success. Your brand is more than just a logo or a tagline; it's the essence of your business. It's what sets you apart from your competitors and makes you unique. Consistency is essential because it helps to establish and reinforce your brand identity, build trust and credibility with your customers, and create a memorable experience for them. Do you have multiple different people or agencies working on your website, social media, print campaigns, and events? Trust me it shows and it creates a disconnect for your customers.

Here are some reasons why brand consistency is so important:

1. Builds brand recognition

Consistent branding is essential for building brand recognition. When your customers see your logo or other branding elements, they should immediately recognize it as your brand. This helps to build brand awareness and makes it easier for customers to remember your brand. When you consistently use the same branding elements across all channels, including your website, social media, advertising, and packaging, you increase the chances of being recognized and remembered by your audience.

2. Creates a professional image

Consistent branding creates a professional image for your business. When all of your branding elements are consistent, it shows that you pay attention to the details and that you're committed to presenting a professional image to your customers. This can help to build trust and credibility with your audience, which is essential for building long-term relationships with your customers.

3. Establishes brand identity

Consistent branding helps to establish your brand identity. Your brand identity is the unique set of values, beliefs, and characteristics that define your brand. When you consistently use the same branding elements, you reinforce your brand identity and help to communicate your brand's values and beliefs to your customers. This helps to create a clear and consistent message that your customers can identify with and relate to.

4. Builds trust and loyalty

Brand consistency helps to build trust and loyalty with your customers. When your customers see consistent branding across all channels, it shows that you're reliable and trustworthy. This helps to build trust and loyalty with your audience, which can lead to repeat business and referrals.

5. Differentiates from competitors

Consistent branding can help to differentiate your brand from your competitors. When your branding is consistent, it creates a unique identity that sets you apart from your competitors. This can help to make your brand more memorable and more attractive to your target audience.

In conclusion, brand consistency is essential for building brand recognition, creating a professional image, establishing brand identity, building trust and loyalty, and differentiating from competitors. It's important to ensure that all of your branding elements are consistent across all channels to create a memorable experience for your customers and build long-term relationships with them. By investing in consistent branding, you can help to ensure the long-term success of your business.

Since the pandemic started the economy has been on a wild roller coaster ride, and while we all might be ready to get off, the next dip is still coming. While economists want to speculate on when it will happen, it’s very likely a recession is around the corner. It can be extremely difficult for small businesses to market themselves and find and maintain clients during turbulent economic times. Marketers struggle to find ways to draw new customers in amidst increasing competition and labor shortages, but there are some unique marketing tactics you can use during economic turbulence. These tactics can potentially put your business on the fast track! Here are some marketing tips for small to midsized businesses during an economic recession.

1. Research Your Competition
When an economic recession is looming, it's not uncommon for business owners to go for a low-cost approach and hope that their customers will still find value in their product or service and appreciate their work. The problem with this is that the competition will also be low-cost and price is one of those no-win last-resort situations. If you're not researching your competition - and your target audience - you run the risk of being undersold by other companies in your market, and it can have a detrimental effect on your business in the long term. Doing your research will help you learn what your target audience wants and how to best provide it to them and focus on value, not price.

2. Focus on Your Customer
In a time of economic turbulence, it's important that you develop a good marketing strategy because many businesses start offering their services or products at bargain prices. In such conditions, traditional broad-reach advertising mediums may not be as effective as they used to be in times of economic prosperity. In addition, while the pandemic may have driven more customers to your business than you feel you can handle, working on customer relationships and retention needs to remain top-of-mind in hard economic times. Focus on your customer and deliver your marketing message directly to that person. Put together advertisements with relevant products/services and contact information and deliver them in places your target audience goes. Distributing information directly to a customer is much more effective than spray and pray advertising because you can get in touch with the people interested in what you're selling. Now more than ever there are very targeted, very cost-effective digital and guerilla marketing tactics that can work for your business.

3. Get Connected
As a small business owner, you've probably scaled back or completely eliminated a lot of activities that linked you to other businesses and local community groups due to the pandemic. Now that we are moving more into the new normal business owners can't fail to make use of this valuable opportunity. Use your connections to market your business. Suppose you get involved in a local community group, for example, by helping with fundraising. In that case, you'll reach a wider audience because other people will see the good work you're doing and want to support it. You should take advantage of any networking events that are taking place now so that you can expand your business contacts for the future. To be successful, you must be creative with how you market your products or services. If your audience isn't aware that your business exists, it doesn't matter how good it is because they won't buy from you. However, if your customers know you exist and know what you offer, they will be looking for opportunities to buy from you, and getting referrals from other businesses who know what you do is a great revenue driver.

4. Lean on consistent branding
During tough economic times, it's important to brand your business consistently. When you display a consistent image of who you are and what your business does, people will remember your business, and this will encourage them to buy from you. When creating your brand identity, think about what kind of personality or character traits you want the company or product to emanate. Make sure this is clear and consistent across all forms of media.

5. Empower and encourage your audience
In these turbulent times, try to reach people looking for value; they will appreciate it when you tell them exactly what they're getting in exchange for their money. Focus on what you do best, and don't try to sell products or services that don't fit in with your business’ mission or your target audience. Instead, make sure that everything you do is based on what's best for the customer, and provide great customer service!

6. Work with digital/social media
Now more than ever it's a good idea to take advantage of social media because most people are now using these sites to promote their businesses. These sites have allowed people to communicate directly with each other, and together they can use these sites for marketing their businesses. If you're not using social media, you might be missing out on a valuable marketing strategy that could be used in times of economic turbulence. There are many targeted social platforms that cater to particular demographics, so you don't have to focus on all social media, just the mediums that get you in front of the people you'd like to target.

7. Get affordable tools for customer data
It's important that you understand what your customers want and how to provide them with it using the latest technology available at an affordable price. Social media allows you to access information about your customers because they freely offer it online, and it allows you to sort out the data for your customers and reach out to them directly.  Social media allows you to create customized user profiles by monitoring what people are saying about your company online. You can use polls, surveys, quizzes, and game apps to gain insightful views of what your audience wants from you. The more you know about your customers, the more you can give them what they want.

8. Use Your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
If you use KPIs, they can be useful when figuring out your potential and how you're performing. KPIs will show you growth in the market and where your potential is. KPIs can also be used to assess things like how fast sales are growing in your company and if there's anything wrong that needs to be fixed or changed about how you do business. If you're not using KPIs, start tracking them. Although it can be a lot of work, it's worth it because it will tell you where your strengths are and where you should be spending more time.

9. Differentiate and target your audience
In a time of economic turbulence, you need to think about how you will target your customers. You should do this by figuring out the exact demographic you want to attract. This will involve knowing who your potential customers are in detail before setting up your plan of action for selling to them. If you're not using demographic data, you're missing out on one of the most powerful marketing tools available.

10. Add new products and services to your business
In a time of economic recession, it's good to diversify your business through investment in new products and services so that people will start to view your business as a “one-stop-shop”. Both B2B and B2C businesses should consider this because you never know when something will happen. In a time of economic turbulence, it's important that you make provisions for your business to be able to survive if something bad happens.

Just because it's a time of economic turbulence doesn't mean you have to struggle to keep your business afloat. If you do things differently and come up with unique marketing tactics, your business will be able to take advantage of these conditions and thrive!

Buying a business in the current economic climate is a challenging process. If you are not careful or patient enough, you will likely make mistakes. Going out on your own and running your own business after a career in the corporate world is enticing. You have to do due diligence, plan, negotiate, and make vital transitions. Here are some mistakes you should try to avoid when buying a business.

Not understanding the prior business engagements

If you rush through the buying process, you might sign contracts or agreements that you do not fully understand. You should use an LLC to buy the business so that you don't get your personal assets entangled. Business ownership requires you to find out what the business owns, borrows, owes, or leases. You also need to find out what debtors the business has, and which customers have yet to honor their payments. It's essential to find out which debtors are likely to end up in claims court for non-payment.

Assuming that you don't need to market the business

This is a common problem for many new business owners who assume that the current flow/traffic of business will continue. The issue is that an existing customer identifies with the previous owner; hence you need a smooth transition or a handover. A new business owner may feel overwhelmed by the idea of marketing their new business; some even avoid marketing the business entirely. However, businesses survive through constant reminders and chasing business prospects and this is critical for growth. The goal would be to advertise when the business is at peak season so that you will have prospects during the low sales period.

Not getting complete access to all website, Google Business, and social media accounts

Modern businesses rely on online marketing to increase traffic and create awareness. A Google My Business (GMB) profile is important since a considerable Google audience will access your profile. The more visible you are, the better for your business. GMB allows you to appear on maps, hence, any local searches will direct customers to your business. GMB also allows customers to leave reviews of your business. Customers' reviews are essential for search rankings and help potential customers make a decision. A company’s website acts as the landing page for GMB, and social media traffic is directed to the website page. Social media pages help a small business reduce advertising costs and reach more customers. It is also a great way of getting reviews and funneling new customers to your webpage or the physical store.

Terminating relationships with previous marketing partners or vendors

The supply chain can become very complicated, and vendor relationships are critical. If you terminate your vendor relationships, you will have to set up new ones, which means you will incur initial additional costs. Setting up new deals is expensive; hence you will be using your money for new deals instead of utilizing it in marketing efforts and customer service. Vendor relationships are long-term efforts that help you save on costs, minimize delays, and receive good quality supplies.

Losing efficiency in your business

If you terminate current business relationships, you lose communication and efficiency. Relationships thrive through communication. As vendors get to know your business, they will be able to offer better services. Order issues and conflict will reduce as you progress in your business and the supplier will learn how to solve problems more efficiently.

Lose built-up trust

As the relationship between you and the vendor develops, you develop trust in each other. You will be able to build your operations to reduce costs and improve efficiency. You can simplify buying and budgeting processes by having the vendor meet your supply demands instead of relying on many suppliers. Moreover, when you build trust, you can also get feedback from your vendors and marketing partners, which will help you streamline your supply chain and marketing activities. All of this will help you improve your customer service.

Losing some valuable insight into the business

If you lose insight into the business, you have lost a very valuable asset in the decision-making process. Insight is a blend of life/work experiences and collected data. It helps you provide improved customer experiences and understand what the customer wants. Moreover, insight will boost revenues by influencing response rates when people buy and encourage reorders. Sometimes this experience will help you outsmart your competition rather than outspending them. With insight, you can also maximize your return on investment (ROI), as you will be able to cut business costs and optimize your business. If you lose insight, you also lose information on how customers respond to your marketing messages and whether customers buy. Additionally, you won't know whether customers leave for a competitor, where new customers are coming from, or what your reach in the market is. Insights are achieved from marketing analytics tools; hence, it's essential to gain them through website analytics, AdWords data, and social media data. A good marketing company can help you do this.

Bottom Line

Buying a new business requires finesse and patience. You need to understand the business model and operations. Moreover, you need to continue relationships with business partners, as they will help you run the business efficiently.