Being consistent in your branding is probably the easiest to talk about but one of the harder ones to accomplish. Like many organizations you probably have multiple people creating things. Each piece will look a bit different. It may have different fonts, photos or even a different name for your organization or an abbreviation that some people may not understand.

When you look at these communications from the inside where you know the organization, everything makes sense. From the outside where they don’t know you from another organization, it can be very confusing.

There have been studies that say you need to see something 7 times before it sticks with you. While this may seem like a high number, think about how many advertisements we see a day. I have seen ranges from as low as 5,000 to as high as 15,000. Now your organization’s communications is going to be only a very small portion of this number. If you have in-consistent communications, it makes it much harder for people to recognize and remember your organization.

Any time you have connections with the community, whether it is in person, in outreach or in communication, you want the community to become familiar with you. This creates a recognition of who you are and what you do. People don’t notice promotions they notice consistency. When your branding and communication are consistent, people notice and it helps strengthen your recognition.

Consistent branding is more important than trendy branding almost every time. While people get their attention caught by trendy branding, it is consistent branding that people remembers. Let’s go at McDonalds. McDonalds always uses the same branding. You can go to any area of the USA or even another country and see the Golden Arches and know instantly that it is a McDonalds. The menus will change based on the area’s demographic and the advertisements will change, but the branding stays consistent. This is what you want to do with your organization. Consistent branding does not mean that everything needs to be exactly the same, it means that you need to incorporate the same branding into everything.

Your organization should have a consistent brand across all platforms and ministries. This includes your website, printed materials and social media, as well as individual ministries/groups. You will need to make sure that everyone is on the same page. Everything should be complementary, and it shouldn’t conflict with the organization’s brand or compete.

One of the easiest way to stay consistent is to use the same logo, main font and colors. This does not mean everything needs to look the same, but complementary. Using the same logo, main font and colors helps create easy recognition.