When launching a new marketing campaign, it’s important to consider how brand style guides can support conversions. Here are some of our top tips.

Why Your New Marketing Campaign Needs a Brand Style Guide

How Creating a Brand Style Guide for a New Marketing Campaign Can Help Drive ROI

Building out a strategy for a new marketing campaign is exciting. Maybe your brand is launching a product or a promotion. Whatever it is, it’s important to consider how your <a href="https://union.co/services/performance-media/campaign-creative-concepting">creative approach</a> can support customer conversions.That starts with brand style guidelines, or a brand style guide, to ensure consistency across <a href="https://union.co/services/data-brand-strategy/brand-identity-messaging">messaging and imagery</a> that the consumer will be following along their buyer journey. When a brand presents itself to users in a consistent way, they can see revenue <a href="https://www.oberlo.com/blog/branding-statistics#:~:text=Keeping%20a%20consistent%20brand%20image,able%20to%20trust%20your%20brand.">increase</a> by up to 33%.
<h1>What is a brand style guide?</h1>
A brand style guide lays out a set of rules that inform what visual treatments and messaging approaches a brand should abide by. These guidelines can set the standard for creative across all brand channels, or, more narrowly, for creative across all brand channels for a single campaign.
To help maintain consistency in both messaging and aesthetic across creative deliverables, brand style guidelines for a new marketing campaign should cover both image guidelines and messaging guidelines.
<h2>What to include in a brand style guide: Image guidelines</h2>
When setting image guidelines for a campaign, consider these four questions:
<ul><li dir="ltr">What component is at the heart of your visual communications? It could be a product, a type of consumer, etc.</li><li dir="ltr">What’s your photography tone? Consider words like bright and clean, and hazy and moody.</li><li dir="ltr">What environments are you showcasing? Think modern, sterile, home, outdoors, and so on.</li><li dir="ltr">Who are your subjects and how are they interacting with their environment? Think families happily playing games outside, or men and women energetically using electronics in the house.</li></ul>
<div><h2>What to include in a brand style guide: Messaging guidelines</h2>
When setting messaging guidelines for a campaign, consider these three questions:<ul><li dir="ltr">What’s your messaging hierarchy? Rank the most important points to hit. </li><li dir="ltr">What are your branches of brand messaging? Consider a few different approaches, like question-based messaging and messaging that incorporates a tagline.</li></ul><ul><li dir="ltr">What are your different reasons to believe in your brand? Include several RTBs that can help convert users to your brand over competitors.</li></ul> So, why should you use a brand style guide for a marketing campaign? Here are two main reasons that ultimately support ROI.</div>

Way before a user can convert to purchase a product or service from a brand, they have to know that brand exists. They also have to be able to keep that brand top of mind even as they encounter a multitude of brands that sell similar products. Because <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2019/10/22/to-convert-more-customers-focus-on-brand-awareness/?sh=483b13fd2075">studies</a> indicate that 73% of consumers use more than one channel along their shopping journey, it’s important that they quickly recognize your brand across every digital touchpoint, from <a href="https://union.co/services/performance-media/programmatic">display ads</a> to <a href="https://union.co/services/performance-media/paid-social-media">paid social</a>. 
For example, if your brand is pushing a <a href="https://union.co/industries/travel-tourism">travel campaign</a> built on destination imagery, aspirational messaging and bright pops of color, make sure those aspects are carried across every piece of creative. If your campaign creative follows brand style guidelines to remain consistent across every channel in terms of messaging, look and feel, that recognizability by users is more likely. 
That buildup of brand awareness can have a significant impact. Research shows that 71% of consumers are more likely to <a href="https://localiq.com/blog/brand-consistency/">buy</a> a product or service from a brand they can recognize.

Why use a brand style guide: Consistent visual treatment and messaging can help improve brand awareness

As consumers move through the funnel and encounter your brand across different touchpoints, consistency in messaging and visuals not only builds recognition, but starts to build brand trust. This is a key part of driving purchasing decisions, since 81% of consumers <a href="https://localiq.com/blog/brand-consistency/">prefer</a> to trust a brand prior to buying from them.
Consistency in a campaign can help users start to trust what to expect from a brand. Brands should provide consistent promises in their campaign to build trust, such as the opportunity to earn travel rewards in conjunction with a product or service. 
Brands can also create emotional consistency. For example, creative paired with that travel messaging can be crafted to elicit a sense of warmth through imagery, consistently hinting at that sense of joy a consumer will feel when they arrive at their destination thanks to that branded promotion.
Not only are users consistently seeing how they want to be or feel, but they have strategic messaging guiding them toward the purchasing decision that will get them there.

Why use a brand style guide: Consistent messaging and visuals can help drive users to purchase

Union has built out brand style guidelines for a variety of clients in the energy industry, the food &amp; beverage industry, and others. <a href="https://union.co/contact">Reach out to us</a> to get started.

Ready to work with a brand style guide to launch your next marketing campaign?

Valtech + Union is a creative &amp; performance marketing agency that creates omni-channel campaigns, unleashing creativity on a data-driven world, helping brands produce memorable, measurable and repeatable results. Obsessed with data-driven performance, we believe every marketing dollar should be viewed as an investment. Our clients expect a meaningful return and we prove the ROI of our work with quantifiable data.

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