When you’re running a business, at the helm of a marketing department or tasked with redesigning a website, brand development is crucial. It’s not just about making a site look good and work smoothly—it’s just as important to develop a consistent brand for you and your clients. Consistent branding brings marketing to a higher level, lending a cohesion to company operations. When your branding is consistent, clients and customers will be able to spot your brand in an instant, an important factor in driving lead generation.

According to a study conducted by LucidPress, presenting a consistent brand can increase a company’s revenue figures by 23 percent. When your company doesn’t have a consistent branding approach, on the other hand, you’re simply missing out on money earned and clients gained.

Brand consistency works to bring in more revenue by increasing brand awareness. But how do you develop consistent branding for your business and your clients? Focus on these marketing elements to achieve brand consistency:

Examine the mission statement

What does your company want to achieve? Every company starts off with a mission statement (we hope), so start there. Look at a company’s mission statement on both micro and macro levels, considering what a company aims to do in addition to turning a profit.

Perhaps you strive to bring communities together through developing technology, or are dedicated to providing the ultimate in customer service through a shopping experience. The mission statement is already in place—it should serve as the core of how a business not only operates, but presents itself to the world. That’s how branding develops, so ask yourself, how do you want your company to present itself to the world? Work on branding from there.

Keep a consistent tone

Tone and voice are central to branding. For example, a medical sales or industrial manufacturing company may take a more technical and formal approach to branding, as their goal may be to inspire trust in their brand. By using a more formal tone in their web copy and written content, these brands can convey that they’re operating at a high level of expertise and take their work with the utmost seriousness.

On the other hand, a consumer-facing app geared towards a younger audience may strive to promote a sense of camaraderie and fun. These companies can use a more relaxed tone, expressing a sense of fun and levity that encourages users to come back to their brand time and again.

Consider how you want customers or clients to relate to your brand, and focus on developing a unique tone and voice.

Bring together tone and design

Once you’ve decided on the tone you’ll be using in marketing campaigns and throughout company operations, it’s time to bring that tone together with design elements. The most obvious place to start is on your website. If you’re going for a more casual, friendly tone, consider use of colour and font to reflect that. These types of brands may want to use brighter colours, animations and snappy copy.

When selecting photos for your website, again consider your audience—if you’re marketing to young adults, use pictures of that demographic. If your company caters to seniors and their families, photos of families would be more appropriate.

To achieve not just consistent branding, but branding that brings in more customers, think from both a design perspective and from the perspective of the customer base.

Ultimately, brand consistency works to increase brand awareness. The logo, web design, product packaging and web content should feel visually cohesive, acting as another way to streamline tone and a company’s outlook on business.

Spark up social media campaigns

Hashtags, Facebook groups, Instagram posts and tweets—is your company engaging with all of these social media elements? If so, does your social campaign feel cohesive? When working within the realm of social media, it’s important to develop branding that can catch someone’s eye quickly as they scroll by. Social media users see countless ads each day, not to mention posts from family, friends and influencers.

Most people will scroll by, perhaps catching a pop of colour or a logo as they race to the next post. But if they stop to glance at one post, then another a few days later, before long they’ll come to associate certain colour schemes, fonts, logos and other elements with your company.

Engaging with the public over social media is an important part of any marketing campaign. Increase the rate of these engagements by increasing brand recognition by way of brand consistency.

Develop a style guide

Centralise your branding campaign by creating a style guide. Make the style guide reflect your branding efforts by integrating company colours, logos and language you want designers, writers, and salespeople to use.

Include specific guidelines on how to present your company to the broader public, how social media managers should promote new products and the tone each blog post, line of web copy or video should use, whether that’s serious, fun, or as an expert voice in the field.

Give out these guides to your employees and reference them often. As your organisation develops, keep this document up to date and make changes as necessary.

Get the whole team on board

Consistent branding isn’t just for those in the marketing department. If you’re going to achieve brand consistency, you’ll have to engage with all of your employees to get them on board. This will of course include web developers and graphic designers tasked with creating a logo, but also will involve account managers and salespeople.

One easy way to streamline brand consistency is to include branding in company emails. Make sure everyone’s email signature includes your brand’s logo and name, and that all emails are written in the same font.

The importance of consistent branding can’t be overstated. Once you examine your company’s goals and mission statement and work to bring together tone and design, you may find it easier to keep your marketing campaigns focused, streamlined and, of course, on brand.