Stefani Thionnet, Owner & CEO, Private Label Supplement04.17.14
What is it that makes a business thrive? Of course there are plenty of factors, including quality service, expertise, proper management, smart and timely decisions and more.
In a highly competitive environment in which constant market integration and expansion is a reality, a consistent brand is what really stands out—a brand that is recognizable, that stays in people’s minds and is associated with specific values. A brand that knows its audience, a brand with personality, a brand that delivers and stays on track—that is what customers are looking for.
If your private label supplement brand is still a fledgling but you’d like it to grow strong and soar high, here’s what you should know about brand consistency.
Brand Consistency
Developing brand consistency is especially important for smaller businesses. Bigger businesses already have it figured out (though it is in constant need of attention and care), because it is one of the things that made them big in the first place.
Brand consistency is what creates differentiation in customers’ minds; it makes your brand recognizable. If people are not able to connect the dots between the various sides of your brand (social media profiles, marketing campaigns and even the fonts or color palette of your logo) they are less likely to pay attention.
Given people’s short attention span, it is a brand’s consistency along with the frequency and relevance of exposure that make a strong and lasting impression. Consider the following list of criteria when assessing your brand’s consistency and looking for things to work on and improve.
1. Build Your Unique Brand Identity
In striving for consistency in your private label supplement brand, you need to first know yourself (i.e., who your brand would be if it were a person), how it would walk, talk and behave. Your brand’s identity or personality greatly depends on your audience. “Catering” to a predominantly male, sport-oriented audience, will require you to behave in a way that conforms to this audience’s needs and values.
At the same time, your style, voice and tone need to be distinct enough and offer something unfamiliar, new and different in order to be recognized as interesting. In other words, your brand’s identity both conforms to your audience but also seeks to surprise and excite it.
Identity stands for uniqueness and differentiation. Even in a dynamic marketplace such as the supplement market, there is always potential for you to find your particular niche, by carefully customizing your products and services, by making them reflect your values and originality.
Ultimately, your brand’s identity is at the core of everything else that your brand is and does. If you haven’t figured it out in detail, you risk sending out mixed signals to your audience.
2. Create Visual Brand Consistency
Once you have the internal structure of your brand intact (identity, values, goals, tone), you have to make sure the outside reflects these clearly. The “outside” of your brand has many dimensions, with the visual being the most immediate.
The visual consistency of your supplement brand includes your logo, typography, the styles and colors that define your brand, the layouts and formatting of the promotional materials, the labeling of your products. All of these are of course related to your identity.
Consider the example of a male audience and try imagining a logo that has a soft and curvy look, with bright and warm colors. Though the example is stereotypical, the point of it is that visual consistency is not only the consistency of all visuals but is directly related to your brand’s identity, its niche and audience.
As much as brands can change conventional perceptions and stereotypes, they also need to conform to them to a certain extent, in order to relate to their audience. Crafting a brand book or “charter,"which carefully describes all visual aspects of your brand’s identity, has proven to be an effective way to achieve visual consistency across the board.
3. Unify Your Social Media & Online Presence
Consistency across your social media profilesis the next stage to creating an integrated and complete brand. Social media brand consistency incorporates the previous two points. Your presence there must combine your brand’s identity with its visual representation.
This is not to say that all your social media profiles need to look alike. Rather, your audience needs to be able to identify your brand clearly at a glance, given the right visual and textual cues.
Social media profiles are like your digital storefront (apart from your website, of course). Your brand’s identity must shine through at all times, in order to create a consistent and trustworthy experience for users. Consider, for example, how some of the biggest brands worldwide have created a consistent brand experience across all their social media profiles.
Social media consistency includes consistent information about your brand, contact information, links to other profiles and your website. If possible, you should also use the same social media brand name (handle, profile name) on all networks.
4. Build Authority with Marketing Consistency
Marketing is not just about selling your products or services but about being convincing, meeting customer expectations and getting your message across. Long before a customer purchases one of your supplements it is your branding and messages that draw them to you.
Consistency in your marketing campaigns and messages creates trust and security and, over time, builds authority. Consider, for example, how Nike has stuck to its "Just do it" slogan for more than 15 yearsand has become one of the biggest brands in its industry. Like many other brands, Nike has recognized that consistency itself is the strongest promise that a brand can make to its customers.
Even if your brand offers a wide range of supplement products, vastly different from each other, if your marketing and messaging is consistent with what your brand stands for then you are on the right track. The point is to know who you are talking to and how to approach them. It is impossible to please everyone but it is not necessary, either. Rather, find what works, find the people that are interested in what you have to offer and commit to them.
Bottom Line
The supplement industry is crowded and competitive. But that should not dishearten you. In this industry, brand consistency is what makes the best stand out from the rest. Much like the saying “good tools are half the work,” good and consistent branding is also half the work of achieving big exposure and growth.
No brand ever achieved anything significant over a long period of time without consistency. If you get this right from the start, you’re effectively increasing all your future chances at success.
What additional instances of brand consistency have impressed you? And how do you achieve consistency within your own company? We’d be happy to hear your story.
Stefani Thionnet, owner and CEO, Private Label Supplement is a “cowboy entrepreneur” and a 23-year veteran in the health and wellness industry. Private Label Supplement is a B2B company that offers supplement retailers a wide range of services and products, from custom and stock formula supplements to creating product labels, designs and even devising marketing strategies for the supplement market.
In a highly competitive environment in which constant market integration and expansion is a reality, a consistent brand is what really stands out—a brand that is recognizable, that stays in people’s minds and is associated with specific values. A brand that knows its audience, a brand with personality, a brand that delivers and stays on track—that is what customers are looking for.
If your private label supplement brand is still a fledgling but you’d like it to grow strong and soar high, here’s what you should know about brand consistency.
Brand Consistency
Developing brand consistency is especially important for smaller businesses. Bigger businesses already have it figured out (though it is in constant need of attention and care), because it is one of the things that made them big in the first place.
Brand consistency is what creates differentiation in customers’ minds; it makes your brand recognizable. If people are not able to connect the dots between the various sides of your brand (social media profiles, marketing campaigns and even the fonts or color palette of your logo) they are less likely to pay attention.
Given people’s short attention span, it is a brand’s consistency along with the frequency and relevance of exposure that make a strong and lasting impression. Consider the following list of criteria when assessing your brand’s consistency and looking for things to work on and improve.
1. Build Your Unique Brand Identity
In striving for consistency in your private label supplement brand, you need to first know yourself (i.e., who your brand would be if it were a person), how it would walk, talk and behave. Your brand’s identity or personality greatly depends on your audience. “Catering” to a predominantly male, sport-oriented audience, will require you to behave in a way that conforms to this audience’s needs and values.
At the same time, your style, voice and tone need to be distinct enough and offer something unfamiliar, new and different in order to be recognized as interesting. In other words, your brand’s identity both conforms to your audience but also seeks to surprise and excite it.
Identity stands for uniqueness and differentiation. Even in a dynamic marketplace such as the supplement market, there is always potential for you to find your particular niche, by carefully customizing your products and services, by making them reflect your values and originality.
Ultimately, your brand’s identity is at the core of everything else that your brand is and does. If you haven’t figured it out in detail, you risk sending out mixed signals to your audience.
2. Create Visual Brand Consistency
Once you have the internal structure of your brand intact (identity, values, goals, tone), you have to make sure the outside reflects these clearly. The “outside” of your brand has many dimensions, with the visual being the most immediate.
The visual consistency of your supplement brand includes your logo, typography, the styles and colors that define your brand, the layouts and formatting of the promotional materials, the labeling of your products. All of these are of course related to your identity.
Consider the example of a male audience and try imagining a logo that has a soft and curvy look, with bright and warm colors. Though the example is stereotypical, the point of it is that visual consistency is not only the consistency of all visuals but is directly related to your brand’s identity, its niche and audience.
As much as brands can change conventional perceptions and stereotypes, they also need to conform to them to a certain extent, in order to relate to their audience. Crafting a brand book or “charter,"which carefully describes all visual aspects of your brand’s identity, has proven to be an effective way to achieve visual consistency across the board.
3. Unify Your Social Media & Online Presence
Consistency across your social media profilesis the next stage to creating an integrated and complete brand. Social media brand consistency incorporates the previous two points. Your presence there must combine your brand’s identity with its visual representation.
This is not to say that all your social media profiles need to look alike. Rather, your audience needs to be able to identify your brand clearly at a glance, given the right visual and textual cues.
Social media profiles are like your digital storefront (apart from your website, of course). Your brand’s identity must shine through at all times, in order to create a consistent and trustworthy experience for users. Consider, for example, how some of the biggest brands worldwide have created a consistent brand experience across all their social media profiles.
Social media consistency includes consistent information about your brand, contact information, links to other profiles and your website. If possible, you should also use the same social media brand name (handle, profile name) on all networks.
4. Build Authority with Marketing Consistency
Marketing is not just about selling your products or services but about being convincing, meeting customer expectations and getting your message across. Long before a customer purchases one of your supplements it is your branding and messages that draw them to you.
Consistency in your marketing campaigns and messages creates trust and security and, over time, builds authority. Consider, for example, how Nike has stuck to its "Just do it" slogan for more than 15 yearsand has become one of the biggest brands in its industry. Like many other brands, Nike has recognized that consistency itself is the strongest promise that a brand can make to its customers.
Even if your brand offers a wide range of supplement products, vastly different from each other, if your marketing and messaging is consistent with what your brand stands for then you are on the right track. The point is to know who you are talking to and how to approach them. It is impossible to please everyone but it is not necessary, either. Rather, find what works, find the people that are interested in what you have to offer and commit to them.
Bottom Line
The supplement industry is crowded and competitive. But that should not dishearten you. In this industry, brand consistency is what makes the best stand out from the rest. Much like the saying “good tools are half the work,” good and consistent branding is also half the work of achieving big exposure and growth.
No brand ever achieved anything significant over a long period of time without consistency. If you get this right from the start, you’re effectively increasing all your future chances at success.
What additional instances of brand consistency have impressed you? And how do you achieve consistency within your own company? We’d be happy to hear your story.
Stefani Thionnet, owner and CEO, Private Label Supplement is a “cowboy entrepreneur” and a 23-year veteran in the health and wellness industry. Private Label Supplement is a B2B company that offers supplement retailers a wide range of services and products, from custom and stock formula supplements to creating product labels, designs and even devising marketing strategies for the supplement market.
