What Is Brand Compliance? 4 Strategies Companies Use to Implement It Successfully

Investing in brand building is vital for growing businesses. However, according to The Brand Growth Study, most marketers aren’t investing enough in brand building. Business owners should direct more than half of daily tasks and activities towards raising brand awareness and consumer interest.

Make sure your investments pay off with brand consistency and compliance.

What Is Brand Compliance?

Brand recognition and identity are central to reaching out to consumers for a company. That’s why most businesses have plans to ensure marketing and awareness strategies are geared towards specific standards. That’s where brand compliance comes into play. 

Brand compliance can be defined in several ways:

• Brand compliance is a process that allows companies to ensure that their brand guidelines are being followed across different campaigns and advertising channels.
• Brand compliance is the creation of policies that include standardized messaging, imagery, and colors to provide a sense of consistency over multiple sales channels.
• Brand compliance is a way to measure how different sales and marketing partners adhere to your brand platform and policies.

What led to the need for brand compliance?

Throughout much of history, business was a matter of need. This arrangement all changed in the 20th century, though, when businesses started using mass media to appeal to more consumers. 

The shift created a need to stand out, and brands soon began to manage their messaging and advertising campaigns over wider areas. More brands started investing in brand management and adopting marketing guidelines, leading to the stricter application of online brand compliance measures throughout most industries.

Why Even Invest in Brand Compliance?

Marketing professionals and small business owners have to be careful about where they invest their money. Putting the right assets in the right places can make the difference between success and failure. Compliance is essential for brands engaging in marketing campaigns to create cohesive messaging and promote their values.

By investing in brand compliance, businesses can maintain integrity across sales channels, reduce internal marketing costs, and minimize the revision of multi-campaign assets. With online brand compliance, you can solidify your brand knowledge base using a centralized system for user support.

Getting Started: Create Your Own Brand Compliance Policy

When done correctly, brand compliance leads to the efficient use of brand assets and elements. Businesses should decide which design choices are right for them and their campaigns before investing time and energy in arbitrary deployments.

Choose the Format

There are many different types of documents that can be used to distribute brand compliance policies.  Having a living brand compliance policy hosted on your brand asset management tool can make future brand changes easier. Whether physical or digital, the policy should be easy to deliver and access.Brand compliance ensures that an organization’s brand remains consistent, regardless of how many marketing channels enter the mix.

Decide on an Outline

The basic proposal to be included in the policy should touch on all critical points related to brand compliance. Specific wording, color choices, shapes, and symbols should be consistently used throughout the campaign. 

Involve the Right People in the Process

Even after taking the time and energy to develop a strong and consistent brand compliance policy, it will be impossible to enforce without the right people in place. CMOs, growth managers, heads of design, and any other important decision-makers should be involved.

Create a Draft and Finalize It

Don’t waste time worrying about whether your compliance policy is perfect. Start with an outline, build on it, and remove inconsistencies. By working to finalize your policy, you’ll be able to deliver consistent brand messaging to consumers right away.

4 Strategies Successful Companies Use to Ensure Brand Compliance

Brand compliance means continuously evaluating marketing campaigns and improving upon them. Successful companies use these four strategies to build consistent marketing campaigns:

1. They Create Clear Brand Compliance Standards 

For many companies creating consistent messaging is muddied by misleading standards and practices. This confusion can lead to misinformation and false perceptions. For better brand compliance, companies can adopt advertisements, messaging, and logos with a clear message.

2. They Set Up a Centralized Brand Compliance Resource

There are many moving parts within brand management. This multitude can make it difficult for marketing professionals and small business owners to deal with ongoing campaigns practically. 

Brand management tools offered by digital asset management companies such as MarcomCentral make it easy to organize brand compliance resources in a single location.

3. They Deploy Localized Marketing Campaigns 

Distributing brand assets across multiple channels can lead to inefficiencies and confusing consumer-facing messages. Companies that succeed in brand compliance can distribute their marketing strategies with localized assets that help communicate important ideas to potential clients. 

Having local stores available, professionals who will make house calls, and purpose-driven advertisements are all great ways to create localized marketing.

4. They Monitor Their Brand Compliance

No matter how hard a company works to deliver messaging straight to the consumer, its campaigns won’t be successful without quality and consistency. By continuously monitoring brand compliance strategies, decision-makers can ensure their messaging is on-point.

Creating Better Brand Compliance Strategies

Brand compliance is key to aligning short-term decisions with long-term organizational strategies. Businesses that take the time to integrate all levels of their marketing campaigns empower themselves and their employees to serve customers from all backgrounds. 

Online brand compliance provides an enforcement mechanism for identifying specific brand values and reinforcing adherence. Businesses that can create clear messaging, offer centralized support to users, and allocate resources where they’re needed receive more positive exposure for their brands.