Go Bankrupt with an Inconsistent Brand

Image from russell.heistuman.com

An inconsistent brand is a waste of money in every industry, especially construction. We discuss the cost of this inconsistency in Construction Executive’s Guide to Brand Marketing.

1) Constantly Reinventing the Wheel – When all of your marketing materials are different, it means you’re putting extra work on your marketing and design team for no reason. 80% of your brand’s look-and-feel is created with your first marketing piece, such as a website, a large brochure, or proposal template. From there, everything should flow quickly because your brand’s look, colors, tone, and messaging is already in place. The rest is just reformatting for size, audience, and usage. Also, if each of your locations has different brochures and business cards, then you are paying a premium for that design and printing when it could all be done at once with different addresses printed separately. We’ve seen superintendents pay over $1,000 for a sign with the wrong company logo because they paid for someone to create a logo for it instead of getting the company’s official logo and paying less than $100 for that sign – inconsistency costs time, money, and exposure.

2) You Confuse Your Prospects – Your inconsistency means you’re making your prospects and clients think there are multiple companies (you’re creating your own competition) or they think something is wrong so you’re changing your name again. Think about how many times banks change their name. It is confusing. If you think about all those changes, you’ve probably doubted your relationship with that bank already, and when talking about that bank, you probably used the wrong name more than once. That happens with your clients and prospects too if you change your name, or even your look, too often.

I am not saying never to rebrand. Rebrands are important because your brand image needs to reflect your company’s personality or the personality you want your company to grow into in the near future. A disconnect between your brand image and your brand personality is even costlier.