Overseeing brand consistency in communications with customers and prospects can be challenging for any organization, and especially challenging in a distributed marketing model. When going to market with a large, disperse sales force - including agents, branches, franchises or dealers - brand consistency across these channels is critical. Even details that may seem subtle, such as logo size, brand colors and the tone of messaging can dramatically impact how your organization is perceived.

Why is brand consistency important?
Your brand is valuable. Your brand is the platform that delivers your core product or service differentiation to your audience. Brand elements - such as your company’s logo, colors, tagline and messaging - combine to create a powerful impression in the marketplace. And, as explained in a recent Entrepreneur article, the key to sustaining that powerful brand impression is consistent communication. As such, it’s important to clearly define brand guidelines and manage compliance across your sales channels as part of your distributed marketing process.

Brand guidelines.
Whether developing brand guidelines or reviewing materials for brand consistency, here are some brand elements to consider:

• Precise brand color matching (sophisticated digital printing services ensure your brand colors are exactly matched to the right shades)
• The quality of printed materials (higher quality paper for more affluent brands)
• The tone that your font conveys (old-fashioned and traditional versus modern and clean)
• Delivery medium (will the message be sent by email, memo, letter, or postcard?)
• Formality and tone of the message (specifications should be set for the formality versus informality of all interactions with clients)

A marketing resource management system empowers your distributed marketing and sales channels to create customized marketing materials while adhering to your branding guidelines. Within the system multiple, localized versions of marketing pieces can be created, managed and distributed to customers – from a central library of materials maintained by corporate staff – all consistent with your branding.

For example, with a few clicks, printed collateral pieces can be customized with local contact information and market-specific messaging while automated workflows enable all materials to be approved by corporate managers before the customized pieces are approved for production.

Providing remote sales teams with easy-to-use tools for creating approved marketing materials helps to ensure brand consistency in a distributed marketing model. Without such resources, local sales channels will create their own materials and expose your brand equity to erosion from potentially hundreds of variations in messaging and branding.