I never ceased to be amazed at how roughly many small business owners handle their brand and identity especially when it comes to online marketing in both the traditional mediums and in the newer channels. Just because your brand is small doesn’t mean that it doesn’t deserve the respect afforded to those more established brands.

When starting your business, regardless of what the business does or where it markets the materials you produce every impression made, whether physical or digital serves to build the aggregated identity of your business. Consistency of message starts with a business card and ends at the Superbowl halftime TV commercial everything in between no matter your size should be considered and filtered for consistency.

From an experienced marketeer’s point of view it comes as second nature not to mess with the general look and feel of your campaign or identity without first considering the potential impact on the consistency of message portrayed by the sum of the parts. Marketing in it’s most basic definition is the process of building awareness of your business, it’s activities and it’s values. For any business, after the initial launch pack of business stationary and general elements, the goal becomes two-fold: keep the customers you have and get new ones.

To keep the customers you have loyal and maintain retention it becomes necessary to build brand loyalty to stave off any existing or emerging competition from poaching from your newly captured market share. It is here that consistency starts to become important. Once you have an initial spattering of clients maintain your brand and detail manage everything that leaves your office to be viewed by a current customer or a potential customer.

It is perhaps a daunting task for a new business owner to find the time to ensure that the finepoint detail work is done 100% of the time and across 100% of the materials but the long-term pay off is more than worth the potential delay in launch of a copy bearing item.