5 Biggest Branding Mistakes and How to Fix Them

Building a memorable, inspirational brand that emotionally connects with your audience is vital, yet incredibly hard. Even experienced marketers and founders often trip up when shaping their branding and communicating it.

Without a consistent, cohesive brand identity and strategy guiding all touch points, you risk confusing prospects, failing to convert leads, and leaving money on the table. We highlight the 5 most common branding pitfalls made across various industries and actionable techniques to course-correct before it’s too late.

1. Not Defining Your Core Identity and Values From the Outset

Far too many organizations start with branding as an afterthought, instead of having it spearhead marketing. Diving into logos, visuals, and campaigns without establishing what your brand fundamentally stands for leads to extremely fragmented communication.

Prospects today deeply value authentic brands that have a transparent purpose, personality and cultural POV baked into operations. Failing to elucidate and anchor on this strategic north star leads to short-term campaigns that lack heart, come off as disingenuous and diminish long-term equity.

Actionable Fixes

• Host an internal workshop with leadership focused on uncovering your core ethos, persona and spirit as an organization beyond products/services

• Research your addressable audience - values, behaviors, aesthetic and tone preferences

• Shape distinguishing brand pillars keeping audience and positioning in mind

• Formulate an authentic brand story that weaves in founder vision, defining moments, social proof

2. Trying to Please Every Person With Your Brand

Another branding misstep is trying to appeal to the entire market Vs picking a specific tribe to serve exceptionally well. Many brands shy away from polarizing or taking a strong stand and instead end up with lukewarm, artificial branding and messaging attempting mass appeal.

This bland approach fails to trigger any emotion or loyalty. Strong brands know who they are and who they aren’t. They focus on their ideal core audience psychographic unequivocally with messaging, visuals and experiences - even if it means some may dislike them.

Actionable Fixes

• Zero down on 3-5 core target audience customer personas through data and empathy

• Study their consumption habits, objections, worldviews to shape differentiated but decisive brand presence

• Workshop messaging themes and creative assets customized to chosen niches instead of everyone

3. Ignoring Visual System Consistency

Customers today engage brands across dozens of fragmented touchpoints - ads, website, product UX flows, apps, storefronts and more. Maintaining cohesive visual language throughout these considering typography, color ways, iconography, illustrations, photography requires meticulous art direction.

Wild inconsistencies in visual treatments across these consumer journeys leaves prospects confused. It signals the lack of rigor a brand brings to communicating their offering clearly. Yet only 28% of businesses have clearly documented visual guidelines.

Actionable Fixes

• Maintain a constantly updated cloud library housing all branding assets and metadata

• Create a style guide detailing typography principles, mandated color codes, regulating imagery licenses, iconography, spacing rules

• Formally train marketing and creative teams on using these assets through pull based asset managers

4. Failing to Create Comprehensive Brand Guidelines

Brand guidelines formally compile all the strategic principles, visual assets, stylistic treatments, messaging dos and don'ts in one place. Yet a shocking 6 out 10 marketers admit not having these documented well.

This leads to disjointed applications of branding across teams. Over time brand perceptions get clouded without continuity guiding awareness campaigns, product experience, communications.

Actionable Fixes:

• Maintain a constantly updated cloud library housing latest versions of all visual assets, copy themes, imagery guidelines

• Detail typographic styles, color codes, grid framework systems cross channels in a style guide

• Specify communication guidelines aligning tonality with audiences, mandatory reviews

• Accessibility focused guides on localized adaptations, inclusive imagery, transparency standards

5. Not Training Staff on Brand Governance

The biggest branding challenge comes down to execution not strategy. When organizational changes happen or new teams join, brand knowledge gets lost without formal training flows.

Customer facing teams left guessing how to apply branding leads to diluted experiences. Leaders assume understanding through osmosis without enforcement and testing comprehension.

Actionable Fixes:

• Conduct structured onboarding workshops on brand vision, persona do’s and don'ts, current style guide

• Build easy to search cloud based asset repositories and access controls

• Nominate brand custodians per department for oversight

• Create mandatory refreshers on updated guidelines annually

• Embed brand focused rituals into internal events, office spaces

The fastest way to fail at branding is assuming it will sustain itself without nurturing discipline. Committing to training and guidelines aligned to positioning prevents fragmentation. Brand and product market fit directly tie to each other.

In summary, ignored branding mistakes can severely hamper credibility and ceaseless mutations of identity. Committing to disciplined governance of brand presence and experience based on core principles is crucial. If executed well, branding elevates far beyond being just a mark - to shape perceptions, trigger consumer behaviors and directly link to revenue.