Whether your brand is traveling down the hall to a colleague's office or across the globe, you need to safeguard it for the journey ahead. With freelancers, marketing agencies, internal teams, and many others using your brand in communications and content, it's easy for inconsistencies and misuse to arise. A brand identity kit can help by providing disparate groups and individuals with the tools and information they need to uphold your brand consistently. In fact, a brand identity kit is an absolute must-have for all businesses!

Anyone who has worked in digital marketing knows that marketing and technology go hand in hand. Successful marketing strategies rely on a variety of tools to evaluate data, connect with audiences, and create engaging content. With thousands of martech tools to choose from, the key is determining the right ones for your team. 

Once you’ve decided on a new marketing campaign, you’ll be tempted to jump right in. Slow down! You’re missing an important first step: the creative brief. A creative brief is essential for getting all internal stakeholders on the same page before executing a project. All new creative endeavors should start with a brief, so use the tips in this guide to help you draft one that is clear, concise, and informative.

Your brand is your company’s most important asset. It’s more than just words on a page or images on a screen ⏤ it’s how you communicate with and attract your audience. From your logo to every customer interaction, it’s the identity of your organization.  

To stand out in a competitive market, consumers need to easily understand who your company is and what you provide. Brand consistency helps consumers feel confident in their decision to become a customer because they know exactly what to expect from you with every interaction.

So, how do you ensure a consistent experience that builds brand loyalty? Develop strong brand guidelines.

In about 15 years social media has gone from an entirely new concept to an integral part of everyday life. Now, any marketing mix that doesn’t include social media is unusual. With nearly 80% of Americans possessing a profile on a social networking platform, marketing through social media is one of the best ways to reach members of your target audience — no matter who they are. Plus, almost all prominent social platforms have paid advertising options that brands can leverage to increase exposure to relevant audiences. If you want to reach potential customers and key stakeholders, you need to be using social media.

But that doesn’t mean that social media marketing is easy, or even altogether straightforward! You and your team have probably struggled with how to create the right kind of content to engage the right people, and how to best measure success online. Don’t worry, you’re not alone — social media is a difficult and confusing tool for many marketing teams. A great step toward demystifying social media marketing is to streamline your social media workflow.

The work of a marketer is never done. In addition to tackling what’s already on your long to-do list, you’re constantly fielding new ideas to get more customers, faster. It’d be great if you could just hire more people, but that’s not always possible. And sometimes, it feels like even if you had 1,000 people on your marketing team, you could still find work for 1,001.

Intentional or not, your social media presence impacts your brand perception. Wendy's uses witty, well-crafted Tweets to support their brand image. Their Twitter bio reads, "We like our tweets the same way we like to make hamburgers: better than anyone expects from a fast food joint." On the other hand... a Facebook page that hasn’t been updated or monitored in five years also says a lot about a brand.

“Everything’s fast now and it’s totally unreasonable,” says comedian John Mulaney. “The world is run by computers. The world is run by robots. And sometimes they ask us if we’re a robot just because we’re trying to log in and look at our own stuff!”

Marketing teams face the opportunities (and temptations) of more channels, more content, and more technology. And thinking about how it all works together to deliver a consistent, effective customer experience can lead to more headaches.

This blog is a guest post from Chris Yuhasz, President of POV Solution, and a result of a collaboration with Widen.

Marketing is about delivering the right message, at the right time, to the right person. No matter what your business is, you can’t run a successful marketing campaign without creating high-quality marketing collateral first.