3 Reasons A Beautiful, Consistent Brand Matters

During our initial consultation with our couples, we always ask some form of this question: “What did you see that made you want to contact us?” In other words, “What led you to be sitting here with us right now?”

That’s such an important piece of information! We want to know if they loved our work. Or if they read about us and knew they would love us. Or sometimes it’s even good to hear exactly what they liked about our work and why. But every once in a while we will get unexpected answers. As Jake & Hannah sat on our couch during their consultation, their response blew us away! It started off sounding pretty normal:

“We saw your work and we fell in love! That’s not to say that we didn’t love anyone else’s work. But we really loved yours.”

But what they said next took us by surprise:

“We decided against meeting with several other photographers because we went to their websites and they were not well-designed. We figured if they are supposed to be artists and they don’t even have a nice logo or well-designed website, then we probably wouldn’t want them to be our photographers either.”

WOAH! We had to keep our cool but we almost fell off the couch! We had never heard that before!

Ryan has a degree in Graphic Design so branding is near and dear to his heart! From the beginning we have known the importance of having a consistent, beautiful brand. That’s not to say we always did, however! It has taken us a while to figure things out along the way. It’s never easy! But don’t let anyone tell you it’s not important. Just ask Jake & Hannah!

If that doesn’t convince you that it’s time to start taking a serious look at your brand, we are going to share 3 really great reasons that building a brand that is consistent and beautiful will make a HUGE difference in your business!

A Beautiful, Consistent Brand Creates Recognition

How can you recognize a Louis Vuitton purse from 200 yards away? Or how do you know someone’s shirt is Nike when all you can see is a tiny 1″ wide swoosh?

It’s because those companies have remained consistent and simple in their branding. So when someone sees your business Facebook page and then clicks through to your website, do they feel like they just went to a totally different business altogether? What about if they go to your personal Facebook page? Or your business Instagram? Are they seeing the same profile images?

If not, you are not creating recognition with your audience! We have wanted to change our Facebook profile photos so many times in the last year, but we don’t! You know why? Because when our couples see us liking and commenting on Facebook, they should see the same photos of us they see on our website. That experience builds recognition and leads us to our next reason!

A Beautiful, Consistent Brand Creates Trust

When people spend their hard-earned money on you, they want to feel good about it! For us, there are a lot of factors that go into building that feeling. We want them to see our work in advance of booking us. We want them to meet us in person. We want them to know what to expect from their experience with us.

But branding is also a HUGE part of building trust. Imagine if every time you drove by a Chik-fil-a, they had a new logo. Or imagine they were changing the recipe of their chicken sandwich once a month or so. Would you go there? NO WAY! Why not? Because they are not being consistent and you can’t trust that you are going to get what you got last time.

The principle is the same in branding. If your audience goes to your website and sees a completely different look than they see on social media, they will lose trust that they are going to get a consistent experience. And the scariest part of that? Sometimes they are making that decision without even knowing it! We are so trained to make quick decisions based on branding that we don’t even realize we are making them!

Guys, a beautiful, consistent brand builds trust in ways you can’t even imagine! It’s important! If you don’t believe us yet, here’s one more reason!

A Beautiful, Consistent Brand Creates Value

You are probably in business for a lot of really good reasons! For us, we believe in marriage. We believe in serving our brides and grooms on one of the most important days of their lives! We believe people are more important than any money we could ever make. But we also believe that service, done well, deserves payment. If you didn’t make any money in your business, you wouldn’t be around very long!

Our goal is that when all is said and done, our couples will say, “You guys are worth way more than we paid for you.” Not because we want to feel good about ourselves, but because we take tremendous joy in knowing that we had a part in making their day special!

Part of creating that “worth way more than we paid for you” value is consistent branding. People want peace of mind when it comes to parting with their money. Just like we said above, people need to trust you to pay for you. When you have a beautiful, consistent brand, your audience trusts you more and therefore they are willing to pay for your services. Most people (especially when it comes to their wedding) would rather pay more for someone they know is going to do an amazing job and take good care of them rather than pay less for someone they will have to worry about. And a brand that builds trust, builds value.

We rebranded in January because we changed our name. We spent the money to have photos taken by someone we trusted and whose style was similar to ours. We highly recommend it! You can read about that here. We spent the money to have a professional design our logo exactly how we wanted it. Guys, Ryan has a Graphic Design degree and we STILL paid the money to have a logo designed (he didn’t think he could ever really be satisfied with anything he designed). These things are worth the money. Do it!

Guys, just like in the first example we shared with Jake & Hannah, when you have a brand that builds recognition, builds trust and builds value, you can’t go wrong! It truly made a difference in our business and it can make a difference in yours too!