As a strategic document, a house style guide says more about you, does more for you, and saves you from more disasters than you probably realize. In fact, a thoughtfully crafted style guide punches way above its weight in terms of the impact it has on your brand’s image, messaging, and ultimately its success.
Does your company’s stance on the Oxford comma have a direct impact on ROI? No, not really. (But maybe… we’ll get to that later). However, the quality and consistency of your brand copy does. Here’s how that works.
What a style guide says about you
In short, everything.
That may sound fatuous, but it is the very purpose of a house style guide. It lays out exactly the elements that make your brand unique, so the people who create your copy understand the Who and the Why and the How of your message.
Let’s take up the Oxford comma again. Do you use it, or don’t you… and why might that matter?
Because people notice details. If your copy is noticeably different from one platform to another—social posts to display ads to web pages to billboards—little inconsistencies add up.
Not convinced? Okay, then take “Oxford comma” out of the above example and replace it with the name of your brand. You’d be surprised at how many different ways that can be screwed up.
- How it’s styled: Is your brand an Inc., a Corp., a Co., an LLC? Imagine if it shows up as all of them across your marketing materials… or within a single document.
- How it’s spelled: A unique brand name is a huge asset, but that sometimes means a unique word or words. So unique that it can challenge the most dedicated copywriter not only in its spelling, but how to make it plural or possessive.
- How it engages with the customer: Style also encompasses voice. Does your brand speak in the first person or the third? Does it address customers formally or casually? And how formally or casually?
This probably sounds pretty basic, but that’s what makes the stakes so high. If your own marketing material lacks the attention to detail to get the basics right, it won’t engender a lot of confidence.
Consistency is the hallmark of quality copy and, by extension, a quality brand. A style guide helps you establish and defend that reputation by ensuring all your messaging meets a standard of excellence.
A style guide is a force multiplier
The effort that goes into establishing a brand’s voice and tone is considerable. Encompassing it in a house style guide effectively gives your marketing leadership team more input on the content creation process with fewer touches. Every time the style guide is referenced, that initial effort pays off again.
Your guide also empowers the people writing your copy, whether in-house or at an agency. Because they’re going into the project with a clear understanding of the look and feel of your brand messaging, it will take fewer iterations to go from first draft to approved copy. And fewer iterations also means fewer rounds of review, which frees up the stakeholders on that project to spend more time on other priorities.
In other words, style guides can lead to increased efficiency. Compound the time and money saved by the number of projects every year, and you start to see how a style guide actually can influence ROI.
Take care of a style guide and it’ll take care of you
It’s important to remember that a style guide is a living document. Your business will grow, change, and pivot as the years pass; your style guide must be equally as agile.
To that end, it’s important to review the guide on an irregular basis.
Why not a regular basis? Because your offerings don’t always change with the fiscal calendar, and the guide needs to change with them. Likewise, when your market position changes then your voice and tone could change, as well. New niche? New style, or at least a hard look at the existing style so you can burnish or replace the relevant sections. Customers can change your style guide, too. As their needs, preferences, and tastes change, so should the way you relate to them.
In other words, there’s no such thing as one-and-done when it comes to your house style guide. If anything about your brand changes, make sure the style guide changes, too.
Style isn’t just for English majors and journalists
While it’s easy to write off style guides as something only word nerds could love—after all, they’ve been satirized by The Onion—the fact is they have a real impact on all your outward-facing brand content. A well-written style guide adds value in the long run.
If you’ve got one, you should be rightfully proud of it. If you don’t, then we’d be happy to talk about creating one for you.
