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Professionalizing your business often starts with the way customers and prospects perceive you. So your “business face” to the world should be cohesive in every way. And cohesiveness is all about frequency.

“Extending your brand through frequency means increased recall, top-of-mind awareness and a greater likelihood to do business with you on the part of consumers,” says Travis Miller, co-founder of small business marketing information firm Gravitational Marketing.“A non-cohesive appearance will not benefit from frequency because disjointed messages will not seem to fit with each other. For instance, if you brand your stationary one way, but your advertisements a different way, those who see both will not get the extra impact of seeing your brand multiple times.”

You don’t have an endless supply of money to pour into marketing efforts, so brand recognition can be especially critical. And this is where cohesion comes into play. Certainly, says Miller, you’ll need the help of an experienced designer for any materials you produce, but you can control the process to some degree by understanding how cohesion can help you with a foundation.

Jim Williams, CEO of LogoYes and Entrepreneur magazine’s “Image and Branding” columnist, refers to cohesion as “coordination” and offers guidelines that can assist you in keeping your message the same across all your media before you design anything. That coordination is what triggers the frequency with which potential customers view your brand. When viewed together, he says, your materials should all have a similar look and feel, without being identical.

• Color is key—Color is critical when it comes to memory retrieval. Williams suggests choosing a strong primary color you feel appropriate for your image and using it as the dominant color across all your media (your printer can show you a book based on the most widely used color matching system, the Pantone Matching System). You can choose a secondary color, but use it sparingly.
• Use few fonts—Choose a single primary font or two primary fonts (a serif, which has a foot, like Times New Roman, and a sans-serif, which has no extensions, such as Helvetica). Serif fonts are good for text, while sans-serif fonts are often used in headlines and subheads. Using more than two fonts can result in a jumbled look, while sticking with primary fonts aids in brand identification.
• Consistent graphics—If you use a distinctive symbol, shape or border to convey your image, use it across your all your media.
• Your logo—As your brand’s most basic graphic element, your logo should appear on all your materials. In addition, you should always try to have the logo appear at the same size and in the same location on the page.

Finally, both Miller and Williams agree on the most important aspect of branding: your message. Your tone and voice work to create the overall context for your brand. If you sell high-end products and services, the message will be a formal one. If you offer more commonly used items, the message is more friendly and conversational.

“An effective message has a far greater chance to be retained by your prospects than a logo. And a logo does very little to cause your prospects to care about it,” Miller observes. “But your message, if structured properly, can connect and engage your prospects and have a branding effect much stronger than your look and feel alone. To craft an effective branding message, think about your customer, not yourself. Talk about ‘what’s in it for them.’”