In today’s marketing landscape, your brand can’t afford to look wishy-washy.

Changing colour palettes based on how you feel that day? Constantly generating copy and messaging that doesn’t align with your style guide? Letting your brand vision slip when planning a marketing campaign?

Those are old habits. (Or at least they should be.)

When it comes to content and visuals related to your brand, every asset needs to have a consistent, cohesive flow — from newsletters to social media content to print media and everything in between.

But with so much material to create for each campaign, staying on-brand can feel like a full-time job.

That’s why templating is crucial.

When you introduce templating into your multi-channel marketing workflow, you’ll never have to worry about losing sight of your brand identity again.

With templates on your side, you’ll create perfect, on-brand assets every time.

Let’s take a closer look at what templating options are available to you and how to use them to keep your brand on point.

Style guides, outline templates, and copywriting templates

eating on-brand content can take some trial and error. However, after analysing your content conversion metrics over time, you can apply those insights to inform branded style guides, outline templates, and copywriting templates.

Here’s what to include in your style guides, outline templates, and copywriting templates:

Style guide checklist

  • Punctuation, grammar, and spelling expectations
  • Content themes and topics overview
  • Writing and editing guidelines
  • Tone and style expectations
  • Brand colours (with hue #s)
  • Brand voice dos and don’ts
  • Content purpose overview
  • Target audience overview
  • Header preferences
  • Image dimensions
  • Image guidelines
  • Formatting rules
  • SEO guidelines
  • Form design
  • Logo copy
  • Font type
  • Text size

Blog article outline template checklist

  • Alt titles and descriptions framework and word count estimate
  • Introduction framework and word count estimate
  • Conclusion framework and word count estimate
  • Metadata framework and word count estimate
  • Body framework and word count estimate

Copywriting checklist

  • Segmented boilerplate messaging examples
  • Landing page copy overview
  • Sales copy dos and dont’s
  • Website copy convention
  • Top copywriting rules
  • CTA examples
  • CTA rules

Additional tools

  • GrowthBar: Help your content team save time writing long-form SEO content with GrowthBar’s AI writing tool
  • Google Docs: Keep things simple and eliminate information silos by drafting your style guide, outline template, and copywriting template in Google Docs
  • Airtable: House your CTAS and boilerplate messaging examples in Airtable so your content team can quickly pull them as needed

Visuals, infographics, digital posters, and print media

From pricing overview infographics to virtual event posters to booklets and brochures, visuals are key to solidifying a first impression and (most importantly) a lasting impression.

Whether you’re going the DIY route or hiring a design agency, ask assigned designers to refer to your style and copywriting guides to create visual templates that are on-brand.

We also recommend creating some cornerstone visual pieces you can use as evergreen content in your marketing campaigns, gated content assets, and blog articles.

For instance, if you run a dental office that specialises in cosmetic dentistry, consider creating staple assets that overview your treatment options — like infographics about how much veneers cost:

Or simple digital posters with vector images describing each service you offer:

Additional tools

  • Use Picsart’s upscale API tool to automatically resize images (without sacrificing quality) across all marketing materials
  • Download Freepik’s vector images to add vectors to your custom infographics and digital banners
  • Use Visme’s infographic maker to create your own infographic templates and cornerstone pieces
  • Use a reliable QR Code generator to incorporate a QR Code into your print materials. QR Codes can direct customers to your website for more detailed treatment information, to sign up for newsletters or promotions, or to access exclusive discounts, enhancing the overall effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

Website and blogging templates

As the engine of your content strategy and marketing funnel, having branded websites and blogging templates is a must.

But there’s a caveat here.

When it comes to your website, you might consider splurging on a complete custom design instead. While drag-and-drop, no-code templates can help you save time and money, you’ll still be “locked in” to some design features and options, so customisation will be somewhat limited.

Let’s take a look at two examples to demonstrate what we mean.
Here’s a website design example from YUPLAY (a site that sells PC games):

And here’s a website design example from copywriting agency Maha Copy Co:

Can you tell which one is custom and which one uses a template?

If you guessed that YUPLAY has a custom website, then you guessed correctly.

While Maha Copy Co. uses a beautiful, on-brand template, you can only stretch its aesthetics and functionality so far.

The gist? If you’re pressed for time and money, go with a website template. If you have additional time to wait and financial resources, invest in a custom site.

Blogging templates, on the other hand, don’t need all the bells and whistles.

When it comes to blog content, readers just want value and high readability. As long as your blogging templates allow proper formatting, it’s okay to choose a simplified (yet still on-brand) template.

For instance, check out this simple blog post template Matchr uses in this article on HRIS software:

This blog template is simple, easy to read, and lines up with Matchr’s brand identity. Simple blog templates like these also work great for SaaS and B2B brands.

Additional tools

  • Choose a blogging site that offers templates that align with your style guide
  • Shop website templates at Tonic

Social media and email marketing templates

Use templates to create a memorable impression whenever an opt-in opens one of your marketing emails or peruses your social media profiles.

You can use tools to create your own templates, download pre-made templates, or hire a designer to create templates for you.

Additional tools

  • ActiveCampaign: Craft high-converting email campaigns with ActiveCampaign’s responsive email templates
  • Canva: Use Canva to create digital posters, carousel posts, and interactive content to use in social media campaigns
  • Social Curator: Save time writing captions and shooting professional images with Social Curator’s caption templates and professional image library (designed for social media but can easily adapt to email)

Where to find free templates

A super easy way to find free templates online is to head to Google and type in:

“(the asset type you want a template for)” + “free templates”

For instance, if you’re looking for internal document templates like a board resolution template, a free tool thanks to which it’s possible to summarise board decisions made in hours-long meetings in a few pages of text, you’d search:

From there, you can peruse ads, blog articles, and websites that reference board resolution templates and choose your favourites.

There’s also a lot to be said about one of the top brand-templating platforms in the world — Marq.

With Marq (formerly Lucidpress), you can:

  • Discover key insights that can help you create better-branded content
  • Sync your compliance standards with your brand standards
  • Build and deliver content to your audience at light speed
  • Promote content consistency across all of your assets
  • Empower your team to easily build content at scale
  • Quickly add must-have copy to projects that need it
  • Monitor content that always needs a second look
  • Centrally manage brand assets and templates
  • Implement smart fields to auto-populate data
  • Create templates and set locking parameters
  • Drive growth by working more efficiently

Here are some additional tools that offer free templates:

  • Creative Commons
  • Adobe Express
  • Mailchimp
  • Piktochart
  • Hootsuite
  • Freepik
  • Canva

Templating checklist

Whether you’re creating your own templates, downloading pre-made ones, or hiring a designer to create templates and custom designs, here’s a checklist you can follow to stay on-brand.

On-brand templating checklist

Run through the following to make sure every element on your templates and custom designs aligns with your style guide.

This template or custom design has aligned:

  • Links to other channels
  • Contact options
  • Colour palettes
  • Trust elements
  • Copywriting
  • Font types
  • Font sizes
  • Keywords
  • Headers
  • Logos
  • CTAs

The importance of a multi-channel templating system

Whether you sell ED meds, Delta 8 products, or linen suits, implementing multi-channel marketing is crucial to making the most of the online spaces your target audience frequents most.

But with so many channels to cater to, brand identity can fall by the wayside if you’re not careful.

That’s where multi-channel templating comes in.

With a templating system, you can create evergreen assets, customize forms, and produce branded content every time.

PS: There’s a lot more where this came from! From landing pages to adding content to webinar slides, you can find or make a template for just about any marketing use case. Now it’s up to you to forge ahead and create a primary templating plan to keep your brand identity on point.

To your success!

Author Bio

Guillaume is a digital marketer focusing on content management at Wordable and Digital PR at uSERP. Outside of work, he enjoys his life in sunny Mexico, reading books, wandering around and catching the latest shows on TV.