Brand Guidelines Template

I developed this brand guideline template after having experienced a catastrophic “re-brand” that left our B2B SaaS company with falling numbers across the board. Our website traffic went down, along with trial starts, conversion rates, retention rates and ultimately MRR growth. 

It was a disaster. The craziest part is that we inflicted this wound upon ourselves. We spent $80K dollars on a branding agency and fumbled the entire project.

I’m hoping this template serves as a framework for you to define your brand without wasting excessive amounts of money on a branding agency. 

So, what should brand guidelines include? It should include big picture stuff like your purpose and brand story to design details like typography and brand colors. I think you'll find this to be the best brand guideline template out there.

Click “Add to Cart” and checkout now to instantly access the Google Sheet of the Brand Guidelines Template. If you prefer to use an excel file, you can first make a copy of the Google Sheet and then download it as an excel file.

Here’s how you create your own brand guidelines using this template. I think of this as my one-page brand guidelines doc. Something that all internal teams can reference on a daily basis for guidance on how to represent our brand in the world. 

This worksheet includes the following tabs: 

• Instructions: instructions on what to do next. 
• Brand Guidelines Template: a blank template for you to input your brand guidelines.
• Example Template: a completed Brand Guidelines Template for inspiration on how to fill in each cell.  

Part of this brand exercise is defining what you are today, what you want to be AND what you don't want your brand to be. Your brand will evolve over time, but it starts by at least clearly defining what it is now and what you want it to be. 

Here are a few quick steps to get started: 

1. Identify the appropriate stakeholders to participate in developing your brand guidelines.
2. Work collaboratively to define and commit to guidelines. 
3. Bring the brand to life through your marketing communications. 
   

After we did this, we were able to turn around a B2B SaaS business that had been declining in growth for 3 years straight. We doubled our monthly trial starts within 14 months. We improved trial to paid conversion rates from an average of 7% to 12%, which radically improved our ability to acquire users through paid channels.

I hope you can make the content of this template something you adhere to as a business. You can either use this template as your framework or transfer it to a word doc or powerpoint for the more visual elements.

Click “Add to Cart” and checkout now to instantly copy the Google Sheet of the Brand Guidelines Template.

You may also like these additional high-growth operating templates for B2B SaaS companies:

• Marketing Budget Template
• Market Analysis Template
• OKR Tracker Template
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