Last time we looked at how to build your brand, but what if your brand isn’t right for your company in the first place? We look at how to keep you on track during your rebrand.
Businesses change as time goes on, which is needed to keep up with the fast pace of the world. However most of the time, businesses branding fails to keep up with the changes, and a business may have changed their services, products or direction several times before they commit to a re-brand.
Which is understandable, re-branding your company is a big commitment, and sometimes you might not be sure of the changes, so you need time to make sure this is what you want to do. But once you’ve committed to the changes, you should also commit to a re-brand to ensure you are doing the best for your business.
You need to change the public’s perception of who you are, what you do and why they should bother to get in touch or buy from you. This can seem incredibly daunting, so how do you tackle this without having a meltdown? We’ve put together a few key points you can follow to keep you focused on the end goal.
Pre-marketing
At The Marketing People, our first step with a re-brand is always pre-marketing, and we believe it is the place any company should start when they are looking at re-establishing their brand.
You need to confirm the reasons as to why you are re-branding, who your target audience are now and what you want to achieve. Within our own process, we would put this together as a brief, so we have clear goals of what we are working towards. Putting together a document like this yourself though and can be a great way of breaking down what can seem like a huge project into smaller manageable goals. It can also be a motivation tool if the process begins to become overwhelming, to remind yourself of what you are trying to achieve and why this is the best move for your business.
But be realistic when setting these goals. When re-branding you are in a great position that you already have data to work with. You know what marketing has worked well previously, what customers responded well to, and where you would like to take the company next.
Design and implementation.
Once you have your goals, you need to look at the design of your new brand, and beginning to implement it throughout your business. It is the usual process to approach a marketing agency when looking at a full re-brand, who will be able to take care of the design, production and web development for your brand, as this saves you time negotiating between various different companies.
However the most important thing is that you work well with whoever you choose. So regardless of if this is an agency, freelancer, or friend with creative flair, they need to completely understand, and be as excited as you are about your company, for the brand to work as well as it can. Having a good relationship with those that you are trusting with your brand makes the process a whole lot easier and exciting.
When looking at implementing your brand, it may be useful to put together a list of what you already have your current branding on, such as social media, online directories, business cards, exhibition stands and leaflets or flyers. This will make it much easier to check off when each item has been updated with the new brand, and won’t leave you stuck, say 6 months after your re-brand when you dig out your exhibition gear and it’s all your old marketing kit.
Inform your customers
If you have a loyal customer base, you need to inform them of the changes and ensure them all the promises you made to them originally are still fulfilled, or if they can’t be due to the change in services or products, what you are going to do instead.
Depending on who you are working with for your re-brand, this may already be taken care of. But you should consider how you mainly interact with your customers, and communicate with them through the same pathway.
So consider direct mail, emails, social media or a website announcement, and keep them in the process with you.
Keep pushing and promoting your brand.
Doing the re-brand itself is only the beginning, and the platform for building the next chapter of your business. Use some of the points from our previous article on building your brand if you need some ideas on how to keep pushing your brand to your customers, and stay excited! This is a brilliant time for your business, and everyone should know about it.
So from why you should focus energy on your brand, to re- branding, to promoting that brand, we hope you have been able to gain some knowledge from our branding series.
If you have some concerns regarding your brand or how you promote it, why not see if we can help? Call us on 01543 495752 for a friendly chat, and let’s see what we can do together. You can find more useful branding insight on our blogs.