To build an amazing brand means to set your business apart from a sea of similar companies in your field, and establish a foothold in the competitive market. More importantly, to build a unique brand means to win over the hearts and minds of your audience, and drive lead generation as well as improve customer loyalty. If you do it right, you will quickly become a household name in your field, and a brand that everyone goes to first.
Whether you’re launching an eCommerce brand, or you’re managing an established service-based business, sometimes it might be necessary to rebrand your company. Whether it’s due to sudden market shifts, or if you’ve made a grave mistake in the past that has ruined your reputation, a successful rebrand can literally save your company from bankruptcy. Here are the five essential steps you need to take in order to give your brand a makeover.
Delve Deep Into The Core Of Your Brand
Every successful rebranding project should start with some deep introspection. In order to be able to build a better brand experience for your customers and audience, you will first need to identify the things that worked as well as the things that didn’t work the first time around and then analyze them thoroughly in order to reinvent your brand. Start by asking some basic questions.
Be Sure To Answer The Following:
- Who are you?
- What is your area of expertise?
- What is your mission, and what is your long-term vision?
- What are the values you stand for?
- Why do you feel a need to rebrand your business?
Answering these questions as thoroughly as possible will allow you to structure your rebranding project, establish key goals and drivers, and start creating new brand content with a clear vision in mind. Keep in mind, though, small businesses may be able to tackle this task on their own, while bigger companies should consider bringing in external consultants due to the scope of the project.
Conduct A Brand-New Market Analysis
Now that you’ve done a bit of soul-searching for your company, it’s time to get back in touch with your customers. As you already know, the way your customers and the online audience perceive your brand can make or break your business, so the next crucial step is to analyze your online reviews, create focus groups, and engage with your following in order to find out what they like and what they don’t like about your brand. It can be a tough pill to swallow, but it needs to be done.
It’s important that you ask your existing customers about your current brand identity, visuals, stories, and messages, as well as your tone of voice. Gather the intel, collate the data, and make actionable reports that will tell you exactly what needs to be changed and how you can align your brand with the needs and wants of your demographic in the most effective way possible.
Reinvent Your Visual Identity
Your visual identity is one of the most important elements of your brand’s overall identity, as it’s the first touchpoint for your customers and the online world when they come across your business. So naturally, the first impression you make on your potential customer matters most, but it’s also important that your visuals help retain existing customers as well. This is why you need to rebrand your online and offline visuals.
List your most important touchpoints, and work on weaving your brand’s new identity into the visuals. Pay special attention to those crucial offline touchpoints such as business cards, because these branded materials will set you apart from the rest in your field, and position your company into the daily lives of your customers. Rebranding your visual identity is not only a great way to attract customers – but it’s also an amazing way to elevate your brand’s standing in the modern job market.
Conduct A Thorough Internal Makeover
If you are to disseminate your new brand effectively across the online and offline realms, you need to educate and train your employees to be its ambassadors. Just imagine the royal fiasco that could ensue if one of your social media managers continues to use your old brand guidelines while everyone else switches to the new visuals, stories, and messages? Instead of becoming a laughing stock of the online community, be sure to conduct company-wide workshops and provide all of your employees with the new brand book.
Take Your Brand Public
Of course, you also need to show the world what you have been working on these past few months, so now’s the time to market your new brand across the globe. To make your dissemination strategy as effective as possible, you will need to employ all marketing channels, including web redesign and content creation, social media management, and marketing, paid advertising, SEO, email marketing, and more. Enter the online and offline worlds on all fronts, and make it known that your new brand is here to stay.
Wrapping up
Rebranding is one of the best ways to save your business and set it up for long-term success. However, that doesn’t mean that this isn’t a cumbersome task, so be sure to follow these steps in order to minimize financial waste and rebrand your business in the most effective way possible.
