6 Jumping Off Points When Rebranding
One of the most comprehensive tasks in marketing is a rebrand. They’re necessary when business feels stale and creativity lulls; this urgency is stressful. It’s more exciting to rebrand when reinventing your company happens organically.My job for the 2016 calendar year is to rebrand the company. For 6 years we were a startup with brightly colored cartoon robots serving one niche industry. After all these years, we felt that we’d grown up. We had an arsenal of knowledge on the industry, and we offered more versatile products to multiple markets. It was time to portray this internal change outwardly.The first 6 months equated to updating our office and building a new website. The current 6 months are dedicated to showcasing our look and getting our new brand to stick.Here are a few initial points to think about when starting to conceptualize your company or product’s new look:----
Mission:
No one just wings a rebrand. Figure out the end goal - from digital to physical presence - how do you want to be perceived? Everything from the design and copy, to the way employees describe the company has to be in sync and decided before beginning the legwork.
Plan:
It’s important to set a timeline. Q1: revamp the office. Q2: redo and launch the website. Q3 and Q4: start marketing, attend conferences, secure speaking opportunities, make ad buys, and set benchmarks. Will you tease your new rebrand before launching? Do you need to make videos?
Web Presence:
Where can people find you on the Internet? Via your website, Facebook, Twitter, Angelist, LinkedIn, Google search. How do you reach people? Through email, push notifications, updates and posts. All of these profiles need to be updated to reflect new changes.
Visibility:
Where can people find you in real life? At conferences, your office, your employees, on a business card. It’s crucial to incorporate your new mission into the way employees speak about the company, pitch a product, and so forth.
Marketing:
Once you’ve launched, it’s time to run with marketing. But you’ve never marketed as your new brand, there’s a learning curve to it and you have to figure out what works and ways to track the impact of your rebrand.
Analytics:
Set the bar for what you deem as a successful rebrand. Are sales numbers tied into it? Is it the way someone refers to your company? Is it employee moral?----There’s no one size fits all when it comes to rebranding or marketing in general. Goals, resources, timeline and budgets vary drastically company to company, but what is universal is ensuring you have your bases covered. A rebrand is a full scope project, and one that can be truly rewarding and bring tangible results.