5 Steps to A Successful Rebrand.
The competition is rising. The sales and marketing team is begging for help, and the Board of Directors is insisting on results.
But your brand has gathered dust.
It may be time to reinvigorate your brand. And why? To share a bold story that connects with people emotionally and creates love for your brand — creating more preference and loyalty that will grow sales and market share.
So your company needs a brand refresh, but where do you start? A lot goes into planning for a rebrand, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. It does, however, need to be disciplined and rigorous in defining what makes you remarkable. Your objective: Reimagine your brand to stir the soul of your audiences and lead them to a desired action—choose your brand over others, again and again.
These 5 data-driven steps will help your company re-establish who you are and direct where you need to go. When done well, re-branding is effective at reinvigorating your brand through the lens of the customers—from the outside looking in.
1. Identify where your company or your organization’s current branding stands among competitors by conducting a Competitive Analysis. This allows you to see where you have room to grow and rise above competitors.
Ask yourself, leaders and front-line customer service staff: What does your organization do better than any others? What are your strengths and weaknesses? What white space can you own that no other company can? Competitive intelligence creates insights that become brand beliefs and unique brand truths.
2. Establish key segments for your company or organization. Defining these audiences will help you develop bold stories to connect emotionally and strengthen relationships. Your company needs to understand what each audience needs to know and what it wants to feel. In other words, clarify the rational and emotional needs of your audiences.
The segmentation framework goes like this: each audience is linked to desired feelings, stories needing to be shared, anticipated behaviors aligned with your products or services. In marketing speak—demographics + psychographics + behaviors drive brand alignment.
3. Gather insights through Stakeholder Interviews. Your stakeholders have been with you since the beginning and have grown with you along the journey. Learn what they value about your organization and where you can improve.
Whether it’s “still in love” or fallen “out of love”—emotions should be part of the conversation. Rediscover what excites and delights your audiences and has permanence to create a durable brand for the road ahead. You may need to take the blinders off and have outside experts facilitate these interviews.
To maintain objectivity, consider hiring a consultant for this.
They can advise on the interviews to identify the “gold” that creates authentic differentiation versus the “dust” that’s too generic for brand success.
4. Collect qualitative and quantitative data through a Customer Survey. Whether this is a blind survey or a direct customer satisfaction survey, surveys give you insights into how your consumers, constituents or members perceive you.
The objective is to provide actionable data to move your brand forward in the right direction. What do your customers value? What are their buying considerations? Which of your competitors may be leading the category, and why? Which stories need to be shared? In the end, these insights inform a positioning framework to reclaim the story that connects on a human level and is authentic to you.
5. Position your brand and create your brand essence using all of these new insights about your company, your processes and your people to own a story unique to you.
Combining the science of data analysis with the art of emotional storytelling, you can craft brand attributes (as pillars to your desired perception) and a brand essence to distinguish yourself from competitors and connect to your audiences.
A great framework for building your brand essence and an ownable position is Convince-That-Because. And here’s how it works. Convince audiences (fill in your constituents or segments) That (what is their desired action or behavior), Because (of some emotional reason for doing so…answer the question “why”). Be empathetic here. What do they want to feel? Look at your company, products and services with an outside-in approach using empathy to craft a brand essence that resonates human-to-human.
By following these 5 steps, you’ll be on the road to reclaiming your brand. You can create an inclusive process for stakeholder inputs, identify knowledge about your customers’ needs and wants and create continuity for where your organization has been (brand heritage) and where it needs to go (brand future).
With support from leadership, stakeholders and a great customer-first brand agency —you can create a strategic roadmap for success with your brand. What’s next for your company and customers is “we love your brand.” And that’s magic to anyone’s ears.
“Agency McKenna has a knack for identifying the spirit of an organization in a short time. With a tried-and-true process, AGMK has the unique ability to turn research and conversation into a brand–one that captures the true essence of our nonprofit, helping us take our mission to new heights.”
“Our centennial celebration presented an opportunity to enhance Association Forum’s position with the community. Agency McKenna developed the positioning strategy and restyled logo as a symbol of the fresh new outlook and forward-thinking mentality the association is carrying into its second century.”
“Agency McKenna was selected for the NVAR total rebranding. Their team’s 64,000-foot discovery process missed nothing! Analysis of our members preferences and the association’s new direction was excellent. The positioning statement, new logo, tagline, magazine redesign and website redesign—yielding excellent results. Compliments still pouring in!”
Stay future-focused and lean on Agency McKenna to guide you through this process.
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