Month: January 2022

With the start of the year in our rear-view mirror, perhaps you started down the path towards a change in your business’s brand identity. Now you need to promote your rebrand to ensure it is successful. You’ve fully researched your rebrand purpose, competitors and timing. When you take all that time and energy (and investment) to refresh your brand, it is imperative you also allocate energy and resources to promote your rebrand.

You have developed a fancy new look and feel as well as content strategy. You’ve decided which digital and physical assets you are refreshing. You have started to replace the old with new putting your new brand everywhere it needs to be. You’re finally ready to show your rebooted brand off to the world. So, what’s the best way to go about it?

How to Promote your Rebrand Internally

In Part 1, we covered how to prepare for a successful rebrand. Here’s how to promote your rebrand both internally and externally. A successful rebrand starts with your efforts to promote your rebrand to your most valuable asset – your people. They work with your brand every day and as such, need to be fully on board with the whole story of the rebrand, from the purpose to the details of your new messaging and brand values. In this way, they can start living your branding and become your key brand ambassadors.

Ways to engage your people to promote your rebrand starts with the following:

Provide clear communication

Ensure your team is fully aware of the reason behind the rebrand. If they are unclear, they may attempt to fill in the blanks on their own which could have very negative ramifications. Unstated purposes could even lead them to question their own job security and reduce productivity and engagement. Be 100% transparent with staff about the reason for the rebrand.

Share the business case

Explain to your team what’s happening and what they need to do throughout the process. Provide background about the rebrand strategy including competitor research, persona targeting, service/product offering changes, etc. Explain how the rebrand fits into short-term and long-term company objectives as well as how these changes impact their individual roles in the organization. This has a dual purpose of ensuring your team knows how they fit into the overall picture but affords them the large picture scope to be able to communicate to your customers and prospects as well.

Provide your team with FAQs

If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that a rebrand will spark lots of customer questions. Ensure your team is well versed in the most obvious answers. They need to not only know the answers but be provided the tools to answer customer questions in the way you want those questions to be answered.  

Get executive buy-in

This should be obvious but without C-level support and resources, your rebrand initiative could get mothballed before it even begins. Your company’s leaders should be whole-heartedly behind your rebrand. In fact, having their active participation can lead to a stronger chance of overall success. Enlist your company leaders to promote your rebrand to staff by becoming spokespersons for regular statements, blog posts and internal updates. A clear vote of confidence from the top will encourage your entire team to embrace and promote the rebrand fully.

How to Promote your Rebrand Externally

Per the previous section, you have educated your internal team on why you are rebranding and their part in the equation. Now it is go time!!

One thing to note, regardless of the tactics you use to promote your rebrand, you need to keep the overall focus on your audience. What’s in it for them? You will be full of excitement about your rebrand and looking forward to showing it to the world. However, the reactions to it could be wide spanning from your prospects and clients alike. Keep their motivating factors in mind as you successfully launch your rebrand.

Be Decisive

The best way to corral reactions is to make the transition as swift and decisive as you can. While you do not need to share your business plan with anyone, a comfortable level of transparency can persuade the naysayers to understand your branding decisions.

You should also explain to your customers and prospects their role in the change. Do they need to start following a different social media handle? Have their login credentials changed? Another healthy strategy as you promote your rebrand is to ask for feedback. This builds trust with customers who will feel they are being heard and their views are important to you.

6 Strategies to Promote your Rebrand

Below are 6 strategies to promote your rebrand successfully to your current clients, prospects and general public (future prospects) to make transition as smooth as possible.

1. Use Teasers . Think about your excitement level for an upcoming movie. How did you find out about it? Likely, you saw a teaser promoting an upcoming event. While your brand refresh might not rank as high as your excitement for the next MCU movie or Nicholas Sparks novel-turned-into-blockbuster-hit, it still can gain traction and attention leading up to the big reveal. Let your loyal customers and followers in on your excitement by piquing their interest about the big changeover. Use email, social media posts and in-store signage. You don’t have to give away much; just enough to know a big ‘thing’ is happening on a certain date.
2. Excite your brand ambassadors. Past and present customers who are loyal and enthusiastic about you and your business should be used to advocate the exciting changes. Your brand ambassadors are the customers most passionate about your brand, likely to organically talk positively about your business at the best of times. Let them in on the news early and possibly even incentivize them to spread the word through loyalty codes and discounts.
3. Provide FAQs. Within the internal promotion section we covered arming your staff with answers to commonly asked questions. Many of these same FAQs can be shared more broadly in an article on your website, social media, email or a FAQ page to send interested parties to.
4. Leverage Public Relations. You can leverage traditional news sources through the use of public relations as an extremely effective to promote your rebrand. A rebrand makes for an interesting news story, so help your local journalists by spoon-feeding them a potentially interesting community piece. Provide press releases announcing the rebrand and have comments – and stakeholders for interviewing – ready to share for their publication.
5. Don’t under-estimate Behind The Scenes (BTS). Let the public see the wizards behind the curtains. Invite them BTS. Behind every rebranding process is a story about a business. Your business. Provide posts, articles, videos about what made you want to rebrand. How did you go about doing it? What are your hopes for the future now that it’s done. It can be a fun an interesting experience for others to understand the logic and process of changing your logo for example.
6. Storytelling is a powerful way to market your business because it adds a human element to the new. You have the ability to get people engaged with you on an emotional level.

Post-Press

Need help promoting your rebrand? Reach out to Minuteman Press Calgary Shepard. We can help with creative design aspects as well as developing an in-depth marketing plan to make sure your efforts pay off.

With the new year upon us, this might be the perfect time for a change in your business’s brand identity. A freshened look and feel has value for your business for various reasons. Every successful rebrand (or refresh) should be conducted with purpose, consistency and delicacy not to alienate existing customers.

Below we share tips covering strategy, design and execution of your successful rebrand in 2022. In Part 2, we cover how to successfully promote your rebrand.

First, Why Rebrand?

The “how you do a rebrand” may in part be answered by the why. If you don’t know why you’re doing it, the level of success you have will likely be impacted. You need to be 100% behind it to ensure you execute a successful rebrand. Common reasons for a rebrand could include the following:

• Perhaps you want to target a new geography or grow your territory
• Maybe there is a new target group your products or services could solve for
• Perhaps you offer new line of products or services that stretch the confines of your existing branding
• Sometimes a new website triggers need for full rebrand across all mediums
• Maybe a merger or acquisition necessitates a brand refresh
• Maybe its as simple as you’ve had the same look and feel for over a decade (every 5-7 years is industry standard.)
• In some cases, rebranding can help a struggling brand move away from a bad reputation

No matter the reason, it is important to understand why you are doing it.

Overhaul vs. Tweak

Are you ripping off an old Band-Aid and redoing everything? Or do you simply need to tweak your image to reach new people or inspire a plateaued audience? A partial rebrand is perfect if you want to give your identity a facelift or modernize it a bit. If a total overhaul is what you’re after, make sure you spend enough time researching and planning to be sure you have a successful rebrand.

Big or small, these are the common elements of a rebrand. Your efforts can include any or all of these:

• Your Logo         They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. Well, a logo could be the difference between 1,000 potential customers.  It stands out front of your business representing everything you and your products stand for. Make sure you spend enough time designing your new logo. Since this opportunity is already a huge step for your business, don’t be afraid to go branch out to something new – even if it might feel less conservative.
• New Name       Renaming is not a part of every rebranding exercise, but it is quite common to break away from the old when a purchase, acquisition or merger occurs.
• New Marketing Strategy or Promotion          Content strategy and tactical messaging is an essential component of any successful rebrand. How you use messaging to connect with new and old customers will dictate how big your refresh/rebrand needs to be.
• Brand Story      Telling your story – how your products and services perfectly solve the problems and needs of your customers – is what all branding should entail. Is your rebrand telling a new story that needs to be created or reframing an existing story?
• New Website    Depending on your business model and the extent of your presence online could mean a rebrand is simply a new website. However, implementing a new look is also a good time to infuse your infrastructure with new technology and upgrades.

Caution: Rebranding Pitfalls to Avoid

Not all rebrands work the way originally intended. To ensure your successful rebranding, avoid these three common mistakes:

1. Do not jump ahead to design. Your rebranding strategy is as important as the elements of the brand themselves. You need to strategize the various elements of your rebrand. Knowing how you going to roll it out is crucial to a successful rebrand.
2. Having a plan to roll out a new look and getting your team on board must include a reasonable budget and allotment of time (it always costs more and takes longer than you initially think it will), research, a project timeline, goals, and realistic expectations. Will you allow the exhaustion of existing collateral to take place gradually over time, release the brand one medium at a time or will you update all collateral and mediums on the same day?
3. Do not alienate your existing target, customers and prospects. Unless you’re completely changing your entire service/product offerings, it’s essential to keep your existing audience on board with big changes.
4. New and bold is good but avoid confusing and/or unnecessary. At the onset, we hit home the fact you should only rebrand if there is a purpose. Stick to the purpose and make logical changes for that purpose.

Consider a Checklist for a Successful Rebrand

Your successful rebrand checklist can likely be broken into physical (print, signage, internal forms, etc.), digital (web, social, online advertising) and corporate cultural and branding itself (mission, vision, brand manifesto, job postings, etc.). Below is a (non-exhaustive) checklist to get you started:

Corporate Culture

• Your brand values
• Unique Selling Proposition
• Sell lines / tag-lines
• Brand manifesto
• Tone of voice guidelines
• Brand style guide 
• Job postings

Digital assets

• Web domain(s)
• Social media accounts (do new handles need to be initiated?)
• Online advertising (Google Ads, Facebook, etc.)
• Email templates
• SEO and metadata on web pages

Physical assets

• Signage
• Stationery (letterhead, business cards, and more)
• PowerPoint templates
• Print marketing material like flyers and posters
• Office or retail store decor
• Product packaging
• Vehicle signage
• Staff uniforms
• Trade show stands and booths
• …and don’t forget promotional items such as mugs, shirts, pens, etc.

In short, just about every touchpoint your business has with the rest of the world may need to be updated for you to achieve maximum chance of a successful rebrand.

Post-Press

A rebrand can be a tweak or a complete overhaul of your business look, feel and positioning. Exciting? Absolutely. Daunting? It doesn’t have to be. Once you’re clear on your goals for rebranding and you’ve decided on the scope of the project, it’s time to get started on making it happen. 

Need a hand in making a successful rebrand? Reach out to Minuteman Press Calgary Shepard. We can help with creative design aspects as well as developing an in-depth marketing plan to make sure your efforts pay off.