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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.