Your brand is your identity, story, and reputation. It distinguishes you from other companies, provides employee loyalty and attracts a target audience. Sometimes you need to strengthen your business by taking a new direction and rebranding the company.
Rebranding is not only about refreshing the visual appearance of your company. This process involves such things as brand identity, visual design, efficiency enhancements, solidifying in the marketplace, targeting, promotion.
How to choose the right branding strategy? Here is a guide that uncovers the most effective steps to strengthen your market position.
1. Ab ovo: Find Out Business Reasons.
When is the right time to rebrand? Here are a few main scenarios:
• your company’s goals are shifting to a different direction;
• you have grown out of the initial purpose;
• you are trying to stand out in a market with a lot of competitors;
• you are changing your marketing team;
• your business is branching out new services or products;
• you are trying to target a broader audience;
• your firm merges with another firm.
A deep understanding of the business reason before you initiate the rebranding helps you to avoid the risk of the tremendous waste of time and resources.
2. Research Your Business and Your Target Audience.
Are you clear with the business case? Go on with the deep research. Compare your current position with the desired result. Analyze which things to save and which things to discard from your business plan. Pull your firm ahead of your competitors on the market space – find out and use your advantages.
Thanks to objective research, you are safe from setting up aimless goals and spending useless financial resources. This is why ask your clients what do they really need. Pay extra attention to feedbacks, both positive and negative.
3. Improve Your Strategy With Market Positioning And Messaging.
Your positioning demonstrates your value as a seller and your place on the market. It allows you being flexible in maintaining your brand and serving your products or services in the best possible light to the different target audiences.
The structure of your brand must deliver a clear message to your existing and potential customers. It should be a pattern written to keep your consumer needs in focus. These messages should be linked with the main idea of the brand.
4. Create The Brand Identity.
The exclusivity of your brand ensures fast recognition and better competitiveness in your field. The best way to strengthen and reaffirm identity is to make brand’s visual elements (the name, the logo design, tagline, colors, business card design) unique only to your firm.
You have to realize that the brand is not only about visual design – it is about your service, reputation, and relevance.
5. Website and Online Presence.
As a seller, you can present your story and mission with a convenient way of communication with your client – a website. Create an efficient and convenient platform suitable for different gadgets and types of operating systems, with a framework based on your architecture of messaging. Online presence means using social media to enhance communication between your brand and your target audience.
These are the most effective modern paths to keep your customers up-to-date with your services or products.
6. Apply Marketing Tools.
The next step is closely tied up with the marketing materials which communicate your company and services. You should include different tools, such as proposal templates, brochures, pitch decks, one-sheet fliers, and trade show booths in your business strategy to achieve the best results.
7. And The Last (But Not The Least): Develop Promotion.
Inform about your changes! Simply build trust for your refreshed brand, explain transparently why and how did you do this. That would help to avoid misunderstanding from your audience. Make sure your employees are comfortable with the changes – the loyal team means a lot.
You need to develop a plan to strengthen your renewed brand. Make it a collaborative process, choose a successful expert partner, communicate clearly your firm’s experience and reputation.
Summing up
Don’t be exaggerating about rebranding. Write down objectives you are planning to achieve. What results are you expecting? What does your customer need? How can you keep your business relevant? Do the changes lead to better results?
The rebranding shouldn’t be an impulsive decision. Make sure your company needs it because it is a long, effort-intensive process.
However, it can help you to improve your positions in search engines, to be more competitive and to explore new business possibilities.
