Rebranding a company or service can be a lot of work. So if you are going to invest the time, money, and effort to conducting a rebrand, you’ll want to make sure that you take advantage of the opportunity to get the most you can from the new launch. The truth is that every company will eventually need to update or improve upon its existing branding.
In this blog, I will talk about some of the best ways to successfully launch your new brand.
Timing of Your Rebrand
Timing is one of the most important factors when planning to launch a new or updated brand. As you know or will soon find out, rebranding an existing brand has an incredible amount of moving parts. In my colleague’s latest blog, Lauren talks more in-depth about all of those necessary items. When planning the launch of your new campaign or brand, be sure to give your team more time than you think will need. Building this cushion into your schedule will help you navigate any unexpected hold-ups, especially those out of your control.
I also highly recommend meeting with your team or partners to discuss if this brand launch should be scheduled to coincide seasonality with your business. For example, if the first quarter is typically slow for your business, it may make sense to strategically plan to work on the updates and prepare for launch in that timeframe. Use your collective minds to select a time that makes the most sense for your organization. This will help make everything run more efficiently.
Rebranding Considerations
Developing a checklist of items for your launch is a crucial step that you cannot ignore. Take the time when planning to cover almost any part of your business that will require a change or update from old branding.
In some instances, you may not need to change everything like the flip of a switch. However, once you start implementing your launch, you’ll want to rely on that list of items to ensure you don’t miss anything. In our experience with rebranding, we learned that you are almost guaranteed to miss something. This is especially true if you have a large organization. That’s okay. Working through your checklist ahead of time will help mitigate the time needed to implement your brand launch. In addition, this will free up time to correct anything that you may have missed. Some of the unordinary items we included on our list included trade group profiles that our company belongs to, branded internal software, billing and payment portals, etc. There will definitely be things you miss but, if you cover as much as you can upfront, it will help ensure that those small bumps in the process don’t become big bumps.
Make The Most Out of Your Brand Relaunch
So how do you take advantage of your new brand launch? The whole idea of upgrading your branding or rebranding is to bring your company into a new light, reaffirm or reposition your branding, and generate excitement from current and potential customers. So, make sure the first thing you do is communicate this change to your current customers.
We preferred to develop a list of clients that we would tell with a phone call and another list of clients that we would notify via email. This helped prepare our clients to understand that new invoices or communications from our email would be coming in the future. In addition, it gives you a reason to contact your clients, let them know why you are changing or looking to improve your brand. In most cases, this will help generate more buzz around your upcoming rebrand, hopefully translating into new opportunities, especially through referrals.
Once you notify clients, have a plan in place to let other potential clients or people outside of your organization know. Months in advance, we planned to communicate these changes via our social media, trade groups that we belong to, or even traditional PR channels. This is an opportunity to get new eyeballs looking your way. Make sure you plan to take advantage of the organic opportunities first.
Depending on your size and marketing budget, you might consider using paid media to announce your new launch. In this case, I highly suggest working with your internal marketing teams, or agency partners to develop a campaign that explains why you decided to change or rebrand.
Tell the story about why you rebranded and how that may benefit a consumer or client in the future. This will help generate more excitement and word of mouth about your brand. Paid advertising can be a great tool, in this case, If your brand is departing far from its existing brand, your company may run the risk of confusing people or having them not notice this at all. I’ve seen large organizations rebrand and decide not to effectively communicate these types of things to their audiences. When that happens, you run the risk of losing marketing share or public awareness. If you’ve spent the time to develop a rebrand that makes sense, solidifies your position, and communicates it clearly to your audience, you’ll avoid costly missteps. Make sure that whatever route you take with paid advertising reflects your updated message clearly and that the message is being shared in a medium that makes sense. Leaning on the experience of an agency here can be extremely valuable.
Launching a new or updated brand can be overwhelming. Taking the time to plan ahead, put the correct team and personnel in place, and think through how and where to communicate this message will keep your launch on target, and most importantly, increase awareness. A rebrand requires a lot of effort and time. By following the tips listed above, you can make sure your efforts pay off. If you are considering a rebrand in the future and would like help planning out the process, we would be more than happy to help!
