If you have decided to rebrand your business, but are wondering whether you’ll be successful, remember that rebranding is a complicated venture. You will need time to do it right. However, these facts need not make you feel overwhelmed or discouraged.
With a little preparation and thorough understanding of the process, your rebranding campaign can be exciting. Here are a few surefire tips.
Plan Beforehand
Preparation is the most important for rebranding as it is for most things in life. Looking at the budget a complete rebrand requires, there is no alternative to planning beforehand to make sure you maximise your return on rebrand.
The more you prepare in advance, the more effective and impactful your rebrand will be.
What is primarily important is to get buy-in from senior management on the value of branding. There cannot be anything worse than spending a long time on a rebrand and finally have your team of executives shrugging it off as insignificant when you are about to hit the finish line.
Therefore, the practical value of an imminent requirement for a rebrand should be made clear to the management before you even start the process.
Your next step will be to recognisethe internal shareholders that will form your rebranding team. These must involve the C-suite and other important decision-makers, such as representatives from Sales, Customer Support, Marketing, Human Resources, and anyone on a managerial post who is in touch either with customers or staff every day.
When senior management is an essential part of the rebranding process, they have a share in the strategy as well as positioning and are capable of implementing brand positioning from the top down.
Lastly, you will have to collect current collateral for the detection phase of your rebrand. The most successful rebrands start with a thorough understanding of how the brand is positioned at present.
By gathering an illustrative sampling of advertising, PR and marketing materials, you will paint a valued picture of the strengths and weaknesses of your existing brand for your branding partner.
Get the Correct Partner
When it’s about partners, one of the best things to do for any rebrand is to choose the correct branding agency like BrandQuest – a branding and marketing agency. Choosing a partner with proven results who can understand your requirements and with whom you establish a trusting relationship is necessary.
It’s worth taking the time to check multiple agencies to ensure you’ve chosen the correct one.
Some examples of things you can consider about your potential branding partnerare:
- Do their culture and values match yours?
- Do they assure of senior-level expertise?
- Is their process based on careful research?
- Do they have a proven track record and detailed case studies?
- Are they flexible enough to accept the unavoidable changes that will occur?
5 Essential Steps
The following 5 steps are essential for rebranding and you should resist the temptation of skipping any of them.
1. Research
In-depth, thorough research has no alternative when it comes to successful branding. Such research will give you an idea of who your brand is at present, how your customers perceive it and what its position is in the competitive landscape.
2. Strategy
Designing a strategy is the process of specifying the psychological structure of your brand, and positioning it for growth as well as success. Some basic elements of the strategy phase are brand personality, core messaging, brand promise and competitive advantage.
3. Identity
The identity of your brand is much more than just your logo. It’s the visual personification of the positioning work done during the strategy phase. A strong identity will grab your brand’s purpose, personality, promise and defining attributes.
4. Expression
Expression is the introduction of your rebrand to the world. It is an extensive, thoughtful narrative that is reflected in assets like your marketing collateral, website and social media channels.
5. Positioning
Positioning is the continued process of making sure your customers and employees know the purpose of your brand and behave consistently with that purpose. This is achieved both internally and externally.
So, you can see that you need not worry while thinking of rebranding. On the contrary, you should start doing it in the right way and the results will amaze you.Visit BrandQuest for http://brandquest.com.au/re-branding for more information.
