Rebranding can be a thrilling experience. If you do it right.
It opens up a world of new opportunities for your company. By creating a perfect rebranding strategy, you have the chance to enhance your company’s image and growth potential, reflecting the evolution of your business.
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Whether your goal is to reach new markets, tailor your brand to meet the preferences of your target audience, or simply give your image a fresh new look, this guide will make the process effortless.
So, if you’re eager to learn, let’s get started!
6 Steps to a Complete Rebranding Strategy
1. Go back to your brand vision
Rebranding is never an easy decision and it doesn’t happen over night. It usually happens because a company:
- needs a refreshment of their brand identity
- evolved and needs to reflect it better
- wants a new look
One of the greatest rebranding examples comes from Zendesk. They did it back in 2016 and it was a huge success.
They’ve:
- presented the variety of their products better
- changed the logo and patterns
- changed their visual identity
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When planning a rebranding strategy for your company, begin by defining your brand vision. The reason for the rebrand is important, but what is your intended outcome?
Take a moment to reflect on your long-term vision for the company. Consider where you want to see your company in a year, three years, or even five years.
What are your desired milestones and big-brand goals?
The concept is simple: You need to know where you’re going before creating a strategy for your rebrand.
For example, let’s say your company sells clothes in Europe and you want to expand to Asia or the USA. Or, perhaps you have altered the fabric and want to switch to producing a more organic product.
Regardless of your reasoning, understanding your desired outcome is crucial in shaping your rebranding strategy.
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2. Think about your brand purpose
Going back to your purpose is one of the key elements of defining a rebranding strategy.
What’s the essence of your brand? What was the driving force behind its creation? And, what is your objective for the rebrand?
In the end, what impact is your brand making in the world, and how can the rebrand enhance this impact even more?
For instance, the purpose of your brand could be:
“Empowering women of all shapes and sizes to embrace their confidence and beauty.”
Or:
“Assisting companies in streamlining their processes, freeing up time to focus on growing their businesses.”
Once you have a clear understanding of your brand’s purpose, consider how the rebrand can help achieve this.
For example, if your goal is to help companies speed up their processes and grow, you can fulfil this purpose by:
- making your messaging very clear and easily digestable
- focus on the results they can have if using your services
- display use cases very clearly
3. Focus on your target audience
Who are your customers, and why should they choose your company?
Are you targeting new markets with the rebrand? If so, what markets and why?
In this stage, review your existing buyer personas and determine if they still align with the needs and characteristics of your target audience. If not, use this opportunity to update them.
If you’re targeting a completely new audience, start fresh by developing new buyer personas.
Dig into the details of who your audience truly is and how your brand can bring value to their lives.
Use this checklist as a guide:
- Who is the target audience for our rebrand?
- Why should they be interested in what we offer?
- How can we provide immense value to their lives? Can we save them time or money? Teach them a desired skill? Offer a product that fulfills their needs and wants?
- What are their main pain points, and how can we solve them better than others?
Then, go further by creating detailed individual buyer personas, including fictitious names and personal characteristics. Consider using a customer data platform to gain a comprehensive view of your customers and develop accurate buyer personas.
Read Meeting Customer Needs: 7 Ways to Get to Know Your Customers Better
4. Think about the content that will follow your brand vision
What type of content is required to establish your new brand image?
For instance, if you have a service-based business that wants to start selling products, you may want to incorporate more customer-generated content and instructional videos in your campaigns.
If you are in IT or SaaS industry, you may focus on expanding your knowledge base and creating informative blog content. For example, you might want to provide additional information about your software, feature webinars with guests from your industry or podcasts with use cases of your tool.
If you are in the consulting industry, you may want to educate your audience on how to prepare for selling their company or how to grow their organization from mid-size to enterprise.
Ensure that your content marketing team is aware of the direction your content will take during the rebranding process. When setting your content objectives, consider the following:
- What new content types need to be created for the rebrand?
- What new topics will the content cover during the rebrand?
- What images are required to support the new content?
- What tools will be used to create the content and images?
- Who will be responsible for creating, writing, and editing the new content?
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5. Choose the feelings you’d like your new branding to evoke
Now it’s time for the essence of your rebrand to be put into action. By combining all the information from the previous steps, your brand vision, purpose, target audience, and content goals, you can determine the themes and emotions you want your new brand to convey.
To ensure that your new branding accurately represents your vision, purpose, and audience, it must:
- Align with your new target market
- Embody your new vision and purpose
- Support your new content goals
For example, the beauty brand Coty put its purpose “to celebrate and liberate the diversity of beauty”. In an enormous visual rebrand, they took the butterfly as their inspiration to symbolize the beauty and diversity of nature and, most importantly – people.
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In this step, you can showcase customer testimonials and feedback to reinforce your new brand image. User-generated content such as brand mentions and customer videos praising the positive effects of your product can help convey the new feelings you want to evoke.
Utilizing tools like Determ to monitor your online brand reputation can help you capitalize on these opportunities and maintain a positive image. A successful rebrand can enhance your brand’s reputation and drive more brand mentions, leading to increased sales.
6. Complete your rebranding checklist
After you’re done with all the steps, it’s officially time to create your new, cohesive brand identity.
Complete the following checklist to breathe life into your rebrand!
Refresh
- Update your color palette: you will need to choose a color palette that aligns with your buyer personas, brand theme, and desired feelings. If needed, seek assistance from a graphic designer or look into color psychology principles.
- Think of the new logo: update or create a new logo that encapsulates your brand vision, services, and reflects the new color palette and theme. Utilize tools like Tailor Brands or Canva, or hire a designer to help.
- Update your brand elements: hire a graphic designer to design new brand elements, such as graphics, decals, and vector images. You can find these on Freepik also.
- Think of your new value proposition: Create a new value proposition that aligns with your updated vision, purpose, and goals, and update all related content accordingly. Consider hiring a professional writer if this is outside your expertise.
- Consider creating a new website: Update your website to reflect your new look, logo, and colors, or create a brand new site. Choose or create new landing page templates that fit your new image, or seek help from a professional. Update old blog posts to match your new tone and style guide, and make sure they are free of plagiarism, grammar, and spelling errors. Utilize AI copywriting tools like GrowthBar or Grammarly, or SEO tools like MarketMuse or Ahrefs.
- Think of new email campaign templates: Choose or download new email campaign templates that match your new image, or hire a designer for help. Responsive email templates by ActiveCampaign or Mailchimp can be used.
- Implement new social media templates: Create or acquire new social media campaign templates that support your new image, or seek help from a professional. Graphic design templates by Picsart or Canva can be used.
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Rebrand
- Revamp your images: Invest in high-quality, rebranded visuals such as images, infographics, and videos. Incorporate these into your newly designed website, templates, and landing pages where appropriate.
- Revise your gated content: Refresh your gatedcontent by incorporating your new logo, color scheme, and brand elements.
- Upadte your internal documentation: Apply your updated colors and logo to all internal documents.
- Renew your external documentation, contracts, etc.: Apply your updated colors and logo to all external documentation and contracts.
- Refresh your presentation docs, slide decks, etc.: Revise your presentation materials, such as slide decks, to feature your updated logo, value proposition, and color palette.
Create
To wrap up your rebranding strategy, develop the following resources to ensure consistent brand representation in all future marketing efforts:
- Visual Branding Guide: outlines your updated color scheme, logo, and design elements.
- Brand Messaging Guide: defines your new tone, writing style, and messaging approach.
- Rebrand Vision Guide: details your revised brand vision, mission, and target audience.
Wrap up
And that’s a wrap! You now have a comprehensive guide to help guide your rebranding strategy.
We hope this guide has provided you with the necessary information and inspiration to bring your vision to reality.
Good luck!
