Step 1: Update Your Brand’s Online Presence
Your website and social channels represent the digital face of your business. A persuasive, modern and well-maintained website ensures that customers receive accurate and up-to-date information about your organization, products or services, and your brand. Strategically deployed social media activities can humanize your brand, fostering a sense of authenticity and trust among customers. Social media can also significantly enhance brand visibility and awareness, driving sales and revenue growth.
For a new brand, you’ll want to establish entirely new web and social channels, which should be consistent in nomenclature, from URLs to social handles.
For a rebrand, take the time to evaluate which social channels are driving the most value. Is now a good time to sunset channels that aren’t as active or explore new channels that are gaining traction within your industry? Retire channels you aren’t getting value from, marking them as private so that no one else can use the handle.
Be transparent and vocal about what social channels you’re going to be active on. Actively managing these platforms provides opportunities for interaction with customers and fostering a sense of community around the brand.
Step 2: Refresh Your Branded Templates
Templates, such as slide decks, one-pagers, business cards and more, serve as consistent touch points for communication with clients, partners and stakeholders. By aligning these templates with the new brand’s visual elements, including logos, colors and typography, you reinforce brand recognition and professionalism across all interactions. Consistency in branding across templates enhances brand visibility, building trust and loyalty among your target audience.
Also, be sure to place your updated brand guidelines in a highly visible, shared location where all team members have easy access.
A note: If you have a new name and/or logo, work with a law firm to trademark and copyright these brand assets. Just know that this process can take some time — as much as a year or longer.
Step 3: Revamp Your Branded Swag
Similarly, updating company swag, such as T-shirts, pens and laptop stickers, offers opportunities to showcase your brand’s personality and get internal teams excited about the new brand. From apparel to drinkware to custom stationery, every piece of swag — aka schwaaag — becomes a tangible representation of the brand.
Step 4: Get Your Team on Board With the New Brand
Your people are your best brand ambassadors. Communicate transparently and frequently via email and other internal channels, offer sneak peeks and plan launch materials and events (with swag) that make team members feel seen, heard and celebrated. Familiarize your team with the updated brand standards, and plan lunch-and-learns for all new hires so that they can understand how best to express the brand externally. Consider putting together a short slide deck highlighting key components of the brand guidelines.
By keeping team members informed and included, you can help make everyone at your organization a champion of your new brand.
Step 5: Share the Love With Clients & Customers
It’s common for people to feel uncertain about a new brand when they first see it. But research shows that, over time, increased exposure fosters greater favorability. This is called exposure theory.
For a new brand, this means that consistent and widespread exposure is vital to gaining recognition and acceptance among the target audience. Through strategic marketing initiatives across channels, such as social media, traditional advertising, influencer partnerships and public relations efforts, the brand can ensure that its message reaches potential customers frequently and consistently. By leveraging exposure theory, a new brand can imprint itself in the minds of consumers, paving the way for stronger brand recall and trust.
Engage with customers before, during and after brand launch. Encourage feedback, respond to inquiries and thank customers for their support, updating your brand guidelines for greater clarity as needed. You’ll never get absolute consensus on a new brand, but by actively and consistently sharing it across channels, you can increase customers’ comfort with and fondness for it.
Step 6: Run a Multichannel Brand Campaign
Consider running a multichannel brand campaign to get your new look and feel out in the market.
This broad reach increases brand exposure and awareness — crucial factors in establishing a new or refreshed brand in the market. A multichannel approach means current and future customers can engage with your brand across different touch points, meeting them where they are. By providing consistent messaging and experiences across channels, the brand can reinforce its identity and key messages, enhancing recall and recognition.
Step 7: Measure the Brand & Evolve
Brand-tracking studies are indispensable tools for businesses aiming to understand customer preferences and behaviors. Through surveys, interviews and other research methods, brand-tracking studies provide valuable insights into how consumers perceive the brand, allowing your team to make informed decisions to strengthen your brand strategy and enhance overall brand performance in the marketplace.
If budget allows, conduct one survey before brand launch and one after to find out how customer perception of your brand changes based on established benchmarks.
Track key performance indicators to evaluate the success of your brand launch and identify areas for improvement. Monitor website traffic, social media engagement and mentions. Set up branded keywords to track, using a tool like Sprout, being sure to account for common misspellings as well.
Also track conversion rates, sales and investments to measure the impact of your efforts. Use this data to iterate, refine and evolve your brand over time. You can also look into your organization’s share of search traffic relative to competitors, which tools like Semrush and Moz help track.
Step 8: Establish a Retainer With Your Branding Agency
Think about setting up a retainer with the agency that built your brand in order to keep everything well executed and in family. After all, who better to continue building creative materials than the team that built the brand from scratch?
Launching a brand is a lot of hard work. It can seem daunting. And it’s worth doing right. With an experienced and right-sized agency partner in your corner, you can launch your brand with confidence and see benefits for years to come.
For a free audit of your current brand or to explore a new one, get in touch today.
