Do you feel your brand needs a ‘rebranding’? Is your current design outdated, boring, or not clear enough for modern customers? Would you like to breathe new life into your brand? If the answer to any of these questions is “YES”, it means you need to get ready for a new branding strategy for your business.
What does it mean and what will you need to do? Find out in this article.
When should you change your branding strategy?
Branding is an important tool for any company. It helps to create a cohesive and consistent image for the company and its products and encourages quality content creation between brands. But there’s one catch – it doesn’t last forever, no matter what type of company you run.
What should you do if your branding strategy has become outdated?
Brand strategies are only as good as the time they were created. If your company has grown or changed in any way, then you might need to update your branding strategy to reflect these changes. If you’ve been running your business with the same branding strategy for years, then it might be time for an overhaul!
Other cases when you might need a branding strategy makeover include:
- Your offline channels are managed differently
- Your business undergoes some major changes
- Your company wants to enter a new market through an additional sales channel
- A new product is being added to your company’s lineup
- You want to increase your product reviews
- Company designs and logos are outdated
If any of these sounds like your business, it’s a sign you need to change your brand and content strategy as soon as possible.
How to get your business ready for a new branding strategy? Top 7 steps to take!
Before you can begin working on your new branding strategy, there are a few things that you need to make sure you are prepared for. Be aware that rebranding isn’t something that can be done overnight, so do your homework first, both for online and offline channels.
Find out your target audience and competitors
Identifying your target audience is the first step to designing a successful branding strategy. You need to find out who you are targeting, what they want, and how they are different from other audiences. Think about different consumer segments that you will need to take into consideration. Don’t forget about your potential consumers – they’re important too!
This will allow you to develop a more targeted marketing campaign that will resonate with your target audience. But that’s not all.
As a brand, you are not just competing to get as many customers as possible. You are also competing with every other company in the industry, including even those lesser-known brands. This is because it is no longer enough to just have a good product or service – you also need to differentiate yourself from others on various social platforms.
The way goods and services are marketed, as well as the branding strategy adopted determine whether a company will be successful or not.
This is why you also need to know your competitors. This will help you determine what kind of competitive advantages you have over them and how you can leverage them to grow your business.
Where can you learn more about your competitors? The following sources could provide you with valuable insight:
- Local business directories
- E-Commerce market reports,
- Exhibitions and trade fairs
- Competitor analysis reports
- Their advertising
- Press reports
- Customer feedback
- Marketing literature and flyers
Some useful questions you could ask yourself when you’re researching your competitors include:
- Who are my main competitors?
- What makes them strong?
- What weaknesses do they have?
- What do my customers like about the competitors?
You can always hire an agency that will conduct market research and a competitor analysis for you.
Determine your focus and personality
Creating a new branding strategy can refresh your company’s image and make it more appealing. However, before you begin, you need to determine your focus and personality. You can then decide on the type of logo, slogan, and colours that will work best for your company.
In order to figure out what your focus is going to be, think about what your company does the most. Is it a consulting firm? Does it sell clothes? Is it an accounting firm?
Based on this information, you can develop a positioning statement that best describes your business.
The positioning statement formula goes as follows:
“For (target market), (brand) is a (category) that offers (point of difference) so customers can (end benefit) because (reason to believe).”
It’s a formula used by many brands worldwide, so apply it to your organization!
You should also come up with a unique value proposition for your brand.
A unique value proposition (UVP), also called a unique selling proposition (USP), simply outlines the benefits that your product or service offers. In other words, it explains what makes you unique.
Here’s what you can use to create a UVP/USP based on Geoff Moore’s value proposition template:
With all of this put together, you should be able to clearly define your focus and personality and, most importantly, communicate them to customers.
Pick the best business name
Choosing the name of a company is an important decision. It needs to be memorable, unique, and not already in use by another company. If we look at horizontal platforms like Amazon or Alibaba, their names are pretty easy to remember, aren’t they?
The best way to decide on a name for your company is to brainstorm all the possible business names that you can think of and then narrow them down so that they’re specific to your industry. Who do you intend to cater to? Medical professionals? Couples participating in marriage programs? Local residents? Online shoppers in China?
Remember that your company’s name is the first thing people notice and the most crucial part of your branding strategy.
It can be difficult to find the perfect business name, but there are some basic guidelines that will help you find the right one:
1) Make sure your business name is easy to spell and pronounce.
2) Be careful that your company name does not damage the perception of your brand.
3) Make sure your business name is not too similar to another company’s name.
4) Keep it short and simple, but unique.
You can use an intelligent and sophisticated business name generator. All you need is a quick Google search and you will be able to find lots of free tools to generate the perfect name for your business.
For example, Shopify lets you use their AI-powered search engine to come up with some interesting brand names for any query you decide to go with. Here’s what it looks like:
What are some other ways you can use to come up with an interesting and catchy brand name?
- Come up with a new word, like Pepsi.
- Use an unrelated word, like Apple for computers.
- Create an acronym from a longer name, like HBO (Home Box Office).
- Combine words together: Netflix – Net (Internet) + flix (colloquial for films)
- Use a suggestive, slightly modified word, like Kontentino (from content)
- Describe it literally, like LiveWebinar (a tool for live webinars)
- Alter a word by adding or removing letters, or use Latin endings, like Tumblr (Tumbler) or Activia.
If none of these suggestions work for you, remember that you can always use the help of experienced and creative people at branding agencies!
Get a catchy slogan
Logos are an integral part of any branding strategy, but they are hard to come up with, which is why you need to get a catchy slogan when getting ready for a new branding strategy. For instance, if you run a company selling organic and bio food, your slogan could be “Brighter Food Future.”
The best slogans are ones that people can remember and repeat, but they also have to be unique in order to stand out from the competition. They have to be able to convey the essence of what you’re trying to say in just a few words.
Slogans are all about creating an emotional connection with your audience, so it needs to speak directly to their hearts and minds. Ideally, it should be simple enough so that people can understand it easily, yet memorable enough so that they will effortlessly come back to it.
Check out these examples of great and memorable slogans from some of the most popular brands worldwide:
- A Diamond Is Forever from De Beers
- Finger-Lickin’ Good from KFC
- I’m Lovin’ It from McDonald’s
- Think Different from Apple
- Just Do It from Nike
- Imagination at Work from General Electric
What makes them great? They’re concise, catchy, timeless, unique, and addressed to the target audience.
Again, all you need is a simple Google search or some help from your chosen branding agency. In fact, a branding agency will most likely do much better work!
Create the look for your brand
Now, let’s talk about the visual aspects of your brand. This is a great opportunity to show your business in a new light.
Designers have the chance to create a new logo, website, and marketing materials that will help you grow your company.
You will want to create an eye-catching design that will help people remember your brand and what it stands for. You should also consider what kind of tone you want to set with your design. Professional? Fun? Serious?
Once you have created the look for your brand, you can begin creating your marketing materials. This includes the website design, social media graphics, and any other digital assets that you want to share with your customers.
It is important to remember that every company has its own unique personality and story that needs to be told through their branding strategy.
Have you ever heard of the color emotion guide in color psychology?
It is a great tool for artists and designers to use when they need to trigger a certain emotion in people. Red, orange, yellow and green are all warm colours that can evoke feelings of happiness, joy and excitement. Blue, indigo and purple on the other hand are cool colours that can represent feelings of peace and tranquility.
Let your branding do the work
After you have done the preparation steps for rebranding, it is time to fully develop your broader strategy, implement it, and start showing it to the world.
Branding strategies need to evolve and change with the times in order to be successful. Your brand strategy should reflect your particular needs. You are not going to have the same branding needs as a large corporation, so you need to tailor your message to your target audience.
Once your new branding strategy has been implemented, there are many ways to show it off. Use social media, business cards, brochures, website design – anything that helps people learn about your company.
Get started by taking your branding to the next level!
Any business that is successful has a strong brand. It is what sets you apart from your competition and it is what will make people remember you.
Most people think that branding is just about logos, colors, or fonts. However, it is much more than that, as you just saw!
It takes a lot of work to build a strong brand and maintain it over time. That’s why it’s important to use the helping hand of a marketing agency has proven knowledge and experience with branding.
So, are you ready for a makeover?
Branding is easier than you think – you just don’t know it yet
In the world of branding, you don’t do it once, then forget about it. The process evolves as your business grows and changes.
That’s exactly why you must update your branding strategy – to inject freshness and new life into your business.
We hope you have enjoyed reading this article and now know what steps to take before you start working on your new branding strategy. If you’d like to further expand your knowledge on branding, make sure you visit our blog section. It’s full of valuable insights, case studies, and more.
SociallyInfused Media has helped many companies build their brands into something truly remarkable. With several years of experience in the field of business branding, website design, social media and SEO, we’re ready to take care of your branding needs. Ready to get started?
