You’ve done the work and taken the bold step of rebranding your company. Perhaps it was to stay relevant in a rapidly changing market, to better reflect your evolving values, or to differentiate yourself from competitors.
Regardless of the reasons, rebranding marks an exciting new chapter for your business. However, the work doesn’t stop with unveiling your new brand identity. In fact, it’s just the beginning.
Below are six essential steps to implement your new brand effectively and ensure its success.
Before you start, craft a rebrand launch plan
Before you start rolling out your new brand, it’s important to keep your long-term goals in mind so you don’t get lost in the details.
Identify your target audience: Your audiences and customers remain your North Star. Keep your key demographics and their behaviors and preferences in mind as you decide when, where and how to launch your new brand.
Choose the right channels: This is not the time for a firehose approach. Based on each channel’s strengths, decide the appropriate channels to reach your audiences and what parts of your brand to introduce for maximum impact.
Strategically update your platforms
When updating your brand across platforms, strategic planning is essential. The best way to do this is to start with your website.
Your website is the biggest piece of real estate your brand owns and likely the first and deepest brand touchpoint your audiences will encounter. According to SEMrush, almost half of internet users say web design is the number one way they decide on the credibility of a business.
While your website rebrand is under construction, you can simultaneously work to update other brand assets so that everything comes to life consistently and cohesively.
Post-rebrand asset update best practices:
List assets: Compile a comprehensive inventory of digital and physical brand assets that will require updating. When you consider all the assets that need to be reskinned after a rebrand - from old case studies and tradeshow banners to HR handbooks and third-party sites like G2 and Glassdoor - this list can get daunting.
Evaluate: Assess each asset for alignment with the new brand identity.
Prioritize: Start with high-impact assets and important materials. You’ll likely need to manage departments’ expectations that not all materials can be rebranded on go-live day.
Create a timeline: Make a schedule for reskinning assets that considers production lead times, printing schedules and digital implementation timelines.
Coordinate: Ensure smooth coordination between teams involved so new design work and implementation can work together.
Monitor: Keep track of progress and address any issues promptly.
Make smart choices to preserve brand equity
Safeguarding your brand’s hard-earned equity while adapting to changes requires a blend of technical and branding approaches. Here are some tips to master this balancing act:
Stay on Message: Ensure your new brand’s messaging and values align seamlessly with your previous brand. Consistency builds trust with your audience and maintains your brand’s reputation.
Manage redirects: Implement 301 redirects to guide traffic from old URLs to new ones smoothly. This not only preserves SEO value but also prevents any loss in rankings due to broken links.
Optimize existing content: Redesign your existing content to match your new brand identity. Incorporate relevant keywords and optimize for SEO to ensure your content ranks well in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Equip and empower your internal teams
When it comes to sharing your new brand, your internal audiences are just as important as your external audiences. Maybe even more so. If your team isn’t excited or aligned with your new brand’s messaging, the result can be lackluster and muddy.
Make sure everyone on your team knows why we’re rebranding and is on board with the new look and feel. Even more importantly, make sure they know the purpose and mission behind the rebrand and empower them with tools to help tell your new brand story. It’s a great idea to hold training sessions or workshops to get everyone up-to-speed on the updated brand guidelines and messaging.
Bonus: hand out rebranded swag to employees at these sessions to encourage participation and elevate the excitement. Or use sites like swag.com and Jappi to make employee swag ordering seamless.
Launch loudly to quickly build awareness in the new brand
After the hard work of web design, asset reskinning and internal coordination is over, it’s time to debut your new brand identity and messaging. In rare circumstances, a rebrand is meant to be subtle. The majority of the time, companies need to publicly announce the rebrand loudly to all audiences in-order-to quickly build brand awareness (and affinity!) in your new name, look and feel. Two key takeaways:
Orchestrate - Create an announcement schedule to ensure go-live activities are in concert. For example, the moment a press release announcing your rebrand goes live, your social media profiles should be changed, too, so that audiences have a consistent experience across platforms.
Build Momentum - Announcement day is a big lift for marketing teams, but don’t stop there. Intentionally plan proactive PR, customer success, internal comms and other initiatives in the days and weeks following the launch. This will create repeated brand impressions with all audiences and give them a reason to believe in your new messaging.
Measure your success and iterate
Measuring your rebranding success helps you track progress and tweak as needed. Set clear goals, monitor feedback and data, and, most importantly, celebrate wins along the way.
Rebranding is a thorough process requiring planning, execution, and continuous evaluation. Stick to your plan, stay communicative, and engage stakeholders throughout.
Remember, it’s not just about a new logo—it’s about authentically expressing the essence of your brand’s promise, mission, and goals. Still not sure where to start? As a leading brand strategy firm, Alloy can help. Let’s chat.