Your rebrand checklist: what to cover when you’re relaunching
When you decide it’s time for a rebrand, there’s a lot to cover. It goes far beyond the assets your customer sees. It’s a total overhaul that requires you to take a good look at the ins and outs of your business.
Remember, your brand is how you communicate with your audience; your values, your tone of voice, your customer journey, the whole kit and caboodle. If one of these things isn’t hitting the mark, it’s time to address that.
I’m going to walk you through everything you need to cover before you relaunch your exciting new brand to the world.
Brand Audit
Before you do anything, you need to give your current brand a thorough once over. I talk a lot about understanding the bigger picture of your brand. This is your opportunity to do just that; a chance to see what’s working well and what’s not. What you want to carry over to your new brand, and what needs to be left behind.
You can find more details on what to include in your audit on my previous blog. Talk to your team or someone you trust to give you honest feedback.
Customer Journey
Businesses evolve over time. The journey your customers take might have changed as you have. You’d be amazed at how many businesses find it difficult to identify the different stages in their customer journey. While you’re rebranding, now is the time to set this in stone.
Doing this will help solidify your processes which will improve consistency. You’ll be able to anticipate problems before they happen and put things in place that will give your customers a smooth ride on their journey with you. See at what points you need to be communicating and understand your customers’ pain points and where you can turn them into advocates.
Brand Strategy
This is the holy grail of brand documents. It’s what all of your ongoing communications with both your internal team and your audience is going to be based on. It’s crucial to nail it.
Your visuals aren’t the place to start in this instance. This is the point at which you want to think about your unique values, your mission, your positioning in your market; these will all inform the direction the visuals then take. Do this in reverse and you risk putting out a brand that’s completely disconnected from your audience and what they want.
Brand Voice and Key Messages
You’ve decided what you’re all about. And now it’s time to figure out how to communicate that through your written word. You can have the sleekest, smartest looking website in the world but if what you’re saying doesn’t resonate with your audience, your brand isn’t fully doing its job.
Before diving into design, create your tone of voice guidelines. This is a simple document that helps everyone who writes on your behalf sound and feel like you. Your values, mission and vision will inform your key messages. If you’ve nailed these, the key messages will feel pretty obvious.
At this point, you can begin to build your content strategy. You’ll have identified what platforms your audience are using and now is the time to plan how you’re going to approach these.
You see how the process all starts to make sense?
Visual Identity
We’re on part four of the process and only now coming to your visual identity. Like I mentioned earlier, this is because your brand’s personality and what’s important to you will greatly inform the way your brand looks. Having done all the previous work, you’ll have a greater sense of what’s ‘you’ and what will speak to your audience when you see suggestions from a designer.
It means you won’t have wasted time and money working with a designer for it to be completely disconnected from your personality. It should be a smooth passing of the baton.
Brand Photography
Now is the time to consider your brand photography. People love getting a better sense of the people they’re working with. Some behind the scenes shots of you in action and some on brand headshots can be a really valuable asset to your brand.
By this point, you know exactly who your brand is and what your style is. You’ll be able to select a photographer that can clearly understand this and bring your photos to life in a tone that’s completely on the money.
Website
For most people, your website is your customers’ first impression of you. It needs to pack a punch. Now that you have your new brand assets and identity ready to go, building your website should feel a lot easier.
Be methodical here. What are your objectives for your customer when they land on your website? To enquire? To buy? Whatever it is, you need to make sure that the structure and flow of your website is going to complement these objectives. This is where creating a site map will help your content writer and your developer.
From here, it’s time to write the content. Too many people fall into the trap of building their website before they have any words to populate it. Doing this limits what you can do when it comes to your content as you’re bound by a physical design that might not be cohesive with your messages.
Best to provide the words so that your content and design can come together harmoniously instead of being at odds with one another.
Print and digital communications
It’s all about the finer details now. These are the things that are really going to help you stand out as a totally consistent brand.
For example, if you regularly send letters, do you have a stand out letterhead? Do you have branded business cards for everyone who joins the business? Have you created a bank of social media post templates so you’re recognisably you wherever you are online?
The devil is truly in the details.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times; rebranding is so much more than a new logo. If you want to make sure you’re attracting the right people to your business (both as customers and employees) then doing this work is a valuable exercise. Not only does it cement your brand identity for you and all those who work for you, your customers will instantly recognise you wherever you may be.
Want to get started with your transformation? Book a virtual brew to chat about it today.