3 Steps To Launch A Successful Brand Conversion
OVERVIEW
The elapsed time since your last brand refresh is an important beginning step, but there are other considerations.
When thinking about a Brand conversion, you want to determine whether this is a tactical or strategic change. Meaning, are you tearing down the existing Brand and starting from scratch, or are you tweaking the Brand to be more competitive?
Whether your Brand’s design is outdated or whether your Brand’s growth has flatlined, the following three steps will steer you in the right direction as you embark through your visual update.
Step 1: Brand Design
Now that you decided a brand refresh is right for you, what are the next steps?
Brand Book: Create an update of your brand book explaining how the newly refreshed logo and color palette applies to your new initiative. In essence, your new look has to make sense to not only your company’s product or services, but it also needs to make sense to your audience.
Introduction: Make sure you prepare to introduce the new look and feel to everyone in the company. You want to make sure everyone agrees and understands the change’s backstory to help contribute to the Brand conversion launch.
Apply: Create an inventory of every asset that displays the brand logo and apply the refreshed new look.
- Retail signage
- Websites
- Sales & Marketing Collateral
- Promotional items
- Proposals
- Emails
Call Enterprise Signs at (866) 571 - 4609 or email essales@enterprisesigns.com to learn more about Brand Conversions with a dedicated signage representative.
Step 2: Review Design
Your senior management will want to know how the brand refresh will help the company. The bottom line is always important, but there are other impacts as well:
Interest: Increased amount of attention from customers via store traffic and social media
Revenue: Increased sources of income based on new Brand.
Stock: Upswing in stock price.
Online: Increased website traffic
A perfect example is IHOP’s [International House of Pancakes] new Brand conversion to IHOB [International House of Burgers].
They saw a 30% increase in their stock price to $80/per share, and by changing just one small detail, they saw a massive increase in foot traffic to try out their new product.
The name change turned out to be a temporary advertising ploy, which made it even more brilliant. It just goes to show one minor change can create a massive impact.
New Audience – Are you interested in attracting a different audience? Has your demographic changed? Are you failing to reach your targeted audience? Has the market shifted since you last updated your brand?
Modernization – Has your image become stale? Is your logo looking outdated relative to competitors, and are your color schemes out of style?
Brand Reposition – Did your products or services evolve? Has your vision changed?
Evolving Market – Are competitors threatening your company’s existence? Is your Brand staying ahead of your competitors and maintaining relevancy?
Search Engine Optimization [SEO] – Is your business utilizing SEO strategies alongside your branding?
New Senior Management – Do you have a new CEO, President, or CMO bringing new perspectives to an organization? Are there organizational changes driving new branding initiatives?
If some of these checkpoints are hitting right on target for your portfolio, the next step you should consider is contacting a national signage partner who will walk you through every step of your refresh process.
Step 3: Final Roll-Out Reminders
An important element of your brand refresh is creating a Brand Standards Guide, which becomes your roadmap to consistency.
Your Brand Standard Guide includes critical information for size, positioning, margins, color, and acceptable “lockups,” which are combinations of the logo and taglines, slogans, illustrations, mottoes, or Brand violations.
However, it’s important to note that Brand Standards are an absolute waste of time if you’re not willing to enforce them.
Now that you created a new brand identity and brand standards to reinforce it, an audit is necessary to ensure that the fresh, shiny, new logo is applied consistently across every touchpoint. Take an inventory of anything and everything that uses your logo.
Also, determine all the ways your company communicates to internal and external audiences (emails, press releases, proposals, website, signage) because you want to be sure that you’re rolling out the updated brand both internally and externally.
Note that you want to make sure you communicate internally before firing off the press releases and updating your website.
When communicating externally, it’s important to reveal the inspiration and details around the process and change.
These details make your brand refresh ‘sticky’ because you want your brand recognition to stick to your audience’s memory.
Having a strong positive brand that stands out to your targeted audience’s minds helps differentiate your products or services from competitors and adds to your Brand conversion goals.
Ultimately, the decision to refresh your brand can be difficult, but it’s worth thinking about when your current brand isn’t delivering the needed results.