Guest article from Mary Aspen Richardson

In the digital age, branding is crucial; from a brand’s logo and mission statement to its website’s color and outreach tone, a brand’s identity will inform customers’ perceptions, expectations, and behaviors. Proper branding will instill positive connotations in brand recognition, inspire trust, and foster long-term relationships. Thus, a rebrand may be highly desirable or even unavoidable when this pivotal element underperforms. However, that’s no easy process, and it comes with multiple pitfalls for the unprepared. To help you navigate these waters, then, let us share 7 tips for a successful rebrand.

When is it time to rebrand?

First, let’s briefly outline the reasons and motivations for a rebrand. Doing so here will help contextualize the process that follows.

Brands will typically consider rebranding of different scales in such cases as:

• Mergers and acquisitions. In such cases, the merged entity may either maintain the brand image of the better-known brand or compound the two. Still, a rebrand of some scale may be necessary.
• Market repositioning. Attracting new audiences and redefining one’s position in the market will also often require a new brand identity. This is particularly true when a brand expands its offerings.
• Expansion into new markets. For effectively similar reasons, expanding into new markets will also often require a reinvigoration of one’s brand. New audience segments will often require a different identity to resonate with.
• Damage control. Relatively more rarely, brands may also be damaged seemingly beyond repair. In those cases, a rebrand may be the only viable option.
• Modernization. Finally, time inevitably outdates brands as well. Realigning core values with one’s audiences, recalibrating internal culture, and other branding elements can effectively refresh a brand’s image.

Of course, the exact scale of one’s rebranding efforts will strongly depend on the reason. Modernization may require little more than a visual update, for instance. In contrast, repositioning may call for complete reinventions to add proper meaning to one’s marketing.

7 Tips for a Successful Rebrand

With this context in mind, let’s outline a strategic, prudent rebrand process.

#1 Collect feedback

Feedback collection and data analysis are likely vital parts of your marketing efforts. If so, they can also serve as excellent foundations for rebranding. Consider such practices as the following, through which you may extract meaningful insights.

Tracking website visitors and activity

Monitoring your website’s effectiveness is among the most reliable ways to know what your audience wants, needs, and expects. You may use such tools as Google Analytics, website heat maps, and other dedicated marketing solutions that collect analytics.

Conducting surveys

Where tracking performance handles quantitative data, surveys offer qualitative data to explain your findings. Audiences are typically very eager to participate in surveys and tend to respond honestly. Moreover, they appreciate the perceived attention to their views on your brand and their experience with it.

Employing social listening

Finally, you may monitor what audiences won’t say directly through social listening. Such tools allow you to track discussions on your brand that happen outside of your profiles and content and can perfectly complement your social media strategies as well.

#2 Identify rebranding triggers

With all your insights, you may now more reliably identify rebranding triggers. In line with the circumstances outlined above, consider such findings as:

• A poor reputation
• Low trust
• Poor engagement signals
• Low market penetration
• Branding inconsistencies

If such conclusions can’t be remedied with smaller, hyper-specific changes to your outreach, PR, and content strategies, it may be time for a rebrand. Of course, the key to a successful rebrand is to initiate it exactly when it’s needed.

#3 Carefully consider the cost and risks

Still, before you get started, you should also consider the scope of your investment. That is, the costs, time frame, expected returns, and potential risks.

For this step, as you solidify your plans, examine:

• Costs. Depending on your rebrand’s scope and exact nature, costs will vary considerably. Simple visual polish may not strain your budget much, but holistic reinventions of your brand will.
• Time. Similarly, rebranding takes time to complete and bear fruit. This time investment will also occupy your teams and sway them from their current tasks.
• Risks. Finally, no business effort is ever truly free of risk, and neither is rebranding. Slight changes may fail to meet your goals, while complete makeovers may alienate existing audiences.

By no means should this step discourage you. However, evaluating those factors may inform your choices and guide your efforts toward a safer direction.

#4 Rebuild your visual identity, retell your story, and recapture your audiences

With all of the above covered, you may now begin executing a successful rebrand. Here, you may start with your visual identity and then explicitly address all shortcomings you’ve identified above.

The 3 fundamentals for this stage, as the section’s subheading suggests, are the following.

Rebuilding your visual identity

Start with your brand’s visual identity; humans are very visual beings. Examine your logo, website design, social media profiles, and even visual content, and align them with your rebranding’s goals.

Retelling your story

Your brand needs a story, and rebranding entails retelling it. Beyond visuals, examine:

• Your mission statement and vision
• Your brand values and culture
• Your brand voice and personality

The sum of such elements ultimately tells your brand’s story, communicating its past, present, and future.

Recapturing your audiences

Finally, consult your insights again to determine what existing audiences expect. Maintain these values and qualities, and keep them at the core of your new brand identity. At the same time, keep an eye on your new audiences – should they be your rebrand’s goal.

#5 Test your concepts with key stakeholders

Next, you may begin testing such rebranding concepts with key stakeholders. For larger-scale rebrands, at this stage, you should also establish a rigid rebranding framework; as you approach launch, all teams must work in perfect synergy. Without this happening, you cannot have a successful rebrand of any considerable scale.

At this stage, you may move beyond the C-suite and test the waters with existing customers, employees, and other stakeholders. If you have access to audiences of potential customers, they should also help immensely. This step will help identify potential issues and shortcomings early and allow you to correct your course if need be.

#6 Deploy a “stealth” brand launch

Moving beyond closed test environments, you may proceed with a “stealth” launch – a soft, controlled launch to critical stakeholders. This practice allows for a gradual, safer rebrand execution that typically works better than abrupt, explosive announcements and launches.

You may begin with your internal teams, other key partners, and key customers for this step. Outline your reasons and motivations, allow for previews and constructive input, and prepare press releases as needed. This step will serve as the final rehearsal before your full launch, so remain vigilant and attentive.

#7 Remain persistent and consistent

Finally, once you have fully launched your rebrand, it is crucial that you commit to it. By this stage, you should have

• Identified your key rebranding triggers, backed by ample data
• Planned your rebrand and execution
• Progressively and thoroughly tested your changes

That is not to say you may not need to make minor adjustments by any means. In fact, as with all business endeavors, maintaining a watchful eye over your analytics may always reveal more room for improvement.

However, you should now largely have a solid, data-driven, robust rebrand in place. As such, it is crucial that you fully commit to it; rebranding entails a new brand identity, regardless of size. Customers perceiving your rebrand as superficial or a quick fix will, in most cases, hamper your efforts, if not outright invalidate them.

In closing

To summarize, there are many reasons why a rebrand may be essential. A plain visual one may be desirable, or a holistic one may be necessary. In all cases, however, a successful rebrand requires very careful planning and strategic execution.

You may begin with accurate data to identify your rebrand triggers and negotiate its type and scope to best match your needs. You may then evaluate the risks, craft your new identity, and consistently test it with select audiences and stakeholders. Finally, you must fully commit to your rebrand post-launch to maintain trust with your audiences and ensure success. It may not be easy, but with these 7 tips for a successful rebrand, it will certainly be more manageable.

Meta description: From collecting insights and identifying your rebrand triggers to a strategic execution, discover 7 key tips for a successful rebrand.

Photos used:

https://pixabay.com/illustrations/rebranding-branding-brand-graphic-6672112/
https://pixabay.com/photos/podcast-music-studio-microphone-3939905/
https://pixabay.com/photos/painting-pencils-paint-pens-911804/
https://www.pexels.com/photo/group-of-people-on-conference-room-1181396/

TikTok has published a new report which provides fresh insights into the role that its platform plays in the evolving path to purchase, and how TikTok clips can change the way that brands and consumers interact.

Meta description: From de-cluttered workflows and outreach fueled by event triggers to less human error, discover how marketing automation can help your business grow.

One might argue that since digital marketing’s inception, automation has lied in its heart. Automating repetitive tasks had seemingly always seen use in digital spaces, so applying the concept to marketing only served as a natural evolution. Today, marketing automation can help your business grow and thrive, enhancing multiple different practices in fundamental ways. To illustrate, let us devote this article to exploring its forms and just how it can do so.

An introduction to marketing automation

At its core, marketing automation is a simple enough concept. It is the automation of repetitive marketing tasks that require little to no creative oversight. This is typically achieved through dedicated third-party automation software, although social media, CMSs and their plugins, and other platforms and assets may also provide such options.

Today, marketing automation boasts tremendous popularity, as 51% of all companies are already using it. In turn, the marketing automation software market experiences substantial growth, with Statista predicting it will “grow at a CAGR of 19.2 percent between 2020 and 2025”. In numbers, the industry’s 2019 $6 billion size seems set to almost triple by 2025. Even as regards B2B specifically, despite its unique challenges, forecasts remain very consistent with Statista’s:

Alt-tag: A graph on B2B marketing automation systems market’s expected growth.

Source: https://cdn-bladd.nitrocdn.com/tdeqYdwyGWepDDsunzzPpBNBtrwvfICC/assets/static/optimized/rev-359a83b/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/B2B-Marketing-Automation-systems-market-size.png

Marketing automation use cases

Marketing is a very broad field, however. In turn, marketing automation can help your business grow through multiple different applications, depending on your specific goals and needs. Three of the most notable use cases for it are the following.

#1 Email campaigns

Email marketing remains a powerful digital marketing mainstay, with excellent Return on Investment (ROI). Email also remains the primary communication tool of most businesses, so automation could only expand to meet its needs.

Email marketing automation offers to automate emails based on customizable event triggers. Such triggers may include actions taken, lead status, segment-based scheduling, and more. These offer unparalleled convenience and demonstrable benefits, as we will cover next.

#2 Social media marketing

Another prominent marketing channel lies in social media. Expanding platforms offered marketers access to vast untapped audiences and still serve as the primary brand awareness generators for many.

Still, social media is an inherently challenging marketing front, as audiences increasingly value authentic engagement over hard-sell outreach. In this regard, automation seeks to both streamline the process and prevent problems on social media, avoiding mistakes such as inconsistent schedules and suboptimal audience insights collection..

#3 Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Finally, as companies increasingly value customer interaction quality, CRM emerged as a series of practices seeking to ensure it. This gave rise to dedicated CRM software, whose most basic features now include automation of focus-specific types.

Reflecting the overall growth of automation software, CRM is now the single largest software market in the world. Forecasts also outline a continued upward trajectory, at that:

Alt-tag: A graph on the expected growth of the CRM market size in the US.

Source: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/static/img/research/us-crm-market.png

How marketing automation can help your business grow

With all of the above in mind, we may now pinpoint exact benefits of marketing automation across different applications. For the sake of text economy, we will focus on 4 among the most notable ones.

#1 Better lead generation and lead nurturing

Among the primary concerns of any business come lead concerns. Even the most robust lead generation, acquisition, and conversion systems may have room for improvement, which directly translates to revenue.

In this regard, automation offers distinct benefits for each phase:

• Lead generation and acquisition. Simple email automation can drastically improve response times to new lead queries, and let businesses swiftly respond to actions taken. Studies find that response times alone can have a drastic impact in this phase.
• Lead nurturing. Once leads enter your sights, further email triggers, CRM segmentation, and other forms of automation can visibly benefit lead nurturing. This includes re-engaging old and lapsed leads, where personalization is key.
• Conversion. Finally, automated outreach, personalized offers, better customer service through query delegation automation, and similar practices can enhance conversion rates. Proper nurturing alone can offer significant benefits in this regard, as Campaign Monitor finds.

This may be the most substantial way in which marketing automation can help your business grow, all in all. Indeed, most marketers prioritize lead-related improvements over most else:

Alt-tag: An infographic on marketers’ most coveted benefits of marketing automation.

Source: https://startupbonsai.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Statistic-7-Marketing-Automation-Statistics.png

#2 Better omni-channel marketing

Similarly, omni-channel marketing presents immense opportunities – and considerable challenges. Marketers have to focus on different content distribution channels as their companies expand to meet customers’ expectations.

Marketing automation rises to the challenge, in many cases directly evolving to do so. Its benefits in this regard can expand to, among others:

• Segmentation. Smart segmentation and automatic lead scoring can save marketing departments considerable time and enhance their efficiency.
• Content distribution. Personalized, conditional, action-driven, and other types of content distribution can further enhance lead nurturing and help secure more sales.
• Interaction management. Finally, channel consolidation and automatic notifications can notably improve interaction quality, facilitating deeper bonds, more customer trust, and more customer satisfaction (CSAT) overall.

Of course, exact automation applications will vary depending on each marketer’s scope and existing assets. However, as the ongoing pandemic continues to fragment customer journeys, omni-channel marketing should remain a prominent approach.

#3 A streamlined workflow and less human error

Another inherent benefit of marketing automation lies in more streamlined workflows. In turn, automatic data entry and trigger-dependent outreach can minimize the room for human error, which remains a performance inhibitor.

Examples of workflows one may automate and streamline include:

• “Welcome” workflow, triggered by signups
• Re-engagement workflow, based on specifically defined periods of inactivity
• Cart abandonment workflow, triggered on cart abandonment

In all such cases, automation offers to circumvent human involvement until creative input is needed – thus reducing human error. Of course, each workflow automation type will differ, but they will all follow a similar trigger-based structure:

Alt-tag: An illustration of the typical workflow automation structure.

Source: https://blog-assets.freshworks.com/freshsales-crm/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/23131733/triggers-3-1024×486-1.png

#4 Enhanced productivity and better time management

Finally, another inherent benefit of marketing automation comes in the form of better time management and enhanced productivity. Jared Atchison, the co-founder of WPForms, expresses this in the simple truism that “[p]utting energy into smaller tasks […] wastes valuable time you could spend maximizing profit and nurturing leads”.

Automation’s productivity benefits can notably include:

• Expanding operations outside of regular working hours
• De-cluttering daily schedules for more creative output
• Swifter reactive actions through task delegation and automatic notifications

In combination, such benefits can have a massive effect on both final revenue and cost. Studies quantify the potential operational cost benefit as up to 30%, a substantial benefit to any business.

Conclusion

In summary, marketing automation can help your business grow in a plethora of ways. At its core, it offers unprecedented convenience and an invaluable time management asset. Problem-solving applications may manifest these qualities in personalized outreach, more efficient lead nurturing, enhanced internal communications, and more. As such, as digital marketing expands to more channels and faces new challenges, automation will likely remain an indispensable asset.