Online Marketing: When it’s Time to Rebrand

Online Marketing: When it’s Time to Rebrand

You’ve taken years to create your brand, as many businesses have, including big names like business.com. And, whether you’re a small business or a corporate giant, changing your brand can be scary.

Many customers find you online based on brand alone – the logo in your Facebook picture – for example. However, with the business world evolving at a rapid pace, it’s important that your company is able to keep up, and for some that means taking the leap to rebrand.

They key to making it a smooth online transition is planning, prep and flawless execution.

Also on TechWyse

Why Small Businesses Think About Branding
What Makes Your Website A Brand in Google's Eyes?

Create Your Plan

When making a brand change, it’s imperative that you have a plan and process in place for creating your new brand and implementing it; this starts at a higher level, asking the right questions.

For example, Tony Uphoff, business.com’s new CEO told SearchEngineLand.com in an interview, “We’ve been collecting data on how small-to-medium enterprise buyers research, compare and ultimately buy products on the Internet today.”

After answering these types of questions, business.com became fresh and modern, like many of their competitors in the online business sphere.

So, once you’ve been able to answer the high-level questions and collected the right information, you need to determine how the new brand will be incorporated into your online marketing efforts. There are two steps you need to take: Prepping your customers and perfecting your timing.

1. Prepping Your Customers

If you’re creating a new logo, not only do you want to prep your current customers but get them excited too. There are a number of ways you can use your online presence to do so – both on your website and your social networks.

  • Poll on Facebook: Ask your customers what they think is going to happen – design change, new product, etc. This gets them thinking about it and makes them want to check back to see if they were right.
  • Related blog posts: Business.com chose to run a teaser blog post – Top 5 Companies That Have Teased a New Product. The final company was business.com; but with no new product. They opted for, “Stay tuned to see the final product of our learnings.” The tease gets them involved and interested.
  • Enticing shares: Intrigue your customers by reminding them of the upcoming change – perhaps you release a clue about the new product, a blurry photo of the new design, or an employee working on the “project.”

2. Having Timely Execution

Finally, the most important piece of the puzzle is how you execute your new brand. After all the hard work you’ve put into it, you want the final reveal to go off without a hitch. To do that, you want to be sure your updates and public changes are timely.

  • Social assets and verbiage: The moment your new product or look is launched, be sure to update all your social networks, and direct customers and followers to the home or product page. Ideally you should have a statement from the company, whether in a blog post or press release, explaining the news.
  • Follow up posts: Business.com followed up two days later with the blog post: Logo Upgades: 5 B2B Companies that Made the Change. The key is bringing awareness to what you’re doing in the context of your industry and competitors.
  • Scheduled interviews: Be sure that you have done the necessary PR so online interviews and articles covering the changes will be live within 5-7 days of launch; this will keep people buzzing about your news.

Your brand is an integral part of online marketing, and making that change can be nerve-wracking. However, many big names, like business.com, have done it thanks to good preparation and timely execution, and you can too.

It's a competitive market. Contact us to learn how you can stand out from the crowd.

Read Similar Blogs

Post a Comment

4 Comments

  • avatar
    thomas1117 

    on 

    Yeah I think there was is a site called overture which used to be a smaller site, now they get much more traffic, just by a simple change of their domain name. Nice post!

  • avatar
    Jessica Sanders 

    on 

    Thanks for checking it out everyone! And Drdurham77 – I agree, it definitely goes much deeper, but for those who may not yet be your customers, and only interact with you on a surface level (your blog or Facebook) your outward brand may be one of the only ways they recognize you. Thanks again, for reading!

  • avatar

    Some good points on changing or updating brand.
    However, I think Brand goes much deeper than products or logos. It is about the personality of the organisation, brand is about your values, about what you stand for and represent.

  • avatar
    Belinda Summers 

    on 

    Hi Jessica. Rebranding indeed needs a thorough planing. It is quite a critical thing to do, not to mention that you have to risk for something. You must inform the public especially your customers if you’re going to rebrand if else, it’s a great loss. Take advantage on this situation. You can ask suggestions / feedback from them. This is the best time where you can build a stronger bond to them. What do you think? Anyway, thank you Jessica for some tips. Found it helpful.

Ready To Rule The First Page of Google?

Contact us for an exclusive 20-minute assessment & strategy discussion. Fill out the form, and we will get back to you right away!

What Our Clients Have To Say

L
Luciano Zeppieri
S
Sharon Tierney
S
Sheena Owen
A
Andrea Bodi - Lab Works
D
Dr. Philip Solomon MD