When it comes to establishing a standout presence in today’s saturated market, building a strong brand is not just an option—it’s a necessity. But what exactly is branding, and why is it so pivotal for businesses big and small? At its core, branding is the art of shaping your company’s image. It’s about storytelling, creating an emotional connection with your audience, and conveying your business’s unique value proposition consistently across all platforms.

The Purpose of Branding

Branding isn’t just about a cool new logo or a catchy tagline; it’s the heart and soul of your company’s public image. It differentiates you from the competition, fosters loyalty, and encapsulates the customer experience with your company. Think of your brand as the personality of your business: it should be relatable, memorable, and above all, authentic.

But what happens when your brand’s representation no longer communicates your business effectively? 

Well, it might be time to think about a rebrand. As the world continues to change and your savvy consumer evolves, your brand must evolve too. But, often, people are worried about rebranding and we’re here to help.

When is it time to rebrand?

Think it might be time to freshen up your representation? Let’s test that theory!

Read the questions below:

Does your branding feel outdated compared to competitors?

Has the company’s vision, values, or audience has changed?

Are you having trouble attracting your ideal customers?

Has your brand become complicated or diluted through expansions and diversifications?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, it could be time to invest in a rebrand.

Interested in learning more about a rebrand? Check out our past blog post where we discussed everything you need to know.

For the rest of this article, we wanted to focus on what happens after you invest in a new identity for your business.

Because after you make that investment you’ll need to launch it, and without a strategic plan to launch, you could fumble the bag and your company’s big day could fall flat.

What is a Brand Launch Strategy

A brand launch strategy is a structured plan that helps companies that have recently invested in a brand overhaul. Businesses that are ready to launch their new assets should not do so without a plan. 

The plan to launch those assets is what we call a Brand Launch Strategy and here’s how Commence Studio does it for our partners.

Planning your Brand Launch Strategy

So you’ve worked with a branding agency to help create a new identity for your business. The next step is rolling it out to all of the materials associated with your business.

Step 1: Development of brand collateral

The very first thing you’ll want to do is to start preparing all of your assets with the new branding. This includes every brand touchpoint that you can think of. Common ones include websites, mobile apps, online & offline marketing materials, signage, employee merchandise, and stationery.

Step 2: Internal Brand Launch

Before you release all of the assets that you’ve just prepared, you’ll need to bring your internal team up to speed. Employees can be the biggest supporters of your brand so by planning an internal release your team can begin to understand and embody the new digs and create a consistent experience for customers. 

Step 3: External Brand Launch Preparation 

Assets are designed and employees are prepped and excited. The next step is to begin planning when and how you’ll release your new brand. Preparation for the external launch involves developing a marketing plan. You should consider sending out a press release to inform the general public, email marketing to existing customers, social media announcements, and advertising campaigns to bring in new traffic. 

Want an expert tip? 

Now is a good time to benchmark metrics for your company. Google Analytics can give you a good understanding of traffic numbers before your launch and tools like Sprout Social can help you track mentions on social media. While some board members or CEOs might now see the value in a rebrand, tracking metrics before and after your launch can help you prove the return on your investment (ROI) to higher-ups.

Step 4: Official External Brand Launch

This stage marks the public debut of the new brand. Remember the marketing plan you created in the last step? Well, now it’s execution time. Put into action the materials you’ve prepped up until this phase and you could also think about including events, promotional offers, and media engagement.

Step 5: Post Launch

After the official launch, it’s recommended to monitor brand performance and gather feedback. Utilize this time to survey customers and monitor the conversation on social media.  Make any necessary plans for marketing the brand or communication efforts. If there are any reservations, don’t be alarmed. Change is hard but if you keep moving forward chances are people are going to buy in.

Step 6: Long-term Brand Management

To ensure the sustainability of your new brand, you’ll need to keep evaluating and refining your brand strategy, maintain brand standards across all touchpoints, and stay engaged with your members.

What are the challenges of launching new brand assets?

Confusion

If you haven’t done the planning then chances are your launch can fall flat and even have an adverse effect on your brand’s performance. In the eyes of your customers, you’ve built up a lot of goodwill. Switching your logo without telling your customers can leave them feeling left out of the loop. Even worse, it could make them think that they’re dealing with another company completely. Make preparations beforehand, i.e. re-read our launch strategy about, and things should go swimmingly.

Forgetting About User Experience

The new branding should be present across all assets. One of the things that’s often overlooked is a brand’s online experience. If your rebrand includes more than a logo and encompasses your brand voice as well, you will need to invest time in updating language across your website. And, if you’ve got a good amount of pages, that can be a major time investment. The best place to start is the most important web pages. From there, you can make a list of additional, high-priority pages and continue to widdle it down. 

The Takeaways

When launching a new brand, you want to make sure you invest in a well-planned strategy.

 Those hours will pay back in dividends when your launch goes off without a hitch.

The brand launch strategy outlined in this post is the exact process that we at Commence Studio implement for our partners. 

If you’re interested in giving your brand a new identity, we’d be happy to help you create something amazing. As a full-service design agency, we can design your logo, position your brand, strategize a launch plan, and handle the marketing implementation to take it off the ground.

 

Let’s hit the ground running.