There remain great differences between simply rebranding and actually rebranding for success. Primarily, most take on a rebranding process intending to tell audiences about the brand. Not about the customer. Success never arrives If you go into it with the former attitude.
Enter into any rebranding process wanting to understand your target audience so well your brand creates preference. By being so reflective of your audience that it is unable to choose anyone else.
Rebranding process – Step 1 – Research
The first step in a rebranding process is always research. You no doubt possess latent knowledge of your target audience and market. But you need to go win with a clear mind, letting go old assumptions. Your competitors hang onto sacred cows, so their market share stays stagnant. Be ready to slay those sacred cows.
Put everything on the table. Test your assumptions. If they’re not true, you’ve found opportunity because you can position your brand against those assumptions. The assumptions the rest of the market promotes.
Research is also misunderstood. Most conduct the usual usage & attitude studies. I test those too. But they are not the most important learnings from quantitative research. I look for the emotional triggers that will make audiences covet your brand.
I lay out a very simple example here. Uncover the beliefs that drive your audience’s behavior.
Rebranding process – Step 2 – Competitive analysis
In order to present your brand as a true choice, you must be different and better than your competition. You don’t offer a true choice if you spout the same messaging as your competitors. And, therefore, nothing changes.
When analyzing your competition, map out where each one positions itself. You are looking for opportunity. What can you say that positions your brand directly against the competition?
A promise. In this part of the rebranding process, you’ll be surprised how similar all the positions have become.
Rebranding process – Step 3 – Brand audit
You want to be different and better. But you also need to fulfill that brand promise. An audit does a few things. One, it tells you what promises you can fulfill and which ones you can’t. In addition, you’ll find strengths and weaknesses in your brand.
I assess your brand through eight categories: Meaning, direction and vision. Clarity of positioning. Clarity of differentiation. Relevance. Consistency. The use of equity markers. Brand-product relationships, and coherent brand management.
Based on the grades of those categories, I tell you what you can do to improve your brand. Any rebranding process that doesn’t include a brand audit means you’ll never be honest with yourself.
Rebranding process – Step 4- Positioning
Taking all that you know from a successful rebranding process – research, competitive analysis and brand audit – you are now armed to find the single most persuasive thing you can say to create preference.
Align your brand with the single most emotionally intensive belief among your target audience. Through the competitive analysis, you find whether any competitor has taken that position – and if it positions yourself against that competition.
The brand audit tells you what you must accomplish to fulfill that brand promise.
What all those are aligned, you’ll find the brand position most powerfully stationed to take market share. The purpose of any rebranding process is to win. Not just a pretty picture. Not just a clever theme. But a real brand position that will make your competitors shake in your presence.
If you’d like to learn how I can help you with a rebranding process, email me at mikev@brandingtowinnow.com.