Let’s set the stage: You’ve worked tirelessly to develop (or redevelop) your brand – getting the language, logo, typography, color, and visual assets just right and you’ve finally secured alignment with leadership (!!!). Now, you’re building the new website and you just received a go-live date from your product team.
So… what’s next?
It’s time to design your brand rollout strategy.
TL;DR:
How you’ll go live depends on your goals, timing, and budget, as well as if it’s a new brand launch or rebrand. Regardless, there’s a way to be prepared to make an impact internally and across earned and owned channels.
The details:
When designing your strategy, first set parameters, then design your internal rollout and craft your external rollout. Let’s dive into each:
Set parameters.
The following elements strongly influence your brand rollout strategy:
Your Goals – What are you trying to accomplish? Keep both internal and external goals in mind. For example, do you want to…
Communicate brand changes with employees to create clarity and generate excitement and hype? This is an example of an internal goal.
Generate awareness surrounding the new brand, the company’s products and technologies, and position yourself in a certain way? This is an example of an external goal.
Your Timing – When do you want to announce the brand?
Consider attaching the announcement to the launch of a new product or feature, holiday, or an industry conference. This’ll help spread the word and create an even more newsworthy moment.
Your Budget – How much can you spend on advertising the rollout? This’ll affect your external rollout strategy.
Design your internal rollout.
Even though the brand you created is for an external audience, your team represents your brand, and so it’s important for them to know how to evangelize it. Here are four ways to effectively loop them in — which one(s) you select depends on your goals and budget:
Host a meeting to present the brand. This time is meant to build camaraderie around your brand and get buy-in ahead of a public announcement. Allow for a Q&A so your team has a chance to ask clarifying questions.
Develop brand guidelines. These outline the visual and verbal identity of your brand and can be used by your team when developing any external-facing communications. For reference, here are guidelines we finalized recently for a brand called Magnus.
Create action items toolkit. There will be actions every team member will need to take. Create a checklist including updating LinkedIn bios,email signatures, and marketing / sales assets utilizing the new brand guidelines.
Send merch. Get the team hyped with branded hats, crewnecks, or stickers as a surprise gift for them on the day of the brand's launch. This is also great for them to wear on video calls and out in the wild.
Craft your external rollout.
Now we get to dive into the fun part: Letting your users, leads, and target audiences know about your brand.
If this is a new brand or product launch, you’ll likely have a larger go-to-market strategy attached to the launch. If it’s simply a rebrand, there’s still a way to make a splash. Here are some effective ways to go live across earned and owned channels – which one(s) you select will depend on your goals, timing and budget:
Marketing: Announce the brand to your audience by sending them an email from your CEO that shares the news. Publish the note on your blog and feature pieces of it on social media. Have employees share the new brand on their own social channels as well — provide them sample copy to make this quick and easy. If you’re a B2B business, have sales representatives send 1:1 emails to important customers and warm leads and consider sending them branded merch, both offer a nice personal touch. If budget allows, look into a larger consumer activation with digital and out of home ads and events in key locations across the country.
PR: Day of launch, publish a press release about the brand launch to generate awareness in earned media. This can range from an in-depth company profile in a prominent trade to several interviews in business and other publications. Look for opportunities to leverage investors, partners, customers, and data to tell your organization’s story. In the following months, build awareness and recognition by capitalizing on calendar moments, newsworthy announcements, customer and partner success stories, and work to secure executive thought leadership pieces, podcast interviews and conference speaking opportunities.
Now, you've got some ideas of how to take your brand from idea to reality and share it with the world. There's a lot to do — before you dig back into the work, remember this is an exciting moment to celebrate how far you've come.
🤝Let’s work together. If you would like to learn more about Robin, or want to talk about your brand’s marketing, communications, and product development initiatives, contact us at hello@androbin.co.
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