Preparing for a brand refresh: part 2

In part 1, we discussed some initial steps in terms of research to get your brand refresh project off the ground. Now we're getting into what your existing customers and internal stakeholders understand your brand to be so you can be more strategic moving forward.

Analyze Your Existing Customer Brand Perception

Your existing customers offer valuable insight into your brand’s strengths and weaknesses. This analysis should include as much information as possible. Here are some places to look, depending on your resources:

• Qualitative Feedback: 

  • Surveys, focus groups, and customer interviews to gather in-depth insights. NOTE: if you can, offer customers a product discount for their feedback and keep questions short and sweet to increase the usefulness and response rate.

• Quantitative Feedback: 

  • Customer satisfaction scores, retention rates, and analysis of product or service reviews. Look for areas to cut dead weight that are dragging you down and bright spots that you can lean into.

• Brand Testing: 

  • Present potential new brand concepts to your target customer demographic for feedback.

• Demographic Breakdown: 

  • Analyze customer demographics and determine if shifts are needed for future growth.

• Customer Behavioral Trends: 

  • Identify patterns in purchasing behavior, brand loyalty, and engagement levels. This can help with the creation of strategic retention campaigns and targeted incentives.

• Brand Affinity and Sentiment: 

  • Understand how customers emotionally connect with your brand. What emotional words do they associate with you? And what words do you wish they would use? This can help you identify shifts you may need to make in imagery or voice/tone.

    
    

Internal Brand Conversations and Strategic Alignment

A brand refresh must be rooted in authenticity. So you need to understand who you are. That means interviewing your internal teams. Discuss the following:

• Brand Purpose: 

  • Why does the brand exist? What mission does it serve? Tip: it can't just be to make money. Please :) Let's make it customer focused!

• Brand Essence and Identity: 

  • What do you want customers to feel when interacting with your brand? This is vital.

• Word Associations: 

  • What key words and messages should be tied to the brand? If you were to ask a stranger to describe the brand, what would you want them to say?

• Include Employee and Stakeholder Perceptions: 

  • Ensure alignment amongst leadership, employees, and investors. This means all these groups should be included in these conversations. Their opinions matter, even if not everything they say is included in the final draft. They'll remember that you asked and that their opinions were considered. And my guess is that they have some really important nuggets of truth about your brand that could be incredible game changers in terms of a refresh. You never know what you might uncover.

• Refreshed Visual Identity: 

  • Logo updates, color simplifications, and typography refinements. If these are being considered, ensure there are reasons behind all of them. They should support the brand perceptions you want to create within the consumers' minds. Visuals do have an element of subjectivity, but try to be as objective as possible during this step. It's easy to slide into opinions, with the loudest voice taking over. Make sure reasons for updates are justified with data and research to back them up.

    
    

Deep-Dive Data Analysis

Use data to inform every decision in your brand refresh. Your Business Intelligence group and the sales team are going to be your best friends! This could include:

• Customer Buying Behaviors: 

  • Analyze what products or services perform best and why. Can you duplicate your best performers to lift other products or lines?

• Sales and Marketing Performance: 

  • Assess conversion rates, ad performance, and overall ROI. Look for places to A/B test to begin optimizing experiences. This could be testing landing pages, email subject lines, email timing, discount amounts, or even imagery.

• Customer Journey Mapping: 

  • Identify gaps and friction points in the customer experience. Which can be solved now with simple and meaningful solutions? Which ones will take longer? Create a prioritized list and agree amongst all relevant departments.

• Retention and Churn Analysis: 

  • Understand why customers leave and what keeps them engaged. Create sales and marketing strategies to support both groups in the ways that add the value they each need from your brand to stay engaged.

• Attribution Modeling: 

  • Determine which marketing channels drive the most valuable engagement. Underperforming? How can you improve? Top performing? How can you optimize?

Okay, we're almost there. You've gathered a lot of insights, and maybe you have a few nuggets of gold that you had no idea existed. Maybe you're starting to see the throughline...there are areas where your existing customers, your internal groups, and the data all align and are speaking the same language. THIS IS GOOD! We're getting closer to your brand's true colors being able to shine...having the background information you need to really create the messages that will resonate and create that magnetic pull across all your brand's touchpoints.

Now it's time to pull it all together...on to part 3.