Your company’s brand acts as the beating heart of your operations. Everything else will eventually shut down if it isn’t strong enough. Clients are always looking for incentives to choose one option over another, which is why this happens.
In other words, even if you have a tried-and-true marketing strategy and sales funnel for converting customers, they won’t help you unless you give them a reason to choose your brand. What makes developing a brand even more difficult is that it necessitates a blend of originality, creativity, and transparency.
Your brand will not stand out enough to begin the process of building trust with them unless these three qualities are present. This is where the value of a brand refresh is realized. A brand refresh is similar to pressing the reset button on your company’s image.
What is a brand refresh & why is it important?
A company makeover is referred to as a brand refresh. It’s the same with your company’s image. Recognized visual elements can be kept or updated with a refresh. Alternatively, a new overall style with a new look, tone, and presentation will gain new recognition. A brand refresh keeps the visual connection to the previous brand identity. The “new suit” makeover, on the other hand, is modern, vibrant, and tailored to today’s audiences.
As your company grows and develops, the brand must evolve to reflect this so that the customer can see the company’s current vision and mission. A brand must be adaptable to meet the ever-changing needs of customers, social and economic development, and other market changes.
The advantages of a refreshed brand
If you’re still undecided about whether or not to refresh your brand, consider the following advantages. To begin with, the procedure is less expensive than most people believe. Unlike a complete rebranding, refreshing your brand doesn’t necessitate spending money on new content, brand value suggestions, and other similar expenses.
Another advantage is that it exposes your brand to a new market of potential customers. If some people haven’t heard of your company yet, a brand refresh will naturally increase awareness without spending money on marketing. In reality, we could spend all day listing the advantages of a brand refresh. Improved product value, service highlighting, and staying current are just a few of the many benefits it offers.
Essential elements of an effective brand refresh
A brand refresh should be more than a graphic design exercise because your brand is more than just your logo and color palette. Great brands aren’t created by accident; they take time and effort to develop. So, if your company has decided that it is time to update its brand, it must do so strategically.
The following are a few essential elements of an effective brand refresh:
- Discovery & research
Research is one of the most critical elements on the list, but it is frequently overlooked or undervalued. If you ask your company’s senior leadership who you are and what sets you apart from the competition, they will almost certainly have an answer.
However, their response may differ from clients, prospects, or even employees. A brand refresh should begin with discovery and research, which should be conducted by third parties using qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys as needed.
Credibility and authenticity are two crucial characteristics of a powerful brand. Research should be carried out to learn how the market perceives your company, discover what actual differentiators you have and look for overlap between internal and external perspectives.
- Competitive analysis
It’s critical to have a high-level understanding of the competitive landscape before updating your brand platform. If you want to stand out from the crowd, you must first learn what the rest of the group is doing and then do it differently.
A competitive analysis allows you to take into account a variety of important factors, including (but not limited to):
- Key messages and taglines
- Colors, fonts, and styles
- Proposition of value
- Content marketing and thought leadership
- The presence of a website and a digital/social presence
- Logo and visual identity system update
It’s impossible to overstate the importance of a distinct visual identity. It’s just as important to look different (and better) than everyone else if you sound different (and better) than everyone else through compelling brand positioning and key messages.
The foundation for conveying the essence of your brand is your visual identity, which includes your logo, color palette, styles, photography, fonts, textures, and other brand elements. The extent to which a company updates its logo now depends on the need and desires of the company. A brand refresh does not always necessitate a complete logo redesign, though it occasionally does.
- Brand positioning & key messages
After you’ve researched and discovered your company’s true differentiators and market perceptions, the next step is to craft compelling key messages that pinpoint your distinct position in the market. These messages should be designed to appeal to your key target audience on both a rational and an emotional level.
While the basics of who you are and what you do must be addressed in your marketing, don’t forget to mention why you do what you do, how your approach differs (assuming it does), and how this ultimately benefits the client.
The ultimate goal of branding is to get past your company’s tangible attributes and tap into your audience’s emotional triggers by conveying intangible attributes, the why factor, that can’t be easily imitated by the competition.
- Brand standards guide
The most influential brands have a solid visual identity, but they also have that identity consistently reinforced across all touchpoints.
A set of guidelines for using the logo and other brand elements are known as brand standards. The guide will include important guidelines for logo size, positioning, margins, colors, and various “lockups” for all acceptable variations (color, black and white, horizontal, vertical, and so on) based on placement and usage. Colors, fonts, photography styles, graphic elements, messaging, and other elements that make up your brand will be discussed.
Having a brand standards guide that is strictly followed throughout the company ensures consistency and promotes strong brand recognition in the marketplace.
Conclusion
The end goal of the brand refresh process is to have a strong brand that stands out positively in the minds of your target audience and differentiates your company from the crowded sea of competitors. It’s critical to include these seven elements as part of your brand refresh process if you want to achieve that goal.
