So, you've launched a company, but you want to go in a different direction regarding the logo, name and maybe even some product features. A full relaunch is not easy, but it could be the X factor that drives your startup to success. We spoke with Luke Brassinga and Cassie Lancellotti-Young about what it takes to successfully rebrand your business.
What necessitates a rebrand?
First off, let's explain one thing: A rebrand isn't just a name change.
"True rebranding involves updating a company's goals, message and culture," says Luke Brassinga, a principal at social media marketing firm Likeable Brands. There are several good reasons for a rebrand—a merger, an acquisition, a diversified product line, an outdated company, an unsuccessful brand or a split company (think Netflix and Qwikster, prior to the reversion) can all merit a relaunch.
Brassinga says there are also times when you should not perform a rebrand. A rebrand is a tough move to pull off, so if your company has significant brand equity, you could very well end up losing customers if the process isn't done well (again, look at Netflix and Qwikster). A rebrand is better suited for a startup or small business that experiences a profound shift in identity.
Savored, a restaurant reservation site that launched in 2010 as VillageVines, is one such small business that benefitted from a rebrand. The site, which offers reservations at top restaurants for a $10 fee in exchange for 30 percent your total bill, underwent a name change in June, less than a year after the site's initial launch. VillageVines was live in five cities, but by its name alone, you might not know what it offers. But "Savored" connotes delicious food and is a much more direct word, ultimately making it a better name for the company. It was a well executed rebrand that was done with good reason.
How do I change my vanity URLs on social sites?
When you come up with a new name, you should make sure you can get not only your .com domain name, but also the handles on various social sites so your communities have a new place to congregate around your brand.
Just like you can't change your personal Facebook vanity URL, you can't change a Facebook Page URL once you have more than 100 fans. (This seems unnecessary, but makes sense when you think about people selling their fans.) But the Savored team was undeterred.
"Once we found an appropriate contact at Facebook to approach about our situation, we found the team there to be extremely accommodating, and they actually did allow us to simply switch our page name to Savored in light of the circumstances," says Cassie Lancellotti-Young, VP of marketing at Savored. We're not sure how successful that would be for a business that doesn't have millions of dollars of funding, so if the aforementioned trick doesn't work, you may have to create a new Facebook Page and encourage your fans to migrate to the new Page.
On the other hand, you can easily change your Twitter handle, as long as the desired username is available. If your ideal handle is taken but inactive (and you have trademark and copyright information), then explaining your case to the Twitter team could nab you that handle. On the contrary, you could just start a new handle and have your fans follow you there. Lancellotti-Young says Savored opted to start a new handle instead of migrating its fans because "we realized that by simply killing @VillageVines and making it @Savored, we'd lose a lot of our important tweeting history from the VillageVines brand." This tweeting history was important to the Savored story and indicated that VillageVines had developed a solid product and fan base long before Savored launched. So the team took over the @Savored handle and started from scratch, keeping @VillageVines as an "archive" and as a way to direct fans to @Savored (see above).
If you decide to keep your old brand handle, be sure you check in for direct messages and @replies so you can offer the same level of customer service and guide that tweeter toward the brand's new social profiles.
Got a YouTube profile? Unfortunately, you can't change the user name on a YouTube account, but you cancreate a vanity URL that directs to your old page (this video clip explains the process). In short, if there had been youtube.com/villagevines, the company could have set up a vanity URL, such as youtube.com/savored, for the rebrand. The Savored URL would redirect to the old VillageVines channel page, but the Savored URL would show in the address bar. This prevents users from having to re-upload videos and losing all the comments and subscriptions. Doing this basically puts a mask of the new brand on the old YouTube page.
And of course, you should keep your old website URL and have it redirect to the new website; this makes it easier for customers to find the new site without jumping through hoops to reestablish connections (like if they have it bookmarked).
How do I announce the new brand?
So you've changed your name. Now how do you let the world know? Here are some tips for getting the word out, explaining the rebrand and what it means to users.
With a personal note
Your CEO should send an honest, heartfelt message to your customers/users/subscribers explaining the rebrand, why it came about and what this means for the company and for the consumers. Promise (and mean it) that there will be no adverse effects on customer service or product quality and reiterate how important your extant fans are. Be responsive and receptive to complaints and feedback that come your way. Your customers come first and need to be treated well in order to adapt to the rebrand.
Through press outreach
Try not to have just the rebrand be the story. Hey, we have a new name doesn't add any value nor does it merit a blog post or newsletter blast. But if you rebrand and add new features or bells and whistles, your customers will have more incentive to stick with you through the change. That also gives the press more reason to cover the rebrand; it's real news the audience should know about. Make it clear to the press that it's just a rebrand and not a new product.
"We bundled news about our new website (including our new content from Zagat), new name and [five] new markets as one bigger tale to better convey the fact that we'd been around a while," says Lancellotti-Young. This move gave the brand street cred and created much more of a story for bloggersand news sites to pick up.
Using Google AdWords
AdWords are a great and effective way to get the word out about your new brand, but there are ways to maximize AdWords's effectiveness. Because VillageVines already had a Google AdWords campaign running and had built up an edge on Google, they used AdWords to beef up Savored's SEO by piggybacking off of VillagesVines's success. Lancellotti-Young says that buying keywords for VillageVines and redirecting them to Savored would be "a nightmare" for SEO rankings, so the company went with ads like, "VillageVines is now Savored."
When you're setting up AdWords for the new brand, be aware that Google requires your new site to be live in order to approve the ads that direct there.
Making use of SEO
You've probably received a good amount of press for your old name. How do you parlay that SEO advantage to your new brand? Reach out to the press that's already covered you to let them know of the change (they may make updates, and as mentioned the rebrand announcement may merit an additional blog post). Savored also used a commenting strategy, whereby the team commented on old press posts (see above) with information about Savored and the five new cities it had expanded to.
Employing consistency across the Web
Be sure your brand pages as well as your team's individual social profiles (LinkedIn, Google+, etc.) are all updated to reflect the change. The Savored team started making a list of everything that needed to be updated to "Savored" about a month before launch so that when the rebrand was about to go live, the team could divide and conquer to ensure a seamless transition.
Establishing partnerships
Make sure any partners are abreast of the rebrand and have the proper logos and information in place so they can update things on their end. Savored notified partners seven to 10 days in advance to make sure resources could be allocated to make the change in time for the launch, and Lancellotti-Young recommends giving ample lead time.
Has your business been through a rebrand? Have more tips? Let us know in the comments below.
No comments:
Post a Comment