A wise person once said that failing to plan is planning to fail. That’s why we’ve put together these key steps to help you to make use of your current audience and guarantee a successful brand launch.
But, when it comes to a successful brand rollout, let’s remember that it’s not all about getting it ready for our audience. We need to consider how we will implement it internally.
This guide will show you exactly how to do that (and we’ve even included a handy downloadable checklist at the end for you).
Where to start with your brand launch
Every SMART goal including your brand launch needs a realistic date. So, this means a date more than 60-90 days ahead so you can get everything completed and ready for launch.
Choosing an unrealistic date (i.e. next week) is one of the most demotivating actions you can take, so avoid this at all costs.
So, how do you know when the best time to launch your company’s new brand is?
- Remember that weekday’s trump weekends, bank holidays or any public holiday for that matter.
- Check Google Analytics, Google Ads and your social media platform insights to determine when your audience is online. This will tell you the best time of day and day of the week to launch.
- If you have an upcoming event or promotion in the pipeline, launch alongside this to boost awareness and website traffic.
Once you’ve set the date, it’s time to start planning your internal and external brand rollout.
What’s the difference between an internal brand launch and an external brand launch?
Internal audience
Your team are the most important brand ambassadors for your business. Their positive attitude will be instrumental in creating a positive experience for your audience. This includes:
- Leadership
- Marketing
- Business development
- HR and recruitment
- Internal brand champions
- All employees
- New employees
The internal launch always comes first. However, once employees are in the know, it's very difficult to keep this inside the company for much longer.
External audience
Relaunching a brand provides an enormous opportunity to reconnect with your audience. This includes past and current clients, prospects and broader network. It’s the perfect chance to remind the marketplace who your company is and what it stands for.
This includes:
- Current clients
- Key business connections
- Prospects
- Strategic partners
- Subcontractors and vendors
- General and industry contacts
- Alliances, associations and industry groups
- Industry and media
How to conduct a successful internal brand launch
STEP 1: THE PRE LAUNCH
1. Conduct brand training
You’ve spent a lot of time and energy creating the perfect brand so making sure your team understand your identity is a huge priority.
If your team doesn’t know who you are, how can you expect your brand to remain consistent and your audience to know who you are?
2. Develop save the date teaser campaign
Human curiosity is a powerful force so take advantage! A teaser campaign is designed to get some hype going around the brand launch. It's an exciting time for your business so make sure it feels that way!
Your teaser campaign should offer up just enough clues to leave people eager to learn more. A great example is a 'coming soon' page on a website. No matter how you decide to do this, the main aim is to build anticipation for the brand launch.
3. Prepare pre-launch communications
To get your message right you need to make sure your internal team understands:
- What the objective of the brand launch is
- Who your target audiences are
- What your positioning statement and key messages are
- Your USP’s and what your brand solves
- Key activities and timelines
- Any lead generation and brand awareness campaigns
The aim is to create an emotional connection between the brand and your employees so take the time to get this message right.
Then, adapt this message to suit your customer personas.
4. Brainstorm on-brand employee gifts
We’re talking about notepads, mugs, pens, mouse mats, USB drives. Although they may seem gimmicky, new collateral provides a tangible item that allows them the opportunity to own the new brand. Plus, who doesn’t love a fresh, new notepad?
5. Order branded gifts
Once you decide which products your team would most use and value, get them ordered!
STEP 2: THE DAY OF LAUNCH
1. Deliver internal launch presentation
This is where your hard work prepping your internal comms starts to shine! All those messages you carefully crafted should take front and centre. Cut out any jargon and make sure you've really honed in on why your team should care, how it benefits them and the important role they have to play.
2. Give out new brand guidelines
Brand guidelines are vital to the success of any brand. If you aren't sure what your brand guidelines should include, check out our easy-to-digest guide.
3. Give out employee gifts
One of the best parts of a brand launch – gift giving! This part should really sweeten the deal on your journey to stakeholder buy-in, especially after you've just delivered a knock-out presentation.
STEP 3: POST-LAUNCH & ONGOING
1. Prepare employees for the external launch
Ways of doing this can include:
- Email or instant message notifications
- Meetings, away days or internal events
- Intranet or internal social media sites
- On-screen messages on internal systems, banners and posters in breakout rooms
2. Deliver post external launch communications to team
This is the part where you share customer feedback, thank them for their support and keep them updated with progress.
3. Conduct employee onboarding, training and ongoing brand engagement and education
After the internal launch, your brand launch team needs to provide ongoing support to everyone else. So, take the time to speak to each staff member. An idea could be to hold round tables where you can talk about the brand launch and answer questions.
This is also a great way to get to know new staff members and help them to buy into the company's vision.
How to conduct a successful external brand launch
STEP 1: THE PRE-LAUNCH
1. Complete full audit of everything that has your current logo, including office and third party systems and platforms
Identify online and offline systems and collateral where your logo may appear. Then, create a timeline for when each one will swap over and who will be responsible for completing it.
2. Update all instances where the logo appears
Online examples:
- Email signatures
- Directories
- Social media
- Email marketing
- Websites
- Blogs
Offline examples:
- Letterheads
- Sales decks
- Proposals
- Flyers
- Employee handbooks
- Contracts
- Business cards
- Employee lanyards
- Brochures
- Sponsorship items
- Promotional items
- Signage
- Vehicle wraps
- Billboards
3. Prepare all marketing communications and channels
Remember a few steps ago where you articulated what your brand objective is, who your audience is and how you'll communicate with them? This is where all of that comes together.
Create a plan using SMART goals, assign due dates and an owner for each channel.
Start by segmenting your audience, then adapting your message to suit each audience persona and platform. The way you communicate on Twitter, for example, will be different to how you'll reach out to new prospects on LinkedIn.
4. Execute pre-launch teaser campaign
By the time you reach this step, you'll have a fail-proof campaign designed to tantalise your ideal audience. This is where you launch it and begin the count down to that al important due date we set at the beginning.
STEP 2: DAY OF LAUNCH
1. Launch website
The day you've been waiting for has arrived, so push the button and put your website live!
2. Relaunch all online communities and social networks
Once the website is up and running, it's time to push the button on all those communications you've spent that last few months planning. The website must always go live first with social networks to follow. Without the website, where will you send people?
3. Start using all-new brand assets (logo, email signature, marketing materials etc.)
This goes hand in hand with the previous step. From now on, every touchpoint a customer has should be with your shiny new brand.
4. Orchestrate launch event
This is your opportunity to showcase your new brand to suppliers, customers and influencers. Your event should create serious hype, boost sales and awareness and build your brand’s reputation.
5. Reach out to current clients, top prospects and other critical business connections
Introduce them to your new brand. The key here is to focus on getting them to understand your brands' goals, why they should care, and how they could benefit.
STEP 3: POST-LAUNCH & ONGOING
1. Begin outreach to prospects and industry partners
Using everything you've created in the previous steps, start communicating with potential customers and partner companies. This is a great lead generation tactic.
2. Update all business and member directories and sponsorship listings
In Step 1 of the external brand launch, you created a list of all the directories. It's time to update these and ensure brand consistency. Updating online directories is a great way of boosting SEO.
3. Announce to general contacts, industry and media
Create a press release, contact the local and national press, even consider a sponsored editorial campaign.
4. Initiate social media push and content, sharing with employees
All that editorial content you planned will be the centre of attention here. Everything you post will have the purpose of engaging your audience and your employees. The stronger the emotional connection, the better so make every post count.
Each piece of content needs to be useful, targeted and purposeful.
5. Send out post-external launch communication
Now it’s time to reflect and understand what elements of the campaign worked or didn’t. Send out messages to find out how the target audience responded to the launch. You can use polls on social media, survey monkey or even social listening tools.
Contact us today to see how we can help with your brand and create a memorable new brand and launch for your business.
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