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How to launch a brand?
Whether it’s a brand refresh or a completely new brand, launching your brand is one of the most important steps that your business will take so it’s important to get it right.
A brand launch is an opportunity to get clients as excited about your company as you are. A well-planned brand launch enables you to re-engage with existing customers, attract new ones, and significantly boost sales. Launching is a project that requires planning and attention to detail. Below is a list of some of the materials that will constitute part of the launch.
Here are some tips about the process as a whole:
Set goals and know your target audience
Before embarking on the brand launch, it’s important to set measurable goals that you hope to achieve within a specific time frame. Setting goals is a helpful way of assessing the effectiveness of the launch. Goals can also help channel the team’s energy in the same direction. Examples of goals include increasing participation, building awareness and consolidating brand identity. Your objectives should be informed by an understanding of your target audience. This will enable you to choose the best tools to make the biggest impact. Knowing your target audience will help you tailor your brand to their needs and interests.
Preparing for the brand launch
There are many channels that can be used to deliver the launch. Examples include press releases, social media outreach, email campaigns, videos, animations, a new website, and launch events. Videos are often great tools for launching a new brand. They can be easily adapted to different languages, they convey messages simply and in an engaging way and are 4 times more likely to be watched than text is to be read.
Before going public with launching your brand, be sure to begin internally so as to get your employees and stakeholders on board. Workshops are a great way to communicate the reasoning behind the launch and to get them involved and excited about the process. Check out this article about the importance of internally rolling out a brand launch and for examples of companies that have done it well.
The main event
When you launch, you will need to make it an event one way or another. The event style you chose will depend on your goals and your target audience. The event can vary from a mega-launch with guest speakers or a series of smaller, more personal events. Avoid a ‘one-size-fits-all approach as this will not create audience engagement. One way to help determine this decision is by checking out what your competitors are doing and evaluating the preferences of your audience.
What next?
Well done! You’ve launched your new brand but the work isn’t over yet! It’s really important to have a plan to phase out your old brand. This helps keep the brand identity consistent and avoid confusion. Make sure you have a strategy and timeline in place to do away with old brand iterations. Collecting customer feedback is also a really important step. It can help you identify what needs tweaking in order to further boost brand performance.
Summary and Checklist
You might find this checklist useful to make sure you have the different elements of the brand launch covered.
For a more detailed account of how to launch a brand, take a look at our brand launch guide:
https://www.clearbrand.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ClearBrand_Brand-Launch-Guide-v1.0-1.pdf
At ClearBrand we launch brands for our clients, from start-ups to SMEs to national brands and help them come up with a timeline for all the different elements of the project. Get in touch for a free consultation on how our branding services can give your business the boost it needs.
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Written by Matt on behalf of ClearBrand, December 2020.
To get in contact about working with ClearBrand on a project,
please call +44 (0)118 959 9284 or email info@clearbrand.co.uk.
