You did it! The day has finally arrived. You’ve spent countless hours reviewing your analytics, building out your customer personas, and your refreshed branding is looking sooo good you can’t wait to show it off everywhere! You.are.feeling it! You’ve tested your site for glitches and broken links. Your metadata is flawless (helloooo SEO boost!) and you can’t wait any longer to announce your new look, feel, and on-point messaging. So you send out the tweet and publish it to the ‘gram and…
::crickets::
You start to wonder, “Is it my copy? Are my new visuals not appealing? Are my product shots not compelling? Is my newsletter signup broken? Why is my mom the only person to like my post? Did I get it all wrong???” (Love to all the Moms!)
And then you wake up from this nightmare and realize you’re still in the middle of your rebrand and you’ve still got time to build excitement and anticipation surrounding your launch! (I had you for a second there, didn’t I?)
If you’ve poured your blood, sweat, tears and money into strategizing and designing your brand, nothing is more soul-crushing than crickets, or worse, the status quo.
Building buzz around your brand refresh actually starts before you’ve officially launched. How do you do that? Well here are six ideas that will get everyone’s attention and build buzz around your brand refresh!
1) ANTICIPA-YAY-TION! You gotta build it.
Like Carly Simon says “Anticipation…is keepin’ me waitin”. Before you launch your new brand, give your audience (and your mom) some teasers:
Idea 1: Create a splash page with a Coming Soon announcement and a way to subscribe to your newsletter for updates or special insider rewards.
Idea 2: Implement a countdown clock and tell your audience that anyone who signs up for your newsletter between a specific time will receive a special reward!
Idea 3: Routinely incorporate sneak peeks into your social media content. Show new product packaging or snapshots of elements of your new brand identity. Test out your messaging by filling in the banks:
“ BUSINESS NAME has always been a place where YOUR PURPOSE. We’re/I’m excited to take things to the next level by KEY MESSAGING POINT #1. We’re/I’m working on something exciting and want you to be a part of the action! Over the next few weeks, we’ll/I’ll be taking you behind-the-scenes and throwing in some special surprises for our/my loyal fans along the way! CALL TO ACTION HERE (signup, subscribe, like)”
2) BUILD A NEW CONTENT CALENDAR
Idea 1: Create a 6-month content calendar so you have a steady stream of fresh and engaging content for your audience that reflects your brand’s offerings and expertise. Be deliberate with your content strategy and design it to hit promotional periods and business goals. Launching a refreshed brand is the ideal opportunity to capitalize on the attention you’re getting and establish authority and extend your social reach by providing valuable posts designed to educate, connect, build trust, and promote.
Idea 2: Audit your social media platforms and drop ones that aren’t actually working for you. There is nothing wrong with auto publishing from Instagram to Facebook! But also, if you’ve forgotten your twitter login because it’s been so long since you’ve shown up there, then it’s time to let it go. Spend your time focusing where you actually want to be on social media and where your ideal clients hang out.
3) REACH OUT TO “MICRO-INFLUENCERS” OR YOUR TOP CUSTOMERS/CLIENTS
Idea 1: Start a referral campaign. Reaching beyond your immediate audience and getting in front of new eyeballs is where the gold lies, so naturally, it’s crazy hard to accomplish. It’s why people hire extremely expensive marketing and publicity agencies to do the work. Take a note out of their playbooks and adapt it to a smaller, more manageable scale. Reach out to your most engaged audience members and offer them an incentive to tell or tag two people about your business.
Idea 2: Start an early review campaign. Similar to a referral campaign, reach out to your most engaged audience members and offer a limited supply sample of your product for them and a friend in exchange for a review. If you’re a services business, survey past clients and see if anyone is will to be your guinea pig and receive some pro-bono work for free in exchange for a testimonial.
4) GO ON A MINI PRESS TOUR
Idea 1: Get out there and demonstrate your expertise. Pitch yourself for podcasts, blog interviews, and guest posts. There are lots of platforms that are open and eager for outside submissions for articles related to their platform. Do a little digging and trace where someone you admire in your space has appeared. Go after opportunities with an abundance mindset — even if there are a thousand people out there doing what you’re doing, you have a unique perspective you alone can speak to. There’s room for more than one opinion on a topic. Trust me. The internet wouldn’t exist if only one person was allowed to voice and own an idea.
5) SET UP A PRE AND POST-LAUNCH EMAIL FUNNEL
Idea 1: If you’re trying your hand at any of the above ideas, you’re already creating a ton of new and exciting content. But not everyone is paying attention to your every move, so repurpose your activities by creating an email funnel for both post and pre-launch.
Be strategic about the journey you’re taking subscribers on and remember the 80/20 rule of sales. (Ahem…give 80% of the time. Ask 20% of the time.) There is a LOT that can be said about email marketing, but remember that the goal is more than just the sale. It’s also about building trust. If your first campaign comes back with a minimal amount of unsubscribes, then you know you’re serving your audience and giving them something valuable to apply to their businesses and lives. And if there is a direct link between your email automation and a sale, even better. Pop the prosecco!
5) SHOUT IT FROM THE ROOF TOPS!
Idea 1: Order those freshly branded business cards, practice your elevator pitch, and tell e.v.e.r.y.o.n.e. about your business. Head to as many networking events (Check out meetup.com to find some local groups near you!), coffee hours, and relevant events as you can. Chatting with your kid’s classmates’ parents before pick up? Tell them about it. See an old colleague while in line at the deli? Tell them about it.
Idea 2: Keep the momentum of your launch moving by switching from the announcement phase, to education. Host a webinar addressing FAQs. Make sure to include an incentive to sign up and stay until the end. Invite a happy client to participate and talk about their experience working with you. The purpose of the webinar is to lead interested or curious parties down the funnel from engaged to committed. By giving them a real-live-face to connect to, you can put people at ease and make the process of working with you feel like less of a risk. Make sure your webinar topic is compelling, you’re speaking from your audience’s POV and have practiced how you’re going to seamlessly transition to discussing your service offering without feeling sales-y.
Done right, a brand refresh is more than just a facelift. You need to build out a brand strategy and design a brand identity that accurately reflects where your business is going, who you serve, and how you are the ideal solution for them. It can seem like a lot, but as you’re going through the process, think about how you can turn this moment in time into a promotional opportunity. Transparency into the process is compelling and a great way to build buzz around your refreshed brand.
WANT SOME HELP WITH YOUR BRAND REFRESH? THEN check out the 20/20 BRAND REFRESH!
In honor of the new decade, I’m partnering up with Courtney of Big Picture Branding to help you update the look and feel of your brand for clearer, more focused messaging and a visual identity that catches the eye.
Together, we have 25 years of experience helping businesses tell their story through words and graphics. Now we want to help you!
