This is the seventh and last installment in our story about the rebranding of our business. Be sure to check out parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five and Six
After months of brainstorming, planning, writing and designing, our rebranding project was ready to launch. We knew it was critical to announce the changes in a way which would allow our various audiences to understand, identify with, and remember our new branding.
For that to happen, we needed a launch plan.
And we needed to think strategically.
We made a list of all the groups we needed to alert: existing customers, potential customers, business partners, suppliers, competitors, affiliates and others would need to know our news.
A short time before we intended to launch we started hinting at our rebranding project in our emails, aiming to spark some curiosity and ignite interest in our plans for the future.
We knew we would have to take our shopping cart offline for a short time to move the old website over to the new one and we took care to announce when that would be, so that our customers would not be surprised by the temporary closure.
We hoped to get immediate recognition for our new name, and that meant repeatedly driving our audiences to our new website, where they would see the name and new branding in action.
One way to do that was to offer a FREE GIFT in our emails, which led people to the website.
We created a giveaway which had real value for our target markets – a free Content Planning Template – which included ideas for content, time frames for content production, and a detailed, yet easy-to-use spreadsheet to keep track of everything involved. Downloading the Content Planning Template added people to a follow-up series of emails which, as well as providing more valuable content, again encouraged readers to return to our website for more information.
We also sent a series of emails to our existing customers and other audiences to encourage them to see our new branding in action.
As part of that email series, we offered special Launch Sales each day for the 7 days of the Launch Week. Each sale was for a themed bundle of products that related to different aspects of our rebranding story. We told that story in 7 daily blog posts, the last of which you're reading now. A new development for us was the opening of a Facebook group where existing and potential customers could meet each other and discuss how best to use content in their own businesses. That proved very successful and within a few hours we had created some initial buzz for our new name as people joined and began conversations. All the launch week activities were strategically interconnected, and were only the start for us. Moving forward, we’re working on strategies to cement our new branding, offer more products and extend our offerings into new markets.