If you’re wondering how to rebrand this year, honestly, so am I.
The term rebrand is fascinating to me. It’s a marketing term at its core, but one that holds the promise of the American dream. It speaks to self-perception and public understanding. It’s also a verb that, by definition, means you can do something to change.
- To improve.
- To grow.
- To become proficient.
The idea of rebranding is so interesting because it can apply to your image, a process at work, the way you dress, the story you tell yourself, your relationship with things, like working out or keeping a clean house, etc.
If a logo is the symbolic token of a brand, a rebrand involves the actionable steps that can move the needle on identity and where you stand in public consciousness.
Today’s post will include some practical notes on how to rebrand in a general 101 sense. The focus will be a case study on this blog as I try to figure out how to refine and rebrand this site.
A little backstory. I have consistently written and published articles for two years now. Currently, there are 98 published posts with some solid Google Analytics and performance stats to inform my decisions moving forward.
In this post, we’ll dive into lessons learned, new ideas, and filters for the future.
How to Rebrand Ft. Rebranding Strategies and Tips from People Smarter than Me (hehe)
As someone who doesn’t know the basic jargon surrounding branding, like:
- brand awareness
- brand identity
- brand equity
- knowing how to brand yourself
I want to begin to understand and apply these principles to my site. To start, I listened to a value-packed podcast with Camille Moore, the self-proclaimed internet’s favorite Chief Brand Director on TikTok.
Next, I read a couple of articles written by some pretty cool women. One focused on the dos and don’ts of rebranding and the other was an ultimate guide to rebranding.
While not a perfect road map for how to rebrand, take a look at the tips below. They may be helpful in diagnosing your own endeavors, whether personal or professional.
Pillars of Good Marketing According to Camille Moore
Camille is interested in marketing because she is fascinated by the psychology of people. People make up the tribes and communities that align with, purchase, and assign meaning and status to brands.
Find Camille’s full interview on The Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show on Spotify or you can watch the full interview on YouTube.
When asked about the pillars of good marketing, she shared:
- Good marketing shouldn’t be difficult for consumers to understand. Keep things simple.
- Focus on creating micro scripts to educate your audience about your brand.
- If you are a service provider, invest in creating a personal brand.
- We buy when we understand who the person is.
- Creating content is like a job interview that is always happening.
- Whether you like it or not, your consultations are happening when your audience interacts with your personal brand online.
- You are not the hero. The customer is the hero. Focus on the customer’s needs and wants, not how credentialed and qualified you are.
- Simple is better, but simple is not easier.
- Virality is cheap in the long run. Don’t exchange making decisions to establish your brand for 20+ years for the sake of quick clicks and a viral campaign.
- Stay consistent with your brand identity, but be obsessed with improvement and willing to morph to the changing platforms and digital landscape.
- Example: Chick-fil-A does a few things really well. Excellent customer service and good fried chicken. The brand’s messaging is simple and consistent.
- Example: Ralph Lauren has been around for more than 50 years. The brand’s identity and target audience focus on people in the upper echelon of society, but they have incorporated a level of accessibility by creating a few coffee shops in select major cities. The shops are called ‘Ralphs’ and allow a broader audience to interact with the brand on a new level. Not only that but since the shops are a beautiful extension of the brand’s aesthetic, people are constantly creating content in the coffee shops, which is excellent for social presence and engagement. A great example of staying relevant in the current times, yet maintaining the class and status of a long-standing brand.
- You HAVE to have an idea why your customers are coming to you so you can make decisions to better serve those people.
- You can’t separate your marketing strategies from your business objectives. You must know how to run your business, including operations, how the back end works, customer service, etc. You MUST have a plan. Marketing decisions come second to this.
- If your brand is truly providing value and improving the lives of a few customers, let those few customers be the influencers for you. Have a plan and execute it so well those customers will want to talk about you at dinner with their friends. People share stories when they get together. Be so good your brand comes up in the conversation.
Tips on How to Refine Your Brand
Camille also shared a few tips about how to refine your brand.
- Your approach to marketing should be aligned with your why and overall plan.
- Be authentic. True authenticity is often very uncomfortable. In a digital world desperate for authentic connection, now is the perfect time to be as authentic as possible.
- Sharing just to share regarding conversations happening in the social landscape that don’t have anything to do with your brand is not a good move. Don’t make a statement for fear of missing the conversation and being canceled. It’s better to stick to what you know.
- It is easier now more than ever to create, test, and get insights on multiple types of ads. Use storytelling. Try things out and test, test, test what works best. You can create an ad in 2 hours using your iPhone, run it for $25, and make adjustments from there.
- When it comes to refining your ad ideas, put yourself in the shoes of the consumer. If all the consumer sees on a daily basis is the message ‘buy, buy, buy’, what is something fresh and relatable that will make people stop and watch your ad? Often the most disheveled unpolished ads work the best. There’s a reason for this.
- People tell you what they feel, not what they think. As a business owner or entrepreneur, you have to be able to interpret what people are feeling to understand what they are thinking so you can solve the core problem.
The podcast with Camille was an interesting listen because she is straight up with how she communicates. She says she started out not wanting to create content at all but has learned how to share her ideas in a more direct way as a result.
Even though this was an aside statement about her own content journey, I think it is worth noting that striving to create good content should add value to viewers and to yourself. This was something I came to while brainstorming new ideas for my own site.
Rebranding Strategies You Can Take to the Bank
Your rebranding strategy needs to start with analyzing what has already been before you can make a clear plan for executing a successful rebrand for the future.
Start by spending time looking at the data. Depending on the size and reach of your brand, this should involve interacting with your content or products and services from a customer’s perspective.
This should also involve listening to your customers. Remember, customers and visitors are the heroes. Not You. Really get to know your audience. Who are they, where do they live, and what are their hopes and dreams? How old are they? What are their hobbies?
Next, determine what it is you’re after exactly in all of this. What do you stand for? What is your mission? Where are you trying to go? This can look like revisiting your initial mission statement or creating one to begin with. Model your messaging around that mission.
Lastly, focus on creating a full experience for visitors and customers. In an increasingly digital world, and with Gen Z fast approaching the command of $3 Trillion dollars, you have to appeal to the visual more than ever to reach these audiences and stay relevant. Video, graphics, and good design should be heavily emphasized.
Read more details about how to rebrand in Jordan DeVos’ article The Dos and Don’ts of a Rebranding Strategy and Kylie Goldstein’s article Rebranding: the ultimate guide (+ examples).
How to Create a Winning Mindset During a Rebrand
As someone who can get stuck in a mental rut, I need to remind myself what a good mindset is when it comes to making changes.
Figuring out how to rebrand isn’t about staying in the box you’ve put yourself in. It’s about breaking down the walls of the original box in exchange for a much bigger box.
This is especially important to hear for anyone who is extremely routine and anyone who is trying to build something. A business, whether that be a real estate business, a brick-and-mortar business, a services business, or a digital business requires agility and a willingness to break down walls, pivot, and do things differently.
Mel Robbins, a life coach and podcaster extraordinaire, is a proponent of becoming a student of the thing you want to be good at. Do you want to start a podcast? Go study the people at the top. Do you want to be a blogger? Go study the people who are where you want to be.
We’ve all spent enough time in a classroom to know what it means to be a student of something. The other side of that straight-A student mentality (you know who you are) is the entrepreneurial action-oriented mindset.
In addition to being a student of what you’re after, you should also look to launch now and adjust fast, as Michael Bosstick, CEO of Dear Media, likes to remind his podcast listeners. Boots on the ground data and personal experience can’t be replaced by conjecture made from the safety of your couch (go ahead and put that on a t-shirt, just make sure to send me my check lol).
And as a parting note on mindset, perfectionism is a high-functioning form of procrastination. Get out there, launch, and adjust based on what happens and the inputs you get.
Pete Snaps: A Case Study on How to Rebrand
My current position is confusing to myself and others.
Currently, I’m not adding a ton of value to anyone.
Meeting the goal of posting every week at 9 am on Thursday is no longer cutting it. My posts have gotten sloppy, unrelated, and monotonous. I reached a place this year where I would put off writing posts until the last minute and then rush to throw something together the night before.
Sometimes that worked, but more often than not it didn’t.
I tried writing about things I was pondering vs. writing in a pointed manner in terms of SEO, keywords, and fulfilling searcher intent. Turns out, there’s a fine line between feeling like you’re selling your soul because you’re writing just to play the game and writing about things truly on your mind.
I got burnt out because the posts that did get traction tended to mimic the type of writing I did at work, so it all just became work.
Eventually, I lost sight of what I was doing, became uncertain about why I was doing it, and found myself spending a lot of time on something that didn’t bring me joy, income, or even the satisfaction of a simple hobby.
Reflecting on all of this led me to question if I should just quit, but here we are instead, brainstorming how to rebrand.
I’ve shared my synopsis of a podcast and a couple of articles focusing on branding and marketing. Now I’d like to share some specifics about how I’m applying those ideas to my own site.
Let’s get into it.
Lessons Learned
98 posts and publishing almost every week for two years is something to celebrate.
As a writer, I learned I can come through for myself.
I found diving into a specific niche and learning enough to reach proficiency very enjoyable. Travel Hacking is an excellent example of this. I learned the ins and outs of travel hacking with four travel credit cards and shared what I learned on my blog and with my friends and family.
It felt great to help people get free flights and in one case an almost totally free vacation! There’s an obvious value-add there–something people will want to talk about at dinner.
I also learned that I excel at writing very specific niche product reviews. This isn’t too shocking given these posts mimic what I do for a living as a Technical Writer.
Google ranking is based on many things, but the main one is how closely a piece of content answers the searcher’s intent. Turns out, people searching specific product reviews want all the nitty gritty details and I, for one, am here for that.
What the Analytics Say
My 2023 analytics show product reviews are where I add the most value to visitors.
Of the 98 posts on this site, 20 of them bring in 98% of my organic Google traffic. Out of the top 20 posts, 16 are review posts. Of the 4 non-review posts, 3 are idea posts and 1 is a more in-depth ‘this vs. that’ type post that could technically be classified as a niche review post.
Funny enough, these statistics are on par with the 80/20 rule or Pareto’s Principle, which states that 80% of output (typically) results from 20% of the inputs.
I’m still in the trenches of assimilating the data and trying to determine all the trends, but the message is clear on what my competitive advantage is. The question is, how do I enhance these posts?
How do I increase the value? How do I brainstorm new and interesting ideas in this space? Also, how do I increase personal fulfillment along the way?
Top Earning Post Review (+$400)
Now let’s take a look at my top-earning post.
Of the 20 posts that bring in 98% of traffic, 1 post has also managed to bring in $400 in cash.
That post is a travel hacking-related post comparing the Discover It Miles credit card vs. the Capital One VentureOne credit card.
A few things to note. This post checks the travel hacking subcategory box. It’s also technically an in-depth review post, just with a comparison twist. This post capitalizes on my competitive advantage as a review writer PLUS focuses on a very specific niche of travel hacking with $0 annual fee credit cards.
This post also proves what they say about ‘vs.’ posts. Typically people who are searching ‘vs.’ type posts are close to making a decision/purchase so the barrier to converting a sale through an affiliate link is more likely.
In its heyday, this post was sitting between position 7 and 9 on the first page of Google for the targeted keyword. This is a huge feat for a tiny blog like mine. This is because my blog doesn’t have a Domain Authority ranking worth mentioning. Yet, there I was, outranking NerdWallet and Forbes.
Right now, this post has fallen to the second page of Google in position 15. You know, where you can hide a dead body and no one would find it… or at least that’s how the joke goes.
Regardless, this one post is a huge win and a great data point. It has a good number of organic Google clicks and an average time on the page of around a minute and a half, which is great for today’s attention span.
New Ideas and Filters for the Future
I think it’s easy to look at analytics and draw conclusions.
It’s also easy(ish) to reflect on how you feel about something.
The hard part is reconciling both of those things and coming up with a simple mission statement. A straightforward answer to the question: what are you doing here?
While I’m still figuring out how to reconcile those two things, I have made a few decisions regarding the rebranding of this site.
The main decision focuses on value. This blog and the posts should add value to me and my readers. If a post doesn’t meet that metric and isn’t something I’m proud of, skip it.
