A Case Study on Rose Marie Swanson No matter what kind of
business you own, if you want to ensure a successful rebrand, you’ve got to be
perceived as trustworthy.
Hopefully,
once you’ve gotten to the point of wanting to refresh your brand, you’ll have
already built up a considerable amount of trust.
But
if you don’t do what you can to preserve what you’ve already built, you could
alienate your customers and quickly lose whatever trust you have.
If
you’re the owner of a well-established brand, regardless of how trustworthy it
might seem, this becomes even more important.
Because
when you rebrand, you’re changing something people rely on, something they
identify with, and something they’ve come to know and love.
And
if you stray too far from that familiar branding, you can confuse your
customers, make your brand less recognizable, and run the risk of ruining
everything you’ve worked so hard to build.
So,
if you want to learn more about what it takes to ensure a successful rebrand,
and look at an example of how we were able to do this for one of our clients,
then keep reading.
Quite
the Balancing Act When Rose Marie Swanson asked us to completely revamp her
brand, it quickly became a delicate balancing act, not least due to the nature
of what she does.
Rose
Marie is one of our longest-running clients, going all the way back to 2015
when we built her first website.
She’s
been well-known in her industry for decades now and had built quite a name for
herself well before she ever reached out to us.
Now,
before I continue, I should explain what Rose Marie does so you can actually
understand her offer.
Rose
Marie is what is known as a spiritual coach.
But
what is that?
Well,
in a nutshell, what Rose Marie does is offer a form of coaching/counselling
that deals more with the spiritual, as opposed to other aspects of one’s being.
This
could mean helping someone to discover their life’s purpose, learn to deal with
trauma from their past, or find out how to stop sabotaging themselves and
unlock their full potential.
Basically,
if anything is bothering someone on a spiritual level, like how they feel about
their life, where it’s headed, who they truly are, or what they really want in
life, Rose Marie will work with them to get to the bottom of it and try to help
them resolve these issues.
Typically,
she does this using non-conventional, and often esoteric methods, which are
certainly not promoted in the mainstream, and unfortunately, many people would
consider this stuff quackery.
So,
before we even started the process of rebranding, her offer was already tough
to convey without sounding too woo-woo, and with so many people being skeptical
of what she does, it was innately difficult to build up trust in her brand.
That
being said, when we rebranded Rose Marie, the last thing we wanted to do was
erode that hard-won trust.
Simultaneously,
we had to find ways to convey her offer and promote her brand to a new
audience, many of whom had probably never heard of her before.
For
those of you who are asking how we were able to do all this, below, I’ve
detailed every facet of Rose Marie’s new branding, and explained how we worked
to maintain trust in all these aspects.
READ:
How to Ensure Consumers Trust Your Brand
How
to Ensure Consumers Trust Your Brand
Whether
you’re branding or rebranding, your perceived trustworthiness (or lack thereof)
could make or break the success of your business.
But
if you don’t make your living in the marketing industry, it can be difficult to
know how to inspire trust in your brand.
So,
if you want to learn how to make sure your brand exudes trustworthiness, then
you’ve got to read this article.
It
explains what makes a brand trustworthy, and offers some suggestions for how
you can ensure your brand inspires trust.
Read
More On oUr Website
Brand
Identity For quite some time, Rose Marie had been thinking about changing her
brand identity and targeting a new audience, but we didn’t get into serious
discussions about it until earlier this year.
In
the past, she had mentioned wanting to work with abused women, especially
because as a child, she was the victim of severe abuse from several members of
her family.
But
given how personal this stuff is, and the potential it had to reflect poorly on
her family, she hesitated to go through with this rebrand.
Even
as we were doing her brand analysis in preparation for the rebrand, she was
still questioning if she wanted to actually share this stuff, but I did what I
could to push her in this direction, as I felt it was the right decision.
She
dealt with extreme trauma as a child, experienced its aftereffects throughout
most of her adult life, and wanted to help women heal from the trauma they’d
endured from similar experiences, so it only made sense to rebrand in this way.
In
the end, she bit the bullet and chose to go through with it.
Right
off the bat, we figured the best thing to do was help Rose Marie to establish
an emotional connection with potential clients by being open and honest about
the abuse she suffered as a child.
We
decided not to go into all the gory details, as it might be triggering for some
people and end up having a negative effect.
But
on her About page, it clearly states, “As a child, I was severely abused by
several members of my family,” so as you can see, we didn’t sugarcoat things.
Rose
Marie’s rebrand should have inherently inspired trust because she chose to
share intensely personal anecdotes about the trauma she’s endured throughout
her life, and how this relates to what she does.
In
theory, this should show that she can relate to what potential clients are
going through, and is dedicated to helping them heal from their trauma.
But
unfortunately, some of the more cynical people out there might not see it that
way.
So,
as you’ll see from the various aspects of her branding detailed below, in
addition to being extremely careful about what we said, and the imagery we
decided to use, we did our absolute best to preserve her brand, and avoid
alienating any of her followers.
Website
Design & Development Even if Rose Marie had decided against this radical
rebrand, her website would still have been in dire need of a revamp.
It’s
been nearly eight years since we created her first website, and as you can
tell, it was definitely starting to show its age.
It
looked dated and cluttered, the verbiage it was using wasn’t helping Rose
Marie’s credibility, and it certainly wasn’t speaking to abused women.
An
old, tired-looking website is never a good thing when it comes to
trustworthiness, and this alone could end up making people less likely to want
to trust Rose Marie.
So,
we got straight to work on revamping her website, and it definitely looks a
heck of a lot better.
We
changed pretty much everything, revising the copy, design, imagery, logo, and
even creating a new free giveaway to try to build up her email list with people
from her new target audience.
It
looks sleek, organized, and modern, and speaks to the pain points of her ideal
clients, putting more of a focus on them, instead of Rose Marie.
But
despite all these alterations, we made a point of trying not to change too
much.
For
instance, the navigation is pretty much exactly the same as it was on her
previous website, and we simply changed Coaching Services to Spiritual
Coaching, as we felt that better explains what she does.
In
addition, we still put her name front and centre, ensured her photo was visible
above the fold, kept the water theme, and stuck with the blue, white, and gold
colours.
This
allowed us to ensure that we weren’t eroding the trust and recognition she’d
already built, and were able to avoid confusing or alienating anyone.
Lead
Generation Rose Marie’s old website also had a lead generator, as part of her
effort to get people to subscribe to her newsletter.
But
we decided it was much too general and wasn’t speaking to the abused women who
made up Rose Marie’s new target audience.
So,
to go along with her website redesign, we created a new free giveaway, in the
form of an e-book, so she could appeal to this new audience and showcase her
expertise.
Freedom
from Failure: 7 Steps to Expose What Holds You Back from Creating Your Success
Truth
be told, it actually took quite a while to determine what this e-book would
contain.
But
after a few brainstorming sessions, we decided to tap into the pain points of
her new target audience, create a powerful emotional connection by sharing some
anecdotes about the abuse Rose Marie experienced, and offer a simple seven-step
process to help them deal with their own issues.
It’s
definitely a lot different from her last free giveaway, but we made sure to
reflect as much of Rose Marie’s already recognizable visual brand as we could,
keeping her old colours, and including her name on the cover, along with her
new logo, which is very similar to her old one.
Logo
Redesign As part of the overhaul of her brand, Rose Marie also asked us to
update her logo.
However,
she was quite fond of the way it looked already, and it was definitely one of
the most recognizable aspects of her brand, so we did our best to keep the
changes to a minimum.
We
kept the water theme, the rings, and the triangle, so we didn’t stray too far
away from what made her original logo so recognizable.
The
triangle and the rings symbolize the holy trinity – a spiritual symbol that’s
intimately related to what Rose Marie does.
In
addition, images of water tend to be soothing, while the rings represent
completeness or wholeness, and all of these aspects exemplify how people are
going to feel when they work with Rose Marie.
These
elements help to make Rose Marie’s brand stand out, and are all deeply
connected to the services she provides, so it wouldn’t have made sense to
change any of this stuff anyway.
That
being said, even if she had asked us to completely redo her logo from scratch,
I may have advised against changing these things for fear of watering down the
familiar elements of her brand.
Marketing
Collateral Aside from refreshing Rose Marie’s brand identity, website, lead
generator, and logo, we also redid many of the elements of her marketing, as
well.
For
example, for some of the programs she sells, such as a series of guided
meditations, the imagery being used was lackluster, to say the least.
So,
we opted to create some new imagery, and it definitely makes a world of
difference.
The
old image is literally just a photo of the program’s packaging, and from a
design standpoint, it doesn’t align with the rest of her brand.
Whereas
the new version offers much more enticing imagery that’s not only better
aligned with her brand, but more representative of what people are going to get
out of this program.
In
addition to this imagery, we also redid all of Rose Marie’s social media
banners and the header and footer banners for her newsletter.
And
on top of all this, we even created some printable items for Rose Marie, as
well, including her business cards, and a speaker sheet to help her promote
herself as a guest on podcasts.
All
of these different forms of marketing collateral align with Rose Marie’s brand,
not least in how they all make use of the blue, white, and gold colours.
And
the few elements that didn’t align with her visual brand were updated to ensure
that they did.
All
things considered, the consistency and comprehensiveness with which we created
Rose Marie’s branding and marketing, combined with the preservation of the
elements of her brand that were already recognizable, made for an incredibly
successful rebrand, and one very happy client.
Are
you considering a brand refresh, but you’re not sure if it’s the right
decision? We’ve been helping business owners to build their brands for more
than 20 years. Contact us today to find out more about how we can help you
decide whether a brand refresh is right for your business.
To
your business success, Susan Friesen
Source: https://www.amazines.com/Business_Opportunities/article_detail.cfm/6264317?articleid=6264317
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