HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU POLISH YOUR BRAND?

Let’s talk when to plan for and schedule what I call - BrandPolish Time - in your business in order to keep your message fresh and your strategy up to date.

A quick glossary of definitions for context before we get started:

REBRAND

Your brand strategy, once established, isn’t something you’re throwing away and starting over with often, or with great frequency.  Because your brand strategy is the long term direction-setting roadmap for your business, a full rebrand isn’t necessary very often unless you’ve had some massive change in direction or a major hiccup. 

One reason for a rebrand is needing to course correct and re-position yourself in an entirely new way because of a potential mistake you’ve made in communicating or showing up with your audience.  Hopefully, this isn’t the case for you, but a rebrand in this type of situation is a great idea.

Or, more likely you’ve been in business for 5+ years and you’ve decided to re-work the direction of your business where your audience is shifting, your focus and offers are changing, and thus your positioning, messaging and brand identity would need to be fully rebranded to consider the new direction you’re headed in and the new audience you're speaking to.  (An example might be - you were a health and fitness coach for women, but now you’ve fallen in love with coffee and coffee lovers so you’re pivoting to open up your own coffee shop).

In this article, we’re actually not talking about rebranding, I just wanted you to understand what is meant by the term, and know we’re diving into more fun and regular updates, refinements and refreshes for your existing brand.

BRAND REFRESH

Refreshing your brand means you’re updating your look, feel, messaging and potentially offers while maintaining your strategy and identity.  In other words, you’re not throwing the baby out with the bath water and starting from scratch. A refresh is giving your brand a makeover to modernize and keep up with the changing times, your changing offers, and what draws your audience in.  

The brand refresh you do should still look and feel like your brand at it’s core, but it just has a new, fresh, modernized style and approach that re-engages your audience and increases trust and credibility (because it shows you’re professional enough to know you need to change with the times and you’re not neglecting your brand - - - or your audience).

Let me give you an example - - - think of your brand refresh like refreshing the interior design of a home.  

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Let’s say you’re in the market to buy a home: If you walked into a a house with 70s design - yes, I’m talking orange shag rug and that avocado green fridge - there may be nothing wrong with the house itself.  It’s got good bones, but does it make you want to buy it?  Does it fit with modern times, and how you want to live now? You’d probably think that If a house feels this old, and hasn’t been updated, maybe the owners haven’t really cared for it and it’s been neglected.  You wonder what’s wrong and it can affect your purchase decision. 

Whereas if the homeowners made some updates and re-designed the home to fit with the current market, people would fall in love with the house and the sale would be so much easier.

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IT’S THE SAME FOR YOUR BRAND…

Keep it updated.  Keep your messaging on point to speak to your evolving audience.  Make people love your brand and they’ll keep coming back again and again.  It makes the sale you want to make easier, and your customers happier.

WHEN TO REFRESH YOUR BRAND

Let’s talk about 2 ways to refresh your brand:

1 - Brand Strategy Refresh

Plan to check in on this annually, but perhaps you don’t need to do a full refresh for 1-2 years (sometimes 3 if you’re still rocking your core message and style with your community).

This bigger refresh would include things like updating your logo, design and style - while still keeping your original brand identity in mind.  It’s not rebranding, it's refreshing.  The look of your brand would get a makeover and update, while your messaging and positioning would, too.

2 - BrandPolish Time

You want to calendar, what I call, “BrandPolish Time” in your business 2-4x per year.  This is a check-in to ensure your messaging and marketing that stem from your overall brand strategy are working for you.

If you’re really confident in your message and your marketing is clearly working well, check in for subtle refinements approximately 2x a year. 

If you’re still learning about your audience and what makes them engage with you, I recommend checking in with your messaging and marketing strategy each quarter (4x a year) to examine what’s working, what’s not, and how to continue refining this for your business.

In both of these cases, there are particular items you want to evaluate, fine-tune and polish for your brand during your dedicated  BrandPolish Time for your business.  And, I’ve created an Agenda you can use!

DONE-FOR-YOU AGENDA 

Every good meeting agenda starts with the What, the When, and the Where.  You can’t get this done if you haven’t blocked time in your calendar, away from your day-to-day business, and identified how long you want to spend on polishing your brand.

If you want to make this fun (which I highly suggest!), find an inspiring location away from your normal workspace and take a whole day, or even a weekend away.  I know entrepreneurs who book a hotel room once a quarter and treat themselves to focused time away in a beautiful location, a big white board, their trusty laptop and room service on speed dial (and maybe spa time at the end of your day).

For Example:

MEETING TOPIC: BrandPolish Time

MEETING DATE & TIME: Last Weekend in March

MEETING LOCATION: Four Seasons, beachside Or an AirBnb with a gorgeous view…You get the idea

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Once you have the logistics figured out and booked (and obviously you can choose to do this without spending any money - head to your local coffee shop with the fab matcha drink you love for the day), then it’s time for the rest of your agenda that will help you know what to do during this focused time.

BRANDPOLISH TIME AGENDA

Agenda (BrandPolish Time)

Meeting Date:

Meeting Time: 

Meeting Location:

Topic 1 - Target Audience Deep Dive & Review

What’s changed, what’s on their minds, do your messaging and offers still align?  If not, begin updating.

Topic 2 - Messaging Refinement

Consider your new audience awareness… based on any new feedback or results from ideal clients, updated challenges / goals, and potential new audience segments or a new niche revealed, refine your positioning statement, taglines and mission statement to match.

Topic 3 - Offer Suite Renewal & Repositioning

Whether you’ve created new offers recently or have been sticking with your existing offers, refine your positioning and offer promise to speak directly to your ideal clients.  Consider if it’s time to add a new offer to your suite based on the evaluation of where your audience is out now.

Topic 4 - Brand Marketing Style

A wonderful way to visually show a refresh and that you’re keeping up with your audience’s wants & needs is by creating updated marketing visuals while staying within your current brand identity (same logos, fonts and colors).  Think about updating your social media templates, your social media headers, and book that next brand photo shoot (or do it as a Part 2 Day of your BrandPolish Time).

YOUR TAKEAWAYS AND TO-DOS

You may not get all of this work done in your scheduled time, so if there are bigger projects and updates revealed as part of your BrandPolish Time, don’t leave your focused time without putting additional time on your calendar to accomplish the refinements and updates you identified.

Good luck!

WHERE YOUR BRANDING QUESTIONS ARE ANSWERED

This week’s question - How often should you polish your brand? - is from Jess Nana, founder of Socially Savvy Studio - - - she’s a social media coach & web designer for wedding pros & creative small businesses.  

Want your question to be featured and answered like Jess’ was?   Join The Brand Building Entrepreneur Facebook Community to get all your branding and messaging questions answered.  See you in there!