In this week’s Content Marketing Musings, I outlined the critical next steps after building a brand framework. Remember that branding should never be a one-and-done project. A brand is a dynamic and evolving asset of an organization. Your brand needs continuous attention, investment, and adaptation to build and maintain a strong presence in the community. Branding is a long-term commitment to creating value and building meaningful relationships with stakeholders.
Launching a new brand is a huge and exciting accomplishment, so take a moment to be a proud brand parent. But your job is not done. There is more to do to ensure that your brand is resilient, credible, and meaningful.
The Critical Next Step
One of the most important next steps after launching a brand is to ensure all internal stakeholders, including staff, managers, executives, and board members, are aligned with your new brand. Internal buy-in is essential. Your brand is strong only when EVERYONE in the organization understands it and lives it every day. This alignment is crucial for delivering a consistent brand message. Internal buy-in gives your brand credibility. If the people who know the company best believe in the brand, others are also more likely to. Also, when stakeholders feel involved in the brand launch, they are more likely to be engaged and motivated. This can lead to increased productivity and better outcomes, as well as a positive and strong reputation.
Internal Brand Launch
I suggest that you plan an internal brand launch. This can happen in conjunction with your external brand launch, but ideally, it occurs before the external launch. The launch should consist of training sessions for all stakeholders (if possible) to communicate the brand values, messaging, and visual identity. In fact, every facet of the brand framework should be shared with your team. In addition, it’s important to outline the WHY and HOW of the new brand. Stakeholders should view the research that went into the brand work. They should understand the reasons why elements of the brand were chosen. They should also recognize the target audience’s personas. You may also need to explain how essential a strong brand is to your organization. Ensure everyone understands the importance of a strong and consistent brand.
Get Stakeholders Involved
Stakeholders will be more engaged with a new brand when they are part of the development and launch process. If you haven’t already involved employees and internal stakeholders in the process, I suggest involving them in the internal and external launch process. There are a couple of different avenues to take.
First, ask them for feedback about the new brand and TAKE IT SERIOUSLY. These stakeholders are the people who live and breathe the brand every day. They are the people who interact with your target audiences every day. They are the humans who know your brand the best. Ask them if the new brand is on target with their perception of the organization’s mission, values, and purpose. Let them critique the logo, colors, content templates, taglines, and headlines. You don’t have to take every comment as a directive to make changes, but you should take them all to heart. Their feedback can be invaluable in refining your brand.
Another option for involving stakeholders is to ask them to contribute to the messaging content and external launch marketing plan. Because these are the people who live your brand’s mission and reflect your brand’s values every day, they can provide you with engaging testimonials and stories to use in social media, web content, PR strategies, and more. Your stakeholders will feel even more connected to the brand when they see their own words representing it.
A Real-Life Example
Before LSS launched the new brand that my team spent years (literally) developing, we went on a roadshow to launch the brand internally. We visited every program in the agency to present the new brand to the management team. We also presented the new brand to every department at the Home Office. The presentation included a timeline of our process, our research with donors, volunteers, employees, and the community, the challenges we faced, and our decisions. We showed them actual examples of where our old brand was failing us and how we improved those examples with the new brand. Because we were also launching a new website at the same time, we gave them a sneak peek at the new site and showed them where they could help us keep the website fresh by providing us with content now and in the future.
We also provided each management team with a toolkit to launch the brand with their teams. The toolkit included a presentation geared towards their employees, FAQs, talking points, posters and flyers for the breakrooms, feedback forms, and branded swag. The management teams had everything they needed to present and explain the new brand to their team members. They reported that their teams responded to the materials positively and with enthusiasm. We also collected a lot of great feedback and content for the new website.
We followed up the roadshow with a series of emails explaining the brand and offering digital assets that employees could use, like screen savers and email signature templates. Our internal brand launch was intentional and deliberately planned to reduce confusion and anxiety and to enhance engagement. I think our external brand launch would not have been as successful if we hadn’t taken the time to make sure that our internal stakeholders were aligned. After all, these are the people who represent the LSS brand in our programs and the community. We wanted them to be valuable and engaging brand advocates. And they were!
Create Brand Ambassadors
Internal buy-in is essential for launching a brand because it creates a strong foundation of support, alignment, and enthusiasm within your organization. When employees and other internal stakeholders are invested in your brand’s success, they become valuable ambassadors who contribute to your organization’s growth and long-term sustainability. Don’t forget these important partners in success!
I’d love to help you launch your brand. Schedule a discovery call today.
