Brand Refresh? Rebrand? Brand Awareness? Our Advertising Agency Explains the Difference

Answer Our Reflection Questions Below To Learn What Your Business Needs

To understand branding, think of a well-known company like Nike. What do its products mean to its customers? Nike products signify athleticism, determination, success, and status. When you choose Nike, you are choosing to wrap yourself in all of these feelings and values. A brand communicates how customers should feel about your business.

Another way to talk about branding is this: good branding establishes trust. Customers won’t buy what they don’t trust. And we trust what makes us feel good. When customers choose Nike, all the emotions and desires that Nike is communicating ring true.

This takes work for any business. A cool design for your logo isn’t enough. Believe it or not, excellent products and services aren’t enough, either. To get your customers to feel a sense of trust and loyalty, you need to build your brand.

What Are Branding Services?

Branding services from a digital marketing and advertising agency allow you to create or refine your brand, depending on how far you’ve already come.

Some companies need to start from the ground up. Others need help to refresh what they’ve already established. Still, other businesses have an effective brand in place but need to develop more awareness with their audience.

The right Kansas City advertising agency can help you take a look at where your brand is now and make recommendations for a brand refresh, a full rebrand, or brand awareness marketing tactics.

What Is a Brand Refresh?

Your business may already be well-established, and you have a brand identity (how your business’s visuals and messaging articulate who you are). However, you may feel that you need a change to truly connect with your audience and establish trust. If this is the case, you may be in the market for a brand refresh.

A refresh may include:

• Redesigning visuals like your logo, color palette, typeface, font, and symbols.
• Creating new or clearer messaging, such as taglines or service descriptions to better describe your business.

A brand refresh allows you to reconsider and revise your visual and verbal identity to best connect with your audience.

What Is a Rebrand?

When you read our definition of a brand — how customers feel about your business and what it means to them — do you think, “We’ve done that,” or do you say “Uh-oh.”

A rebrand is your opportunity to start the branding process over again. You don’t need to restart your business and what you offer, just how you’re communicating what you offer to your customers. A rebrand can bring in new audiences and establish deeper loyalty with customers you already have.

A rebrand from a top-tier digital marketing and advertising agency in Kansas City follows these steps:

• Discovery
• Brand strategy
• Visual identity
• Verbal identity
• Implementation

A rebrand helps you discover your brand’s purpose, plot out how you want to position yourself in the marketplace through storytelling, and create visuals and messaging in relevant spaces (like your website and socials) that communicate your purpose, vision, mission, values, and story to your audiences.

Next, it’s time to take action.

What Is Brand Awareness?

After you’ve refreshed or rebranded your business, it’s time to implement your new brand through a brand awareness marketing campaign. These campaigns, when run by a successful digital marketing and advertising agency in Kansas City, allow you to get in front of important audiences and let them know who you are.

Brand awareness tactics include:

• Organic social media content.
• Newsletters, blogs, and mailers.
• Educational content.
• Email campaigns.
• Conference advertising.
• Digital ads across various channels (Search ads, socials, display, video, and more).
• Public relations, including press releases, thought leadership articles, and interviews.

Brand awareness presents your brand identity across multiple channels to get the attention of customers, help them understand who you are, and begin to establish trust.

Use Our Advertising Agency’s Questions To Discover What Branding Services You Need

Uncertain about what you need to do next to create a trustworthy, meaningful brand identity? These questions can help you decide that it’s time to seek out a partner for a brand refresh, rebranding, or a brand awareness campaign.

A “yes” to any of these questions points to a brand refresh:

• Does our logo, color palette, or overall look feel dated compared to our competitors?
• When I look at our website or marketing materials, do they still feel like “us,” or do they reflect who we were in the past?
• Have we added new services, locations, or audiences that aren’t clearly reflected in our visuals and messaging?
• Do potential customers seem surprised when they finally talk to us because we seem different from what our brand materials communicate?
• Do I feel uncertain about sending people to our website or social channels, even though I know we’re good at what we do?

If you’re nodding your head and saying “yes,” consider a rebrand:

• If I asked five customers to describe our brand in three words, would I get five different answers?
• Do people regularly misunderstand what we do, who we serve, or our value-add?
• Has our business model, ownership, or ideal customer changed, so our current branding no longer fits?
• Are we trying to move into a new market or compete at a higher level without the brand to match?
• Are we attracting the wrong type of customers because of how our brand communicates?

Answer “yes” to any of these questions, and brand awareness might be your best bet:

• Do people who work with us love us, but we’re still not seeing the volume of new leads that we want?
• Do we often hear, “I’ve never heard of you before”?
• Do we already have a solid logo, brand guidelines, and messaging, but we’re not using them consistently across all channels?
• Do we have strong content that isn’t getting much engagement?
• Are we unsure which marketing channels are the best places to invest our marketing budget?

Ready to Level Up? Get a Custom Strategy from Our Advertising Agency

iFOCUS Marketing & Advertising is ready to partner with you to bring your brand to life. We help you determine the next best steps for your brand, whether that’s refreshing your current branding efforts or starting at the beginning. Our digital marketing and advertising agency for social media, web design, search marketing, and more can also help you implement your brand in the right places and bring awareness to these efforts.

We create opportunities for you to build deeper trust and loyalty with customers.

We look forward to collaborating with you on a brand strategy, so your business can reach your next big goal. Schedule a call with iFOCUS today.