All successful brands make it their priority to be one thing… Relevant. And with the ever-changing digital landscape, it can be difficult for brands to stay in the spotlight. It’s when that spotlight starts to fade that repositioning a brand can be crucial. Think of it as a strategic shift in how you target your audience and in return, how your brand is perceived. But when do you know it’s time to reposition a brand and where do you start when it’s time to take the leap? In this blog, we’re sharing our advice for exactly that and providing the steps you must take to reposition a brand successfully.
When is there a need to reposition a brand?
There are few different factors that can indicate it’s time to kickstart your brand repositioning. However, it’s important to ensure the decision is backed by evidence and data that demonstrates the requirement for this process. Be sure not to jump ship based on feelings and emotions! Here are a few examples of when it could be time to reposition a brand:
- Declining market share
- Shifting customer preferences
- New competitors or a shift in competitor strategy
- Brand messaging inconsistency
This list isn’t exhaustive but provides a good idea of the scenarios when repositioning can be important.
Steps to reposition a brand
1. Understand your current brand position
This step is key in understanding what’s working and what isn’t, which can be used to build your new brand position. This stage involves assessing your brand’s current position in the market. You should take the time to really dig into the questions in the list below, as the better the picture you have of the brand’s current position, the more impactful the plan for repositioning will be. Here are some factors you should be considering:
- Who are your main competitors?
- Undertake a competitor analysis to understand their strengths and weaknesses, their target audience and any marketing gaps where you can over something unique
- Who is your target audience?
- Use target audience analysis to understand your target’s demographics, psychographics (hobbies, values, interests, etc.), behaviours and perception of your current brand
- You might’ve done this previously, but it’s good to do it regularly so you can identify any shifts
- Are you targeting the right people?
- Analyse your current position and ask whether you’re really speaking to the right target audience. Can your messaging be adapted? Is there another target audience you could tap into?
- What are your strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities?
- Conduct a SWOT analysis to gain a holistic view of your current brand position. You can use the previous questions to drive this analysis
This information will help you to understand your brand’s current position.
2. Market research
No marketing team should ever draw conclusions based on feelings. That’s where the importance of market research comes in.
Market research provides you with reliable data and insights that can help you to discover opportunities in the industry. It can also be key in validating or disproving your initial thoughts on your competitors, target audience and the gaps in the market. It provides you with a layer of confidence that repositioning your brand is the right step to take at this moment in time.
One of the key components of market research is speaking to your community as demonstrated in step 3:
3. Speak to your community
When repositioning your brand, it’s crucial to get as many relevant perspectives as possible. Three of the main groups that you should focus on to get a 360-degree view include your customers, suppliers and team members. Below you’ll discover some examples of how you can explore each of these groups.
Customers
Conduct in-depth interviews with a selection of your top clients. Try to use open-ended questions to get some real insight into their thoughts and feelings about your brand. Some examples include: What do you love about our brand? Why should someone work with us/buy from us? What value do we bring? How would you describe our brand to a friend? These types of questions can help to dig into your strengths, weaknesses and the value you deliver from an outside perspective.
Suppliers
Conduct interviews or surveys with your main suppliers. Again, depending on the format you choose to use, open-ended questions can work well here. Some examples include: How would you describe your experience working with our team? What core values do you see reflected in our daily interactions? What would you say sets us apart in the industry? Why do you like doing business with us? The answers to these questions will help to uncover information about your brand from a broader ecosystem perspective.
Team members
Your team’s perspective is very important as they are the heart and soul of your brand. Conduct focus groups with your team and ask questions to gain their opinions on the brand. Some example questions to ask include: How would you describe our culture in three words? What are you most proud of when it comes to our organisation? Which of our values do you think clients value the most? What do you think sets us apart from competitors? Why do you enjoy working for us? Make sure your team have the space to answer openly as their insights can be crucial in understanding your brand from an insider standpoint.
By gaining the perspectives of these three key groups, you can create a much richer picture of your current brand position.
4. Articulate your vision, mission, purpose and values
To ensure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to repositioning the brand, both internally and externally, creating a clear vision, mission, purpose and values is critical. Below you can find some guidance for creating each of these steps:
- Vision statement: Ensure your vision for the brand reposition is a concise and inspiring statement that captures everything you want your brand to be in the long term. 2 to 3 sentences are an ideal amount for a vision statement as you want to keep it memorable.
- Mission statement: This is different to your vision as this is what your company are doing right now. Try to define the core purpose of the brand and how you deliver value to your customers in a way that fulfils your vision. This should also be around 2 to 3 sentences.
- Purpose statement: This is often much longer than a vision and mission (between 500 to 1000 words). Your purpose statement should capture the exact reasons your organisation exists – beyond profit. Consider the bigger picture and explain the positive impact it strives to have on society as a whole.
- Values: Select 5-10 core values that are non-negotiables which define your brand (your market research will help to define your values). Think about what principles you stand for and how you interact with your community. These values will act as a guide for how you want your team to work towards your business goals.
Once you’ve created your vision, mission, purpose and values for your organisation, you’ll have a strong foundation for what your brand stands for. This will help to ensure your repositioning efforts are aligned with your goals and resonate with what your company stands for.
5. Time to reposition a brand
Using the results from the previous steps, you should now have a clear idea of what is required to reposition the brand. This process doesn’t always need to be drastic, a simple reposition strategy will suffice. It could be that you’ve identified you require changes to your brand’s visual identity, messaging, targeting & channels, or campaigns.
It’s important to get the internal team on board with the brand repositioning so that the messaging is consistent and there is no opportunity for outside confusion. Clear guidelines and training can be useful before implementation to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Similar to a normal marketing strategy, you should define clear goals for your repositioning strategy. What exactly do you want to achieve? It could be increased brand awareness, improved customer engagement or higher sales. Additionally, KPIs should be set that are created using the SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound). This will help the team to understand what resources are required and the timeline for implementation.
6. Tracking success
Now that there’s a repositioning strategy in place and implementation is underway, how do you know if it’s working?
Once your marketing goals and KPIs are set, it’s important that you track the performance using data, analytics and insights. Keep a close eye on what metrics are moving. For example, this could be website performance, social media insights, newsletter sign-ups, inbound leads, etc.
If you notice something isn’t performing as you’d planned according to the KPIs, you can always adapt the strategy based on the findings. However, be sure not to jump to conclusions immediately as repositioning a brand can take time (Rome wasn’t built in a day!).
As you can see, repositioning a brand takes a lot of thought and work. But it can be key in staying relevant! These steps should help you with knowing when to reposition a brand, how to position the new brand, how to implement a repositioning strategy and the importance of monitoring performance. Overall, you’ll be able to ensure your brand thrives in the ever-changing digital landscape.
