How To Keep The Brand Alive Under New Ownership
By Vera Raposo On April 6, 2008
Under Blogs & Blogging, Branding, Business
Branding, like anything worthwhile, takes time. Nike didn’t become who they are overnight and neither did any other large corporation. It takes time for many reasons.
Branding is part of a larger marketing process. Branding has many aspects to it including company personality, logo, mission statement and all of the intricate features of a comprehensive marketing plan. Because branding is an ongoing process and because it is interwoven with a company’s marketing strategy it is absolutely in your best interests to take is slow when becoming the owner of an already existing business.
Here are a few considerations when becoming the new owner of an old business.
What is the company’s current branding philosophy and image?
To examine this first take a look at your company’s mission statement. This will give you a significant idea about where your business’s current branding image and philosophy reside. Assuming that you’d like to modify the mission statement and company image decide what that mission statement should look like and what steps you can take to integrate the two.
Notice I said integrate and not replace.
Branding is a process and to abruptly switch gears will be like throwing cold water on your current customers. They won’t appreciate it and it’ll take them a long while to warm back up to you.
What is your company’s current marketing plan (and how does branding fit with it)? Marketing is essentially the fuel that runs a business. Without it, you won’t go anywhere. For this reason, it is imperative that branding, as it is a part of your current marketing strategy, be modified slowly and tested often.
For example, if you were to change the business name or logo, that trickles down to every piece of marketing already out there and every piece of marketing in your future. In fact you’d need a full scale marketing strategy in place just to handle the change of either.
Why spend that kind of money and time if the current branding is working well? Instead, if modifying the current branding is one of your business goals, make it a long range goal with many small steps, steps that don’t require large expenditures or complicated strategies to implement. Can you imagine McDonald’s changing their name or Nike changing their logo? Yikes!
As a small business owner your personality is your business personality and it is your strongest asset. Prospects and customers buy products and services from you because they like you, plain and simple. As a new owner of an old business, adding your personality to the mix is as easy as becoming part of the business. Blog, communicate with customers and make your presence known. It’s the best and easiest way to not only keep the business brand alive but to rejuvenate it and make it fresh.
As the new owner of Small Business Branding, I plan on doing just that. Changing the brand that fans have come to know and love just isn’t a good idea, however I can make it fresh and keep it interesting by becoming an active part of the business.
Also I’m excited to announce that we are currently in the process of a site re-design by Ben Bleikamp who recently did the design for Problogger, I’ll be announcing the launch date very soon.
