Positioning Your Brand to Win (Without a Total Rebrand)

A lot of today’s businesses are talking about branding, whether it’s elevating, boosting, or totally re-branding their company.

But what does branding work do for your business? What is the return on investment? And how do you measure its success? Let’s answer some of these questions (and explore how one client came to us with a website refresh project and came out with a whole lot more).

What is a brand?

So often “brand” gets confused with a company’s logo — but it’s so much more than that. We like to say that brand is what people think of when they hear your company’s name. It’s the message, imagery, and feelings that come to mind that consumers immediately associate with your products or services.

Every strong brand has 5 key ingredients:

• A clear why
• A clear brand promise
• A clear target market
• Clear branding and design consistency
• A clear marketing strategy

Take Apple, for example. When you think of Apple products, you probably think of empowering people through technology and challenging the status quo. And their products’ clean lines, minimalist, and simple designs support and dramatize their mission. Their brand goes hand-in-hand with their products, and you would probably know an Apple ad even if they left off their logo. That’s the result of a powerful brand.

Boosting your brand doesn’t always mean rebranding

It’s common for a business to think about rebranding when they aren’t reaching their target market, they feel like their website is out of date, or they can’t convert qualified leads.

But rebranding isn’t the answer to all branding challenges.

Let’s take a look at EvaClean, a B2B business that sells disinfection equipment, chemistries, and consulting.

EvaClean faces a fork in the road

When COVID-19 took the stage, disinfection companies suddenly saw an influx of business. EvaClean’s Chief Marketing Officer, Dan Clifford, approached Vye with a branding roadmap. He didn’t want to re-work their logo or completely change their look and feel. Instead, he wanted to buckle down on EvaClean’s science and equipment and position the company as an approachable, trusted resource in the midst of a pandemic.

“We could have chased the dollars,” said Clifford. “We could have gone down the road of nothing but fear mongering. We made a decision early on to really craft a brand and a brand purpose and an approach that was more human.”

At their core, EvaClean wanted to reflect that they weren't a “here today, gone tomorrow” business, but rather a long-term partner for all things infection prevention.

So what was getting in their way?

The website didn’t tell the EvaClean story.

The chase for a new website

Like many businesses, EvaClean knew why their brand was unique — but that message wasn’t necessarily getting to their audience.

“A site needs to be an extension of both our brand and sales team,” said Clifford. “It needs to bring the brand to life, it needs to be clear about what our product line up is, and it needs to be technically sound to help enable conversion.”

EvaClean partnered with Vye to build out a website that would showcase EvaClean’s unique science and equipment, communicate their mission, and bring a look and feel to the company that aligned with who they were — all while being easy to manage and update.

“A site needs to be an extension of both our brand and sales team. It needs to bring the brand to life, it needs to be clear about what our product line up is, and it needs to be technically sound to help enable conversion.”

We made it happen using empathy and research around:

• Buyer's needs, emotional drivers, and pain points
• Search engine data, key topics, and terms
• Click and heat mapping data from their old website
• Competitive audits (with content gaps) and a strong market positioning

Then, using our data from research, interviews, and Dan and EvaClean's existing strategic brand roadmap, we designed a new website with their buyer persona in mind.

All the hard work pays off

With their new website launched, EvaClean’s performance is on the up and up. Because we took a strategic approach to their messaging — informed by the brand guidelines and key term research relevant to their industry — we’ve seen:

• A big jump in organic traffic
• A steady increase in ranking organic keywords

And because we did the heavy lifting before the website build, we’ve improved how people get around on the site, which keeps people on the site longer.

Watch the full conversation with Dan Soldner, President of Vye, and Dan Clifford:

How do you measure brand effectiveness?

When it comes to gauging the success of brand work, we believe that numbers are the source of truth. If your brand work is successful, you’ll meet your KPIs (and even begin to exceed them). We always set these goals up front — and ensure they are realistic — so that you can see how your investment is paying off.

Once your project is complete and you have a few months of implementation behind you, we can look back at these KPIs and ask, What did you want when you started your brand work? What did you need from your brand to remain competitive? Are you there yet, or is there still more to do?

For EvaClean, we hit all of their KPIs during their website build, and even a few more:

Brand work is never really over

We like to think that your competitors never sleep. As a result, even an investment in elevating your brand can only go so far. So what comes next after brand work?

For EvaClean, they’re running with the messaging created in partnership with Vye and launching campaigns to generate more awareness and leads. This is what we love to see. A good website build can live on in other aspects of your business long after the updates are made.

Ready to put your brand to work?

Maybe you’re like EvaClean and have an idea of where you’d like your brand to go. Or maybe you just know you need something (but you don’t know what). Regardless of where you’re at, we do brand work for a living, and we’re ready to roll up our sleeves and get to work on your business.

Ready to talk brand?