What do Netflix, Nintendo, Western Union, and National Geographic all have in common?
They have all dramatically changed their business model and marketing, and thrived through evolution.
This isn’t revolutionary information, but stick with us. Businesses in all industries routinely evaluate their products and services. So, in 2020, we did the same, and it changed everything.
When Reaction started out, we were a full-service marketing agency, and our offerings ran the mix of social media to SEO and everything in between. It just made sense. As a growing agency, it was important for us to cater to every need to bring in the most business.
However, In the more than 12 years we’ve been doing business, our most shining work has always been our branding and website projects for clients all over North America. So we decided to double down on what we do best – Building websites and creating brands.
In honing our offerings, we needed a brand strategy that illustrated exactly why we’re the best at what we do and target our ideal customers who understand the value that solid branding and a high-performance website can bring to their business.
Spoiler alert: We documented the whole process!
So grab a snack and get ready for some serious inspiration! This 8-part video series provides a ton of value and gives you a behind-the-scenes look at the same brand building or refresh process that YOUR business might need to level up.
2020 Changed Us for the Better
It would be a ridiculous understatement to say that 2020 was a crazy year, but with all the upheaval and chaos, Reaction managed to come out stronger than ever.
Like a lot of businesses, we decided to make some big changes – yet not out of necessity, but out of a desire to come out the other side as the best version of Reaction, we could be.
As we said above, our big shift was to double down and focus our efforts on best-in-class branding and web design services, so we needed to give our brand Reaction, the facelift and new website we so frequently give to our clients.
We are so glad we did. The ROI has been fantastic!
Find Your Ideal Client
Our first step when undertaking our branding and messaging refresh was to really get to know our new ideal customers.
No, we’re not talking about icebreakers or “Hey! How’s it going” calls. We’re talking about really getting to know our ideal customers and their journey to find a digital partner who can guide them through the branding and web design process.
This starts with building out personas of our ideal clients – ours are Rich, Sam, Max and Amy. All of them have different roles in their companies, goals, pain points, and communication styles that we aim to cater to through our branding and messaging.
For example, let’s get to know Rich.
Rich is the owner of a business that does between 2 and 20 million in annual revenue. He’s ambitious, eager to succeed, and cares a lot about his business reputation. Ultimately, he knows that his website is a powerful tool for growing his business and continuing to generate more revenue.
However, Rich has some problems. His website is losing search rankings, it’s hard to update, and his competitors just have a better-looking site. Rich wants to know how we can help his brand grow, and, because he’s such a go-getter, when we can get started on his next project.
Creating a Branded Key Message
Now that we now know more about our most ideal clients and the problems they face, we need a branded key message that speaks directly to them.
For our clients, for us at Reaction, and for just about every business in the world, customers seek you out with typically 3 things on their mind:
- They have a problem
- They want to see a solution
- They want to know what success looks like
We utilize Donald Miller’s Storybrand framework for crafting a key message that invites our clients to be the hero in their own journey for success and positions Reaction as the guide to help them along the way. Like the Fellowship is to Frodo or Yoda is to Luke Skywalker.
The outcome? First, a comprehensive communication strategy document that speaks directly to each phase in the story that a customer has in doing business with us. Second, a branded key message that covers each of the 3 things that just about every customer has on their mind.
The Problem: Many successful business owners struggle to take full advantage of their online opportunities.
The Solution: We’re a digital agency dedicated to guiding them through strategy, branding, and web development.
The Success: So they make big things happen online.
Auditing Your Website
With a communication strategy in tow, it’s time to take a peek under the hood of the old website.
What sorts of content are you creating? Does it attract people from search engines? Does the site perform well, and is it easy to navigate? These are all great questions to ask yourself during a website audit.
If your website doesn’t explain what exactly you can offer a client and demonstrate expertise and authority, you might have some crossed wires that are actively working against you in funnelling in new business.
In our case, we had old web content that wasn’t accurately describing our new service offerings. Along with technical fixes and upgrades, we wanted to implement a system to ensure our website was future-proof and continued to win traffic from Google and other search engines.
Changing Your Brand Identity
Remember all of those companies we mentioned at the start of this article? Netflix, Nintendo, National Geographic? All iconic brands! If you’re brand nerds like us, you can close your eyes and see their logos and wordmarks spring to life.
So, when we were going through our branding refresh in 2020, we wanted to make sure our brand identity spoke for us the same way.
- We “broke out” our logo and introduced brackets as branded elements
- We changed our brand colours to an off-white and brought in a darker and lighter shade of our primary orange
- We created a graphical language that we use to tell our story with shapes, colours and fonts.
Building Brand Standards
In all things marketing, consistency is key. You want to make sure your best foot is forward at all times.
This means using your visual brand language, logos, fonts, colours, and graphical elements in a consistent manner across your printed marketing materials, website, and any other uses you may have.
However, that can be very difficult, especially if you have a larger marketing team or are more of a do-it-yourself style team where marketing tasks are picked up on the fly by anyone who has the bandwidth.
That’s why creating a brand standards document that establishes guidelines and best practices for using any of those aforementioned elements is so crucial.
Launching A New Website
A website is your most valuable digital asset. It acts as your digital sales portal, customer service tool, and it’s often the first touchpoint for your audience.
As a remote digital agency and a business-to-business company that works with clients all over Canada and the United States, we designed our website to be the home base for our business operations online. From fresh design and new content to a dynamic image CDN and integrated calendar-booking widget, our website is packed with features to give potential clients browsing the best experience possible.
Roll The Blooper Reel
Just like a classic Jackie Chan movie, no cinematic odyssey is complete without a blooper reel to cement the value, so here we go!
Ready to Make Big Things Happen Online?
We hope this video series was inspiring and helpful. Want to chat with a member of our team to learn more about the process of building a brand? A quick conversation might be the only thing holding your business back from making big things happen online.
