So you’re launching a rebranding effort for your bank or credit union. There are some critical steps to take to ensure you and your team are successful. But first, if you haven’t already, make sure you’ve addressed some of the pre-rebrand considerations. All set? Then you’re ready to kick off your brand project.
To help guide your planning, here are six steps you’ll want to take:
1. Ensure You Have a Mission, Vision, and Values in Place
Ensure your mission, vision, and values are ones that your company lives by, not just a tile on the intranet or posters in your branch break rooms. Refer to them before any major decisions and incorporate them into your new brand strategy. Confirming alignment with your company’s values helps keep what you say and what you do in lockstep.
2. Audit Your Brand (and Its Place in the Larger Landscape)
Start with your competition. They’ll likely fall into a few discrete boxes—rule-makers staying traditional, rule-breakers pushing boundaries. Be mindful and realistic when you define your competitive set—you might aspire to compete with the major banks, but be sure to reflect the competitive set that customers and prospects consider alongside your bank or credit union. Reference that competitive audit to determine where you are today, and where you’re striving to be with your new brand. Once you’ve determined where the competition lies in the larger scheme, look for the white spaces you can authentically own based on your services, products, and value proposition.
3. Develop Your New Brand & Brand Strategy
This might entail an entirely new brand purpose, brand promise, positioning and value proposition, or just minor tweaks. It might also include a refinement of your brand personality, tone, voice, and identity. You can lean into ease of doing business, or the advanced nature of your mobile banking, or the personal relationships your FI delivers. But, to be differentiated, make sure you’re adding your unique flavor for each of those benefits, otherwise you’ll sound like every competitor you face. No matter what, make sure you’re staying true to who you are and who you can be in the near future. When the gap between what you say about your brand and what people experience of your brand becomes too big, you run the risk of eroding brand trust, so stretches are ok, giant leaps should be avoided.
4. Test Within Your Target Audiences
A crucial step in any rebranding effort is confirming potential new brand directions with your core target audiences before finalizing anything. This typically involves testing a few creative options and concepts via qualitative methods (like focus groups or interviews) or more robust testing via a quantitative study. Bring customers and prospects directly into the rebranding process by gathering their candid feedback on everything from your proposed brand identity to overall brand tonality. Their input will be invaluable when helping to understand how your target audience will interpret and react to your rebrand. With their feedback in mind, finalize your brand strategy. And don’t forget to update your brand guidelines to ensure your internal teams and external partners all execute your brand strategy consistently.
5. Launch Internally and Externally
Employee and stakeholder communication is critical for a successful brand launch/re-launch. Build a comprehensive roll-out strategy that starts with an internal launch to educate and energize your employees. When discussing your rebranding with employees, make sure they’re aware of what assets to use and any new brand guidelines to follow. If there are operational or cultural changes in play, prioritize internal training so they can fully embody the rebrand. Consider branch in a box launches to really get your customer facing employees excited. And, don’t forget engaging folks in your headquarters.
When you execute the external launch, leverage all paid, earned, shared and owned channels to build on excitement and visibility. Then, continue investing in a healthy balance of brand advertising and demand generation. Remember that your rebrand efforts will take time to have an effect—shifting hearts and minds doesn’t happen overnight.
6. Clearly Define Performance Tracking & Celebrate Successes
Recall how you and your stakeholders defined success when you were first considering a rebrand. Then make sure you’re systematically able to actually track and measure those KPIs—don’t just measure what you can, measure what matters. And with a brand launch, the luxury of a brand health survey might not be realistic more than once per year, so remember to use proxy metrics like branded search and web traffic as indicators of brand lift.
Recognize and celebrate milestones after the rebrand launch, whether it’s improved word of mouth and website traffic, increased demand generation, or better NPS scores. This helps reinforce the value of the rebranding effort, and it can give your team a much-needed morale boost when you’re able to point to what, exactly, is working. Rebrands may not immediately result in increased account openings or further household penetration, so find the leading indicators to celebrate as well as those lagging indicators.
Having a well-thought-out plan in place during and after rebranding is essential for ensuring a smooth transition and achieving long-term success. Rebranding can be a disruptive process that impacts multiple aspects of a bank or credit union, including customer perception, employee morale, and market positioning. A clear strategy helps manage these changes by providing a roadmap for consistent messaging, minimizing confusion, and aligning the organization’s goals with its new identity.