The Importance of Research
Research is the power that fuels your rebranding strategy. Without it, you are making decisions with no real basis in the real world of your business. You need to establish a solid understanding of your audience and competitors to meet your existing and potential customers’ needs, and set yourself apart from the rest of your industry.
With target audience research, you will be able to identify buyer personas, or the profiles of who your ideal customer is. Armed with this information, you will be able to tailor any further strategies to attract that specific demographic. If you are currently having a hard time bringing in business or retaining customers, your branding is likely not reflective of your model consumer, so this is an opportunity for a large-scale, effective change.
Competitive research drives your value proposition. To understand why people should choose your company over others in your industry, you have to dive into what makes other businesses attractive to your would-be clients. Comparing value propositions lets you shape your own so that it is something distinct.
Brand Research Methods
You can break brand research methods down into four main areas.
- First, start with information you already have on hand. Internal data is a great resource for brand research. Your existing company resources and data paint a picture. For example, look at the metrics for website visits —what links people are clicking, how often these links are being utilized, and how many of those clicks turn into sales. Internal information gives you a historical overview of how your brand has worked so far and can guide your growth.
- Next, there are surveys. This method is one of the most widely used and it is very easy to implement. Create a survey for customers to fill out after a purchase or inquiry, set up a survey for web visitors, or share a link to a survey in your email campaigns. If you want to sweeten the deal, consider a discount code or an entry into a reward drawing for people who complete the survey.
- Your business can also conduct workshops and focus groups with your target audience. This is similar to gaining information through surveys, but with a more concentrated effort. By interviewing your clients and prospects face-to-face in smaller groups, you will gain specific feedback that you can then apply to your branding strategy. You can also test potential new branding or marketing campaigns in these settings.
- Finally, having an awareness of social intelligence is key to successful brand research. This means you will need to utilize data from all of your brand’s social media platforms to gain insight into consumer behavior and preferences, and how this compares to your competitors.
Putting Brand Research to Work
Now you can use your rebranding research to create a new brand strategy. Because of this competitive research, your brand identity will be built on metrics, facts, and information that you know to be true and can easily guide the next steps in your rebranding process.
C-leveled is your resource for best practices in branding research and rebranding strategies. Contact us today to learn more!