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How an effective brand refresh can increase sales

Writer's picture: Kylie-Ann HomerKylie-Ann Homer

Updated: Jan 21

It may be an obvious thing to say that a brand refresh will drive substantial return on investment by increasing sales and revenue, but what is perhaps less obvious is explaining how it achieves it.


In explaining how an effective brand refresh can increase sales, I hope to be able to equip you with the tools to ensure that any brand refresh you undertake with your business will be an effective one.


An effective brand refresh will increase the customer base, which will in turn lead to more sales and revenue. Crucially, an effective brand refresh will help to gain new customers and will help to reconnect with existing ones.


This is achieved by an increase in brand awareness, ensuring the brand fosters (or maintains) an emotional connection and ensuring the brand stands out against competitors with its own unique brand positioning.


Brand Awareness

Increased brand awareness will grow the audience and therefore customer base, which will in turn drive more sales and revenue. This can be done with a brand refresh alongside engaging social media content and advertising created with unique brand assets. But it isn’t enough to just get the brand out there. The brand has to be ready for it; it has to be strong.

A strong brand will be memorable and in order to achieve this, the brand should have a unique brand story and foster an emotional connection.


Unique Brand Story

Brand awareness can not be achieved without a memorable brand. One such way to make a brand meaningful and therefore memorable is to tell the brand story in a unique way with distinctive brand assets. This will give the brand ownability and protect the brand from copy-cats, helping it to stand out from its competitors.


The brand identity for Mama Paints helps artist Kate to stand out from her competitors by telling the story of growth after the birth of her two sons and subsequent experiences of post natal depression, which she overcame through painting.



Foster an Emotional Connection

The successful communication of a meaningful brand story will foster an emotional connection with consumers allowing it to resonate with consumers and increase memorability. Increased memorability will drive sales in two ways. Firstly, the brand will be top of mind when it comes to the customer needing the product or service. Secondly, once that service or product has been purchased, the consumer will recall the brand effectively for repeat purchases or recommendations.


A brand that does not resonate will have poor recall amongst consumers, and any increased investment in social media or mainstream advertising will likely be ineffective.


The redesign for Pinnacle Pet UK fosters an emotional connection with a pet smile complete with heart nose, which puts happy pets at the heart of the brand.




Stand Out

Similarly for advertising and social media content to be effective following a brand refresh, the brand must stand out from its competitors. Memorability alone will not give a consumer reason to buy, the brand’s positioning and the product’s unique point of sale must be clear to them. In a sea of similar products and services, the brand must stand out.


This could be as simple as ensuring that the brand has a unique colour palette within the category, that its photography style is unique or that the typefaces and illustration style are not the same as another brand.


But on top of all of this, in order for a brand to truly stand out, it must have a strong brand positioning.


In carving out the positioning it is vital to know what the competitors are doing and in an ever-changing market we need to reevaluate this regularly. This is why the most successful brands will refresh every so often. Changes may be subtle in terms of the brand identity and the unique brand assets, but the positioning needs to be tweaked and finessed in order to keep the brand up to date, or else it will fall behind.


Things to watch out for

An effective brand refresh should gain new customers and reconnect with existing ones, but with changes ahead, how do we ensure we don’t alienate our existing customers?


Don’t alienate existing customers

Of course when a brand is refreshed we are looking to increase our customer base and not lose customers. This means we have to ensure that the brand is still recognisable and still resonates with existing customers. In tweaking the brand positioning this can be particularly important as the customers need to be on board with the changes we make, both physical and emotional. In order to ensure customer loyalty it can be worth using qualitative or quantitative consumer research to ensure that any big changes to the brand identity and positioning are communicated accurately and that they are well received.


Ensure an accurate perception of value

When redesigning we have the opportunity to tweak the feel of the brand identity to encapsulate a wider audience, however, we must ensure that we maintain or improve customer satisfaction rather than negate it. We must, therefore, ensure that the perception of value is consistent with any price changes made, in order to ensure that the consumer’s expectation of the experience of the product or service is still managed through the unique brand assets.


Don’t be a copy-cat

It can be tempting to do what another brand is doing in order to follow in their success. This will, however, ensure that the brand does not stand out and is not unique, which will not do the brand any favours in the long run. Above all else, a brand must be its own thing. Celebrating what makes the brand unique is essential to ensuring an effective brand refresh.


I hope that these pointers will be useful when it comes to embarking on your own brand refresh and will ensure that the design changes made will be both effective and profitable.


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