Successfully Rebrand as a Microsoft Partner
Estimated Time Reading: 4 minutes
Intended Audience: B2B Marketing Strategist, B2B Business Owners, Microsoft Partners
Redefine Your Brand
What your brand means to you is important to establish how you want the world to see it. To successfully rebrand, you need to start with an internal brainstorming session. Let your team talk about what they think of the company image and how it has changed over the years. As a Microsoft Partner, you must also involve customers who have witnessed the growth of the organization and get their views on the evolution of your tech solutions and services.
Understand Your Target Audience
Rebranding may happen for a lot of reasons but often it is about capturing the new market and attracting the most relevant leads. By learning about your target market, you will have better insight into how to position the business to your audience. As Microsoft Partners, you need to identify what kind of technology pain points are affecting customers and what degree of expertise and service they are seeking. Based on your research you can utilize your competencies to stand out in the crowd with a successful B2B rebrand strategy.
The Elements of a Microsoft Partner Rebrand
1. Brand Voice
Language is a powerful tool as it communicates what you stand for as a business. Transitioning to a new brand voice and messaging is key to demonstrating how the business has grown from strength to strength. Ensuring that brand voice is consistent, clear and well-defined will make all the difference. As a Microsoft Partner, you can take this opportunity to weave in the ease of working with industry experts into the new brand voice. Developing the brand voice can also be about leveraging your relationship with Microsoft to your advantage and intwining that with the new tone.
2. Color Palette and Typography
There is so much that can be conveyed just through colors and the fonts you choose to use. The human brain reacts differently to different colors, so this selection is key. To influence the perception of your potential customers, you must find the right mix of colors and choose fonts that reflect your business persona. In the Microsoft Partner community, you want your colors and font to display you as a modern yet bold organization, that is trustworthy and here to make a mark!
3. Logo
The visual identity of your business relies heavily on the logo. With a rebrand, redesigning the logo for a more contemporary feel becomes essential. You do not want to present your prospects an outdated image of your organization.
Unbelievably, logo trends are a thing — and to stand out in the sea of software sameness you need to invest ample time in finding a logo that matches your business values.
4. Imagery
Any other visuals that go with your company communication and external persona falls under this element. Whether you opt for stock images or custom graphics, you must establish guidelines for what can and cannot be used to represent your brand. Over the years, showing a more human side to the business has gained more traction, making pleasant, appeasing images of business professionals a sought-after image category.
In 3.. 2.. 1.. Launch!
Making all the changes with no one to see it, what is even the point? You must act on your transformation and make sure it is known that the business is out with a fresh look, message, and mission!
Internal Rebrand Taster
External Brand Presentation
Once your internal channels are up to speed, it is time to take this horse to the races! This process begins with updating your brand online, starting with your social media channels.
As we mentioned before, the intensity of the rebrand will determine what needs to be updated. In some cases, organization’s build completely new websites while some just make minor edits to global themes on the existing site. Either way, you will need to have a launch calendar that is shared with all concerned parties – copywriters, designers, web developers, and of course the strategists.
Just updating information across the web is not enough, you must match all communication assets, any outgoing material, directory listings, featured posts to the new branding. At the same time, to get the word out, a comprehensive rebrand campaign is what you need to leave a mark. Based on your target audience and the new messaging, you need to produce a unique way to announce the change and update your professional associates.
