Early in my career, I saw firsthand the limitations of a compliance-driven firm. So, when it came time to build my own, leading with advisory was the obvious choice. But while the choice was easy, the execution was not. Even with wonderful clients and an A+ team that was no stranger to change, educating clients required a real investment.
Updating your messaging and identity following a fundamental shift in who you are as a firm can be more difficult than building a brand from scratch. Here’s what we did to leverage the reputation we’d already built (and acquired) while repositioning the firm for our new path forward.
Start with Internal Buy-In
Getting your team on board with the new firm vision is non-negotiable. If they don’t believe in it, your clients won’t either.
Don’t hesitate to share leadership’s “why” behind the shift and how it benefits everyone. Highlighting that an advisory-driven proactive approach allowed us to have more impactful relationships with clients wasn’t a benefit anyone wanted to turn down. And although the decision is made at the top, execution is a team sport.
Host interactive sessions that invite active participation, from completing learning pathways on delivering advisory content to shaping how it’s communicated.
At our firm, even though our operations team doesn’t deliver advisory services directly, we had them go through the same training. It gave them a clear understanding of the value we provide to clients and empowered them to identify opportunities to help.
While your marketing department may have the final say in how global messaging is presented, you must prepare your entire client-facing team to tell the story if you want it to stick.
Reframe Your Value Proposition
If your firm needs a rebrand, there’s a good chance your value proposition has changed since the last time you went through this process.
What are the core pain points facing your new ideal client? What problems are you solving?
In our case, our value proposition had shifted dramatically. Yours may not. But getting your value proposition right is the key to unifying your brand message across all platforms and scenarios.
Make a Decision on Your Visual Identity
With your new value proposition in hand, it’s time to assess your logo, color palette, fonts, and related design elements. If you’re happy with your current visual identity and feel it will work with your updated brand, you don’t have to change it.
But if a fresh look is warranted, you’ll want to decide on the new logo, color scheme, and typography before working on the updated copy. Note that refreshing these visual elements adds significant time and financial investment, but it may be worth the effort if your goal is to distance yourself from the old brand.
In our case, we chose to keep our visual identity, for two reasons:
1. To maintain continuity with our current client base
2. To reduce confusion for the clients we had absorbed the year prior via merger.
However, we made small adjustments in color tones, the approachability of our brand “voice,” and even the word choice in our logo to better align with our process (see the before and after below.)
Before
After
Phasing Out the Old Script
Transitions can feel messy if old language and collateral muddy the water. Audit every page of your website (including downloadable PDFs) as well as any slide decks, one-pagers, or other documents shown or delivered to clients. Tag each as “keep”, “update”, or “retire.”
It’s unrealistic to think you’ll be able to update or rewrite all of this collateral before launching your new brand, but having a checklist organized by priority will help you determine what needs to be done pre-launch and what you can chip away at moving forward.
To avoid misunderstandings, be sure to use a staging site to work out the kinks of your new website, even if you’re only updating the messaging on a handful of pages.
Develop a Phased Rollout and Communication Plan
Divide each aspect of your rollout into soft or hard launch. Things like updating social media bios and internal systems can be done during the soft launch, but you’ll want to reach out to your clients before turning on the new website.
This is a fantastic opportunity to communicate the rollout of any new service offerings and to get clients excited about how they will benefit from the rebrand.
Be Patient but Unafraid to Iterate
No story is complete without feedback from your audience, and that means tracking how well your rebrand resonates. Check the pulse of both legacy clients and new prospects to gauge how well your new message is sticking. Touch base with internal departments to see how they feel using the new language and tools. Use this data to revise chapters of your narrative, tweak your value proposition, and refine the names of new service packages.
Your Brand is Story
With a sharpened value proposition and thoughtful rollout plan, the rebranding process means more than just changing your logo and rewriting a few web pages—it opens a window into who you are and how you serve. And when done right, your brand represents more than mere marketing. It becomes a promise your whole team is proud to deliver on.
