As a business owner, embarking on a rebranding journey involves a lot of bold moves and risks. As your business grows and maintains a loyal customer base, remaining relevant and competitive becomes necessary. This part is where an event marketing strategy can help you. So today, let’s delve into the primary benefits of event marketing and how you can use it to achieve a seamless rebranding transition.
Introduction to Event Marketing for Rebranding
What is Event Marketing?
Event marketing is a powerful strategy businesses use to promote their products and services by engaging with their target market in an in person event. You create memorable experiences that leave a lasting impression on your existing and potential customers. The kind that makes them want to know your brand more and later on start doing business with you.
This marketing approach will help you gain the spotlight that makes rebranding easy and fulfilling.
Importance of Rebranding as a Strategic Move
In our fast-paced world, technology and markets change, and the same with customer preferences. So, rebranding is vital to stay in the game, connect with potential customers, generate leads and make you stand out in a crowd.
Doing a rebrand is not just about looking different. This is more about sending a message that you changed for the better, staying relevant, and ready to offer something different.
It’s like saying to your customers – we are still here, and even better. Rebranding helps your business grow in a changing world.
Benefits of Event Marketing During Rebranding
1. Increases Visibility During Rebranding Phase
Picture yourself attending a big party where everyone you know is there, talking about something exciting. This is how memorable events can do the same thing for you during your rebranding phase.
Events help create a buzz around your brand. They put your new ideas and business out there in front of highly qualified prospects. When people come to your rebranding booth or event, they don’t just see it; they learn about and experience it. Then, they start telling their friends about it and share your brand on social media.
2. Engaging with Stakeholders
Engaging with stakeholders is a crucial factor when doing a rebranding. Customers, employees, and partners all play a vital role in the success of your rebranding effort.
Connecting with more customers allows us to understand their expectations, preferences, and concerns. This will help ensure that the rebrand aligns with their needs. Involve your employees in the process. This promotes a sense of ownership and commitment, transforming them into brand ambassadors. Lastly, collaborate with partners for a seamless transition and to strengthen your shared business goals.
3. Reconnecting with Loyal Customers
Reconnecting with your loyal customers during rebranding would be a great time to catch up and get their feedback. And an event would be the perfect place where you could get in touch with them again.
For any of your current customers or potential customers who might have doubts about the changes, in person events provide an opportunity to rebuild their trust. It’s like saying to them – even if we evolved, our partnership remains strong.
To nurture these special bonds, focus on keeping it personal.
Treat them as esteemed guests. Acknowledge their loyalty by providing exclusive privileges and insights into the rebranding process.
Just like in friendship, having clear and consistent communication, coupled with thoughtful gestures, deepens these connections. This ensures loyal customers stay by your side as your brand evolves.
4. Showcasing the New Brand Identity
Trade shows, expos and events are the perfect platforms to showcase and introduce your new brand identity. You can use color schemes, decorations, and branding materials. Even the attire can contribute to giving off a cohesive visual narrative.
The atmosphere, visuals, and how you talk and promote your brand all play a part in telling your rebranding story. From the backdrop to the lighting, each conveys a story that reflects the new brand message and goals. Doing this will help you create meaningful connections that resonate with attendees, allowing them to immerse themselves in your rebranding journey.
5. Collecting Valuable Feedback
Interacting with your audience during events provides a valuable exposure and opportunity to hear what attendees and stakeholders think about your rebranding efforts. You can use surveys, discussions, or simple conversations to gather feedback for upcoming events.
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Feedback is an exceptional way to acquire insights from relevant sources that can help you refine your rebranding and event marketing plan. Analyzing this feedback empowers your brand to make informed decisions, refining the rebranding approach to meet the needs and goals of your target audience.
6. Leveraging Social Media and Digital Integration
Imagine events as the center of your rebranding approach, and social media amplifies it by broadcasting it to a much bigger audience. When you integrate your event marketing efforts with social media, you do it in a timely and relevant manner.
You can share event details and highlights as they happen through live events and updates, photos, and videos on Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram. Careful planning can help ensure your online complements your offline efforts. Use content calendar and event-specific hashtags to streamline your strategy. This can help encourage event-goers to actively participate in events online and share it with family and friends.
7. Measuring Event Success and Rebranding Impact
Some crucial factors are considered to know if the rebranding strategies work. These include the number of potential attendees, audience engagement, acquired new leads, and closed sales.
In addition, gauging shifts in brand sentiment, media exposure, and social media interactions is vital to assess the effectiveness of your rebranding efforts.
Also, assess if people who attend events started feeling better or more comfortable about your brand after the event. Once the event is over, you can conduct a post-event analysis. Evaluate the attendee feedback, conduct ROI (return on investment) assessments for attending events, and check if the event objectives have been met. This helps your business stay competitive with similar brands and make future events and your rebranding successful.
OM System’s (former Olympus Camera) Rebranding Experience through Events
Still doubtful if integrating event marketing with your rebranding efforts will work for you?
Well, it did work out for one of our esteemed clients, OM System. In fact, they consider events as one of the primary ways to educate and introduce their new look to the target audience.
OM System, which is formerly known as Olympus Camera, has been in the business since 1919. For the longest time, they’ve established their name in selling cameras. Not until recently, they switched the brand name Olympus on their medical device equipment and used OM System on selling their cameras as part of the business.
Undergoing a rebrand, especially for a well-established brand like them, can be quite challenging. Some of the challenges they’ve encountered were:
- Maintaining the value of their camera under the new name with how it was known before while differentiating themselves from Olympus
- There is no one solution on telling everyone and making them aware of their new name
- People assume they are a different camera company until they see their products
- Most people are unaware of any changes.
- It gets more difficult to get people who are new to photography or using other brands to switch to them if they don’t know the name.
Now to strategically resolve all these, they made use of event marketing. Events became their primary option on introducing the new brand to potential and their existing customers. By targeting events where a lot of professional and amateur photographers attend (such as the Overland Expo and other outdoor events), it gives them the advantage of interacting with their audience. This and with the help of appealing displays that resonate with their brand, gave way to capturing their attention and develop relationships with their current and future clients.
Events helped them bridge their message as a new brand with the same high-quality product to their many new customers and potential customers. It helped them communicate with their dedicated customers about the switch and were willing to spread the message as well.
Conclusion
You now know the numerous benefits of event marketing to help you with rebranding strategies.
Rebranding can be a smart move for businesses to stay up-to-date and relevant in changing markets. We also learned how events help brands showcase their new identity while engaging with customers, employees, and partners.
Utilizing social media while doing event marketing also helps to amplify your rebranding message to a broader target audience. Measuring your lead generation event marketing success through feedback and post-event analysis can also help assess how well you did on the event and what steps you can take to improve on the next event.
Rebranding with successful event marketing strategies and custom-branded displays, done right, can increase brand awareness, customer loyalty, and success in ever-evolving markets.
