Rebranding: 3 Ways a Writing Agency Can Help

REBRANDING: 3 WAYS A WRITING AGENCY CAN HELP

Every business needs an upgrade once in a while. Whether you’re integrating a new philosophy or undergoing organizational changes, rebranding is necessary to make sure the improvements within your business match the message you want to portray.

With so much research, planning, and strategy involved, it may seem like a daunting process. If your company decides to rebrand, hiring a writing agency to help with content creation is a great way to ensure that all of your content needs are met, while setting your business up for success in the long run.

What is rebranding?

Rebranding is a marketing strategy that involves a company undergoing changes to some aspect of its identity and creating new materials and processes to reflect that.

Whether it be a new concept, name, design, or all of the above, rebranding intends to change the corporate image of a company from the perspective of customers, investors, competitors, and stakeholders.

Partial Versus Complete Rebranding

Businesses rebrand for different reasons. Some of the common ones are:

• Market repositioning. A business may need to shift its brand identity to target a new audience. This requires rebranding of some sort to follow suit.
• Acquisitions and mergers. Two companies coming together means discovering a brand that represents the new entity.
• A change in vision, mission, or values. A company’s core message needs to be reflected in its branding to attract the right customers. If your brand’s philosophy changes, rebranding is necessary to ensure your new message resonates in the best way.
• Expanding to new markets or locations. When a business ventures into a new market or location, rebranding promotes a new image for audiences to identify with.

When a company is just looking to freshen up its brand identity, it will likely change some aspects while keeping the brand’s heart.

A partial rebranding is a way to redefine a company’s place in the market with refinements in visual brand identity, services, or marketplace. Minor “facelifts” like redesigning company logos, reworking mottos and catchphrases, or upgrading color schemes are involved.

A complete rebranding includes changing all aspects of a company, resulting in a new organization. All of a company’s internal and external structures are revamped to fit the company’s new identity. Complete rebranding is common with companies experiencing mergers, acquisitions, and product overhauls.

What role does content creation play in rebranding?

Wintress Odom, owner of The Writers For Hire, explains: “Handling content when rebranding can be difficult for a company to take on alone. It’s an overwhelming process, and many don’t know the best way to attack the problem. The biggest challenge I see is one person has been put in charge of reworking, rewriting, and revamping a huge amount of content—on top of their everyday job!”

For every business, content is king. It’s easy to underestimate how much new content needs to be created and updated when rebranding. Along with new designs, marketing strategies, and style guides, rebranding requires vast amounts of content—especially for companies undergoing mergers and acquisitions.

Some of the most common types of content needed when rebranding include:

• Internal Communications
  • Emails
  • Processes
  • SOPs
  • Day-to-day operational content
  • Policies and procedures
  • Reports
  • Stakeholder communications (internal and external)
• External Communications
  • Website copy
  • Ads
  • Blog posts
  • Social media posts
  • Email newsletters
  • Direct mail
  • Style guides
  • Brochures

You may not know the first step to tackle when working on content rebranding. Every department within your company has different content creation needs, and it might feel like they all need to be met at once.

So much time and effort go into creating one piece of quality content. And content creation is only one part of the grand scheme of rebranding. Instead of overwhelming yourself trying to keep up with content, you might want to consider hiring a writing agency.

3 Ways Hiring a Writing Agency Can Help With Rebranding

Deciding to hire a writing agency ensures you will have quality content that reflects your brand appropriately, prevents issues like employee burnout, and ultimately saves time and money.

Agencies have experienced writers who specialize in the task at hand.

When you hire a writing agency, you can be confident that the content creation process is in good hands.

Writing agencies employ skilled writers who are experts in creating the types of content you need.

You can be at ease knowing that the end product will be quality content that is creative and well-written without common mistakes.

It also helps to have a different set of eyes on your marketing content. A writing agency can offer suggestions to improve your strategy and ensure that your company gets the right message across.

Agencies take over content creation, so your employees don’t have to.

According to Odom, “Content is almost always an afterthought. Because of this, some of it never gets done at all. Pieces of it will get done, but the pieces that don’t, become this mess of legacy content that just sort of stays around and confuses people.”

Rebranding can leave you and your team swamped with unfamiliar writing tasks on top of a typical workday. A writing agency takes over the process, so you avoid adding too much to your employees’ plates. This way content becomes a priority in your rebranding process instead of something that will get done eventually.

Handing over content writing to an agency means subject matter experts (SMEs) can be involved when it matters while still getting their actual jobs done.

When you hire a writing agency, you’re investing in your business.

Choosing to hire a writing agency may be a costly upfront expense, but it will allow you to save time and money in the long run. A writing agency helps you prioritize the most urgent items to ensure that all efforts are consistent and organized. Since the agency’s primary focus is content, you can concentrate on other parts of the rebranding process.

Outsourcing writing tasks can help increase business efficiency and profits over time while reducing operating costs. Since everything related to content creation is handled by the writing agency, the end product will be cohesive and your key messaging, tasks, and goals will be clearly expressed in your content. The improvements in internal and external content will result in less wasted time, effort, and business costs.

What to Consider When Hiring a Writing Agency

Consider and prepare a few things before you hire a writing agency to help with content rebranding. To ensure the company you are hiring produces the best results, consider:

• Performance versus size. Just because an agency is large doesn’t mean it’s always the best option. Make sure to dig deep into the history of the agency you’re thinking about hiring and base your decision on the strides they’ve made in the writing industry.
• Portfolio. Checking out an agency’s portfolio is the easiest way to assess their work, reputation, and processes and see if they align with what you want to achieve with your rebranding. Look at their testimonials and see if they have previous experience working with companies similar to yours.
• Track record. If you’re on the fence about a particular agency, speak to one of their former clients. You’ll be able to get unfiltered insight into what it’s like working with the agency and discuss the client’s overall level of satisfaction. It could be the deciding factor in whom you choose to work with.

Once you choose the right agency for you, prepare your team. Each department head should set goals to attain and create a plan, itemizing materials that need to be created and updated.

What does the content rebranding process look like?

“Every company’s rebranding process will be different, depending on factors like deadlines, preferences, who they are, etc.,” says Odom. “It also depends on the type of rebranding. Mergers and acquisitions usually need the most content. When two companies are merging, we take the best from each company’s processes and services to create new content.”

When you hire a writing agency, all content needs are taken care of, but communication between SMEs and writers is necessary to complete specific tasks.

Making your employees available for integral parts will ensure the content creation process is straightforward and that the writing agency has the information they need to produce the best results.

Some essential steps in the content rebranding process are:

• Data collection. Data collection is necessary for the agency to learn more about your company. You may be asked to provide legacy content, and some agencies will sit in on training sessions and interviews with new hires. This way, the agency can understand your company’s culture and processes and create content to reflect that.
• Content audit. The writing agency and your team will band together to conduct a content audit to assess your content needs. This will involve analyzing and cataloging all of your company’s content for strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement.
• Gap analysis. A gap analysis will determine your company’s content requirements and assess the performance of your current content. The agency will figure out what’s missing, what needs to be updated, and how, based on the results of the content audit and suggestions from SMEs.
• Mapping out workflows. Does the new process differ from the old one? Mapping out workflows deciphers what steps should be added or omitted based on your new business processes. The agency creates an actionable improvement plan so accurate content for each new process can be created.
• Prioritization of tasks. The agency will prioritize which content to tackle first. Some content poses a higher risk than others. High-risk content that is poorly constructed is most important to address.
• Content creation. A skilled team of writers creates the necessary content, and your SMEs offer revisions. Groups of writers who are experts at interviewing SMEs and know the best questions to ask to understand and write about your business processes will be in charge of creating content.
• Signoffs. Different companies have different requirements regarding signoffs. Once revisions are complete, you’ll want the leader in each department of your company to review and approve documents.
• Quality assurance. The quality of each document is assessed to meet the specified requirements of your business. A front-to-back edit is conducted to ensure the new content for each process is working together in harmony.
• Style guide edit. All content is edited and proofread against your brand and style guide. The final touches such as fonts, color schemes, and word usage are added to ensure the content accurately reflects your brand.

Final Thoughts

Choosing to hire a writing agency might be your best option to streamline content creation in your rebranding process—especially if you’re experiencing a merger or acquisition. Not having to focus on your content needs frees up your time to concentrate on other aspects of rebranding.

When you correctly approach content rebranding, it’ll benefit your business in the long run. Investing in good documentation ensures quality results and reduces wasted time and effort. This eventually increases profits by improving stakeholder communications, marketing strategies, and credibility.

Always remember to focus on an agency’s work and reputation when choosing the best option for you.