The process of rebranding a startup
An interview with Stacy Goh!
Welcome, welcome, to an insightful interview with Stacy Goh, Digital Marketing Manager at Outwrite, previously known as GradeProof.
Stacy hus cut her teeth on tech marketing, including being the first employee at Wildcard, and being part of the team at Sneaking Duck when it was acquired in 2018. Having seen almost the entire lifecycle of a startup, she knows a thing or two about getting them off the ground, but more importantly what it takes to take them to the next level.
A rebrand is a really exciting, but laborious, project that often goes unappreciated. Most recently, you may have seen the backlash Bankwest received for updating their logo and colours. Check out this Facebook post if you want to see the worst of it.
But, for startups who don’t have lunatic customers that are weirdly attached to a bank’s app icon, a rebrand can be what helps them cut through the noise and standout in the market!
Onto the interview…
Kayla: How do you personally define the value and importance of strong branding?
Stacy: To me, a brand is more than a logo or a name. It's what people think and feel when they interact with your company. It's the identity shaped through your product, your advertising, your socials, even your customer support.
That's what makes strong branding so important. If you want to hire the best employees and attract the most loyal customers, you need to give them a clear, compelling story to connect with. And once you've accomplished that, it will be much harder for competitors or the occasional bad review to touch you.
I've seen the effects of strong branding first hand. Customers will ask you for merch, and whether there's a vacant spot for them on your team. Influencers will offer to partner with you, and agencies will invite you to speak at their events. For early stage startups especially, they're signs that you're onto something good.
K: At what point does a brand need rebranding? What triggers should marketers look out for?
S: There are many reasons why a company may need to rebrand: to expand into new markets; refresh an outdated look; fix a damaged reputation; or merge with another company.
In Outwrite's case, a rebrand was necessary to driving our next stage of growth. Our previous name, GradeProof, and logo gave off some heavy educational vibes. While suitable for school students, it posed a serious barrier to acquiring professional users. Furthermore, the recent addition of our sentence paraphrasing feature meant we were no longer just a 'proofreading tool'—we were a writing assistant. So we decided to undergo a major rebrand, complete with a new name, logo, and visual identity.
But just because you can rebrand, doesn't mean you should. Plenty of companies have been punished for changing a brand that their customers already loved. In 2010, GAP reportedly spent $100 million on a new logo, only to revert to the original a week later due to immense backlash. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
K: What resources did you have available and use during the rebranding process for Outwrite?
S: As a bootstrapped startup with eight employees, we didn't have a multimillion-dollar budget at our disposal. The closest thing we had to an in-house designer was Canva. But I think that helped us think more creatively, and make the most of the resources that we already had.
We started off with a simple employee survey and Dropmark moodboard, to brainstorm what we wanted the new brand to look and feel like. We then collaborated with a group of freelancers called Simple as Milk to turn these ideas into something concrete.
When it came to implementation, we used Notion to track and assign tasks, Whimsical to design wireframes of the new website, and Webflow to build it. As someone with little coding experience, these tools were a godsend.
Finally, we used Google Analytics and Amplitute to measure the success of our rebrand on a quantitative level, and AnnounceKit to collect customer feedback. Fortunately, it was a big success on both counts!
K: What was an unexpected hurdle other marketers should look out for?
S: One of the biggest challenges was committing to rebranding in the first place. It's a big risk, and you can never be certain how customers will react to it. Sometimes you just need to trust your gut, and take the dive.
In addition, you should be mindful about where your product can be accessed. Outwrite is currently available on multiple online stores, all of which have different review times and requirements. I'd recommend compiling an extensive checklist of every asset and page that need updating, to ensure you don't miss anything during the transition.
Lastly, notify your customers about the rebrand well in advance. Clearly explain why you're rebranding, what's changing, and when. We found temporarily changing our name to "Outwrite, previously GradeProof" across all communications prevented any confusion when customers interacted with us for the first time after the rebrand.
K: What should really be outsourced to a specialist and what should be kept in house?
S: The important things, like the strategy driving your rebrand, should always be kept in house. You can then outsource the things you don't have strengths in, like SEO and creative, to specialists.
While we are lucky enough to have an incredible development team, we don't have a branding expert or a designer (though we are hiring one!). Simple as Milk filled both of these roles, and provided a valuable outsider's opinion on many of our ideas. This feedback helped us to fine-tune the personality, voice, and tone of our new brand.
Once we had confirmed Outwrite's visual identity, I could then put on my different marketing hats (copywriting, content writing, email marketing, search marketing, and so on) to make it happen. We even did our own PR, gaining coverage on Channel 7 News, The Australian, and Smart Company.
K: Any resources, courses, or articles etc you recommend for people who are interested in learning more about branding?
S: GV's 3 hour brand sprint is a great starting point, particularly for early stage startups. It's a collection of six branding exercises that will help your team refine what you do, and why you do it. I've used it twice so far, and found it stimulates some interesting and productive conversations.
I'd also recommend looking at the style guides of brands you admire. Slack and Mailchimp are some of my personal favourites.
Clickity clicks
I found a lot of links I liked this week! This story from Wired about managing esports stars and corruption in the industry was fascinating. I’d love to know more about esports marketing, it’s such a cool niche.
The Email School is a series of links and resources for everything there is to know about email marketing.
A productivity app, Tweek, is really similar to how I manage my to-do list (but I do it on Notion, if I didn’t use it at work I’d totally give Tweek a go)
I found Maria Medem’s animation for this music video to be quite inspiring (the song is really good too, bonus), and I found it through last week’s It’s Nice That ‘Midweek Mentor’ newsletter!
Best for last! This activity booklet from the Bare Bears movie is the single greatest piece of engagement marketing I’ve seen post-covid. Builds hype, prepares you for a watch party, and keeps you engaged. More activity booklets for webinars, please.
Next week…
Getting back to the B2B SaaS roots of this newsletter, be on the lookout for my guide to recycling leads, re-MQLing leads, and converting more of your funnel (even after they said no!)