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The world has changed– dramatically… and people are changing with it. If your company is sending out the same message as last year, chances are you’re being ignored. “Brand” is your voice and your message, and it’s time to rebrand.

The pandemic has created a seismic shift in how we relate to each other and our sense of community. To survive, companies need to enhance both their online presence and their ability to traverse all stages of the sales funnel digitally. They also need to connect authentically with the themes and ideas that resonate right now.

Hurricane Images is a communication design company, which means nothing irritates us more than vaguely worded, semi-inspirational, half-boiled blog posts on “how” to do something. So let’s get into some nuts and bolts. Our introductory post on Sales Funnels provides a basic overview of what a sales funnel is and how it relates to your business. Our post on A Deep Dive into Branding and Sales Funnels has illustrates the inter-relationship between marketing content and helping your customer choose your product or service. Many of the examples use video content, but the principles apply to any form of communication. The gist is this: your sales funnel helps you visualize the steps customers take before clicking the buy button, as well as the information you need to offer to help their process. In this moment, people need to be able to find your product, understand how it works, trust that it is beneficial, and feel confident in your ability to deliver. And all of this needs to happen online.

Those needs are defined in 4 clear stages: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, and Retention. Each stage requires content that helps the customer progress to the next stage. (Now is a good time to review our Deep Dive post.)

Amidst the daily turmoil, people also yearn for concepts, ideas, and themes that help them feel in control. Empowerment, choice, community, cohesion, and control are all themes your brand needs to rise above the competition.

Your brand is your statement to the world. And to an individual customer. Not every rebranding effort requires a top-to-bottom adjustment. In most cases, re-positioning is enough.

Companies are often reluctant to re-brand because they think it means changing everything. A nightmare of meetings, Mission Statements, Logos, and website redesigns clog the imagination. I rarely recommend re-working your vision statement, or logo, or color scheme unless you’re re-defining your target demographics (in other words, deciding that it’s not Millennials who should buy your product but Seniors). What companies need now is to highlight all of their products and services online, and provide easy, three-step processes for customers to complete a sale. There are three things that make Amazon.com the powerhouse that it is: their three-click sales process, the volume of information they provide on each product, and the breadth of their offerings. You don’t need to be able to offer every product under the sun to your customers, but they need all of the information for your products right at their fingertips.