Your customers interact with your business in more ways with each passing year. Even if you maintain the same sales staff, your brand — the market identity that sets you apart — needs to change with time.
That kind of evolution happens through a brand refresh. You’ll retool marketing assets like your webpage and social media. You might update or rethink your logo, and you’ll bring your customer-facing copy into the present. As you make these updates, you’ll need to stay abreast of current design and communications trends while staying true to your brand.
Increase User Engagement and Retention
A new customer’s first interaction with your brand is likely to be digital: via mobile or the web. They may come to you with a goal in mind, or they may discover your business organically. No matter the method, a refreshed online presence improves many aspects of their experience, especially:
- You allow customers to find what they want with little downtime. Everyone is impatient online, and the easier you can make it for a customer to find the car they want quickly, the more brand loyalty you build, and the more sales you close. A refresh will optimize the way customers find the information they need, how simple it is to consume and understand that information, and, most importantly, how easy it is to buy.
- You ensure customers consistently interact with your brand. You’re not likely to convert a prospect to a sale the first time you reach them. That’s why it’s vital to create clear and informative content. Pages that are easy to navigate tend to increase the amount of time a customer spends with them. More engaged customers spend more time thinking about a purchase and less about going elsewhere.
- You give customers a clear understanding of what your business stands for. It shouldn’t be hard for customers to understand your mission statement. They know you can offer them value, but you should also endeavor to create an emotional reaction once they interact with your content. Consider something that showcases how your business is a collection of caring professionals and how your service and sales are tied to your dedication to every customer who walks onto your show floor.
Even if you focus on just the three above factors, you’ll probably find that almost everything about your online presence will need updating. You’ll be improving the layout, search functionality, information hierarchy, and more. You’ll also open up opportunities for new messaging that better reflects how your brand has evolved, and a refresh is a perfect opportunity to make those improvements.
Define, Expand, and Clarify Your Messaging
How a customer understands your brand goes beyond the incentives and deals you offer them. It comes from how you speak to them, online or off. When working on a refresh, take stock of the language you use beyond the numbers. Then set up a hierarchy of what you feel is most important to your bottom line.
In this case, hierarchy is the order and orientation of messaging whenever a customer engages with your brand. Your OEM will set some of it, but beyond that, what you believe to be most valuable takes priority. Awards, years of experience, dedication to safety and security — these are just some of your assets that can play critical roles in your brand image.
You can also take the time to expand on and clarify the copy you already have. You’ve probably got plenty of language already written that shows the value you provide. There’s no need to rewrite it from the ground up. Take time instead to tighten everything up so it says only what it needs to say.
Take stock too of how your business has evolved since you last updated your copy. Is there some new benefit you can offer customers, some new way they can rely on you to fulfill their needs now and in the future? You don’t have to create a whole new page or pamphlet to advertise it. Making it a primary feature atop what you can already provide is enough.
Stay Current with Market Trends and Aesthetics
Brand aesthetics are bound to change over time. It’s a business’s job to stay abreast of current trends and update accordingly.
For instance, Toyota and Nissan recently refreshed their logos to favor a flatter, more streamlined look. Their old logos were more three-dimensional, and they made this update to match other major brands in automotive and elsewhere. You might have also seen that Google made changes to its logos across its services. The color pallet is the same — green, yellow, and blue — but the design is much more streamlined and in keeping with current trends.
Your brand can also benefit from updates to your visual identity: your logo, company colors, and slogan, among other assets. Bringing everything up to modern standards shows your customers your willingness to evolve and shift as the market requires. It positions you as forward-thinking, adaptable, and in touch with the times. It’s something customers will appreciate whether they’re buying for the first time or looking for info on their first new vehicle in twenty years.
Refreshing your visual identity also allows you to set your business from the competition in new ways. You can take a long look at how other dealerships built their aesthetic and push your own in new and exciting ways. The exact path you take toward a better look will vary depending on your business’s evolving needs and your OEM’s restrictions. However, it should allow you to differentiate yourself from your competitors and highlight what matters most to you and your customers.
Ultimately, how far you take a brand refresh depends on how much you can dedicate to it and how long it’s been since your marketing received an update. You can, however, expect a lot in return. Increased customer engagement on your digital platforms, increased brand awareness and loyalty, and a better-constructed set of assets are just some of the benefits you’ll see. This process should not be undertaken lightly, but the work you put in now will pay dividends for years to come.
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At ReVo MG, we recently went through a refresh of our own, both on our website and our product offerings. Contact us today to learn more about our new and updated products and visit our new website to see how we’ve made our way into the future.
