11 Lessons: Rebranding Process

Our clients, Stacia & Robert Guzzo of Handcrafted HoneyBee came to us to tear their business down to the bedrock and build it back up again. Do you want to know why and how to rebrand your own business? Then this is a must-read. Here is some insight straight from them! 11 Lessons: rebranding process.

They began as a brand that wanted to empower women, but that wasn’t why their customers were buying.

They started to dream bigger, and they found that the magic happened when they began to think smaller:

The women most in need of self-confidence and inspiration are actually women-in-the-making.

In every girl, there is a potential inventor. A potential artist. A potential entrepreneur. A potential chemist. And we can help to nourish and unlock that potential.

We want to empower the next generation of promising young women to become leaders that can integrate logic, creativity and intuition to solve the problems of the world around them.

And we’re going to do it with a simple kit.

We’ve turned Robert’s writing about their strategy and mindset into an ebook that doubles as a workbook for you to do the same for your business. You can grab that here:

What made this branding and website project so effective?

Of course the Aeolidia team does their best on every project. I’ve managed to pull together a group of designers, developers, strategists, and content creators who are never able to settle for “good enough” – they’re constantly going above and beyond the call of duty. We provide the design and tools and our client uses them to build their business.

But sometimes a client comes along who is able to harness the power of the Aeolidia team to make something that is almost guaranteed to succeed. What did Stacia and Robert bring to their project that will likely ensure their success?

1. A deep understanding of their brand, their perfect customer base, and what differentiates them from others in the market. I can’t overstate how important this is to success.
2. Being aware of where they needed to invest in their business. The heating bill for your studio is a cost, and something that you might as well try to keep down. A design project, however, is an investment. Keeping costs down here is going to hold your business back.

Below is a preview of the book. So fascinating!

A-Z rebrand with Handcrafted HoneyBee

Prologue: we were struggling and everything felt like an uphill fight

“If you are struggling with your current brand – trying to find your voice, striving to figure out why your message is not connecting with your audience, seeing that your business goals are not aligned with kinds of customers you are attracting – then this story should offer you some hope. Because we were there. Oh yes, we were there big time.”

Part 1: the need to change

“Our current brand was failing to resonate with the customer we had targeted, but it was also failing to effectively serve the customer we were actually reaching. We had a choice to make: either take a hard look at all aspects of our current brand and fix it to attract our target customer, or go all-in on a ground-up rebrand in order to provide real value to our actual customers.

Part 2: the work it takes to get a rebrand right

“But brand is so much more than the visual style. It’s more than the logo. It’s more than the website or the product or the blog. Brand is the heart of the relationship that you want to have with your audience. It’s the foundation of your entire business. It’s your reputation. It’s your WHY. And that’s why a rebrand should never be taken lightly.”

Part 3: how to choose a designer

“The day that Stacia got the quote, she wrote me at work to say, “It’s a lot of money… but it could also be the tipping point. The thing that gets us to the point where we are making a living from this dream. And it’s a really good proposal. We have some talking to do!”

Part 4: creating compelling content

“The more we wrote, the more we fell in love with our new brand! Because the more we wrote, the more we realized just how much of a need there was for what we are creating. We realized just how much we wanted to serve our customers. And we realized just how much we had to offer them.”

Part 5: creating and using your brand guide

“And here’s the craziest thing. Our designer was surprised when she saw how much we were actually using it. In a recent correspondence she wrote, ‘Rarely do my clients take their style guide and really run with it! I think of all my clients, you are only one in a small handful who has.’”

Part 6: creating compelling packaging

“Our top goal was packaging that could speak for itself. Previously, our products would sell when we were there in person to speak with the customers. But we didn’t have packaging that could sell a product on a shelf or on a website.”

Part 7: juggling two brands at once

“Whatever we planned to do for our content marketing, we wanted to honor the audience & customer base that had gotten us to this point. So one of our main goals was to help our current audience understand the reasons for the rebrand and invite them to share in our vision for the future.”

Part 8: building a homepage

“Our short-term goal was improving our online sales conversion. Our long term goal was a bit more complex: strengthening our customers’ relationship with the brand. As the owners, Stacia & I were in charge of content creation, but each member of the Aeolidia team would be able to contribute to the story we were trying to tell, the value we wanted to deliver & the connection we wanted to forge.”

Part 9: launching the new site

“Bespoke tailoring is clothing built from the ground-up, starting with your body. Bespoke fits you perfectly because it was made precisely for you. It has the features you want because it was designed with your needs in mind. The same is true for a custom website.”

Epilogue: relationship advice for your rebrand

“We began this rebrand with a strong focus on our “why.” It was a vision of the future, the seed of an idea. Everything that followed—our content, our visual identity, our packaging, our website, even our product lines—sprouted from that seed.

And those investments in our brand have started to bear fruit. In the kind replies of our newsletter readers. In stellar customer reviews. In awards & press coverage.”

The return on investment for this project

Aeolidia’s success is our client’s success, and we would have been devastated if Rob and Stacia’s investment hadn’t paid off. Everything we do for each of our clients aims them toward their goals, and it has been rewarding checking in with each client six months later to see the ROI in action.

Here is what we found from before Aeolidia’s work to after the rebrand:

247% increase to conversion rate (our work)
371% increase to monthly visitors (Stacia’s work)

This led to a:

918% increase to income

Stacia and Rob have seen strong growth after investing in their business. You can read the specifics of how the rebrand affected their sales here: 3 Ways to Increase Shopify Conversion Rate: Handcrafted HoneyBee

Interested in starting the rebranding process?

Contact me if you want the power of the Aeolidia team behind you to help you meet goal after goal after goal for your own business.