Last week we went live with our new application. Our new brand – Growth Panel – was born!
Since many of our customers have asked for case studies of companies at specific stages of our marketing process, I thought I’d share our thinking and the initial results of the rebrand.
The decision to rebrand came after reviewing feedback from user testing conducted in February. Most of our customer testers commented that our updated version was much different from our previous app, and deserved a brand that better expressed its capabilities.
I have to admit, the rebrand was a painful process. We were on a tight development schedule, which can sometimes interfere with getting the creative juices to flow, and quality results aren’t always compatible with short deadlines–especially when the team is already overworked.
When you force it, you often get weak results, or worse yet, utter garbage (like MarketWok or SparkSauce!)
The Anatomy of a Rebrand
Our initial list of names contained 156 options. Many of the names we liked didn’t even make the list because I wanted the .com URL to be available. There are simply too many variables when negotiating with third-party domain squatters, so why even entertain it?
We had some really crazy names on the list, but in the final stages, the choice became clear. We wanted a name that would support and complement all our stakeholders’ brands:
- Marketing & business consultants
- Their clients
- End-user marketing teams
- Partners with co-branded and private-labeled versions
The cool thing about Growth Panel is – it works!
Then we had to decide how to describe it. The new app doesn’t fit into any existing product category. Growth Panel contains online project management, document management, plan-generation functionality and electronic customization for the career’s worth of content that’s included in the offering.
During testing, users started referring to our new baby as a marketing platform. We liked that and we decided to go with it! Growth Panel is a marketing platform.
We also don’t fit into any of the existing software spaces that the analysts have created: EMM, MRM, marketing operations management, analytics, planning, marketing automation or basic project management (though Yahoo seems to think that we’re solely project management).
Maybe we’re closest to EMM (enterprise marketing management), but since we’re focused on SMEs and loaded with marketing intelligence that most SMEs don’t already have, we decided to call our space Intelligent Marketing Management.
Growth Panel Messaging
So here’s what we settled on for our basic messaging:
Marketing Content + Online Project Management = Intelligent Marketing Management
Growth Panel is software-as-a-service (SaaS) that blends a career’s worth of marketing content with online project management. It’s a marketing platform that enables users to create marketing solutions, add their own expertise to make it their own, and organize and manage their marketing activities.
Join the Conversation
We’re starting our soft-launch and laying the foundation for our social media Internet marketing strategy. We expect to ramp up over the summer, so join us and be a part of the conversation. You’ll find us at:
Take a Peek
We have plenty of screenshots and full audio/video screencast demos on the new website, but you check out a few screenshots below:
