The Moz rebrand story: what we learned (both good and bad) on our journey from SEOmoz to Moz.

Justin Vanning: Senior Customer Acquisition Manager

Masters of Business Online – Oct 9, 2013

@justinvanning

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What does “rebrand” mean?

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Rebrand: “To take an improved product, rename it and market it as new.”[1]

Rebrand: “The creation of a new name, term, symbol, design or combination

thereof for an established brand with the intention of developing a new,

differentiated identity in the minds of consumers, investors, and competitors.” [2]

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Why do companies rebrand?

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Proactive Reasons• New market: when a business is entering a

new market, often a rebrand is necessary to better align the brand with the new market

• New Audience: when a business wants to appeal to a new audience, often a rebrand is necessary to make the brand more relevant to that audience.

• Relevancy: when consumers no longer view a brand as relevant, a rebrand might be necessary.

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Why do companies rebrand?

Reactive Reasons

• Competitor Influences: sometimes a competitor will innovate so fast that it makes your brand look outdated.

• Negative Image/Publicity: sometimes a brand will be hurt by bad press or just develop a negative image.

• Mergers and Acquisitions: when companies merge or acquire new companies, often they need to rebrand to better represent the new combined brand identity.

The Moz Rebrand Story

What we learned (both good and bad)

1. Have the right reasons for rebranding and let those reasons guide you throughout the project. Make sure your team supports those reasons.

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Why did we decide to rebrand?

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1. Calling ourselves SEOmoz was no longer transparent or authentic

2. SEO is bigger than just SEO

3. For folks outside of our community, SEO had a negative reputation.

4. It was surprisingly hard for people to say the name SEOmoz

5. SEOmoz still had strong brand recognition from our consulting business past

6. Marketing play – to get folks to give us a second look and see our new product

2. Set goals and BHAG’s that the entire company can shoot for with the rebrand launch.

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Marketing goals of the rebrand for launch day/week…

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1. 1,000 waitlist signups on launch day; BHAG: 10,000 signups over launch week; Super BHAG: 5,000 signups on launch day.

2. Get more site traffic on launch day than we’ve ever had.

3. Promote the launch on social channels and generate higher engagement than we ever have.

4. Be super responsive on social and respond to questions, praise or inquiries from the community.

5. Get press coverage on at least 3 major websites and hackernews.

6. Get 10,000 video views of the new Moz homepage video on launch day.

3. Don’t try to do too much. Be willing to de-scope the project so you can meet your deadlines.

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So what did we want to change with our rebrand?

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Seriously, we planned to launch a new brand, website, and product at the same time. Yeah we were crazy!

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New Product: Moz AnalyticsNew Site: Moz.com

New Brand

4. Stay organized. Come up with some sort of way to track all the projects and status of each.

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We used a master spreadsheet at Moz to help organize and plan all rebrand related activities.

5. Build buzz prior to launch if possible.

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How did we build buzz prior to launch?

Launched a teaser site and captured over 5,000

wait-list signups

Seeded the new brand colors and mission in acquisition press releases, on our blog and at

conferences.

Had a social campaign on FB where we counted down the days until launch to get people excited.

6. Plan your launch day site takeovers well in advance

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What did our launch day site takeover presence look like?

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How did our paid advertising perform on launch day?

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Wallpaper Ad Unit81,892 impressions2,442 clicks2.98% CTR*highest ever on GW

1,989,397 impressions10,255 clicks0.52% CTR*Wallpaper units had 2.75%CTR or higher – one of the highest ever seen on BI

2,066,064 impressions5,177 clicks.25% CTR

547,296 impressions1,319 clicks.24% CTR*Wallpaper unit wasn’tclickable

Homepage Takeovers:

4,684,649 impressions19,193 clicks4,852 wait-list

signups

Other Paid Channels:

3,489 wait-list signups

7. Plan your social media account migration in advance to coordinate for a smooth launch day experience.

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How did we migrate our social accounts?

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Worked with the Page Ops team to coordinate transitioning from

facebook.com/seomoz to facebook.com/moz for launch

day.

Once we had the @moz twitter handle, we had to login from that

account and link it to the @seomoz account and then get

Twitter to verify it.

8. When planning and building a new website, make sure you don’t get too crazy where the site becomes inflexible.

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Things we did well with our new site...

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This resulted in visitors viewing 14% more pages, they stayed on the site 28% longer and we saw an 8% reduction in bounce rate!

1. We simplified our top nav.

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Things we did well with our new site...

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2. We built a new interactive product tour and revamped our “products” section

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Things we did well with our new site...

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3. We showed off the Moz employees, our personalities, and quirks.

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Things we could’ve done better…

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1. We went for a bold design that wasn’t very responsive design friendly.

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Things we could’ve done better…

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2. We went a little crazy with creative navigations that are making it hard to scale.

9. Try to make sure you are still releasing things during this major project so your teams have milestones to celebrate. Be wary of burnout.

10. Communicate the results of your goals/launch day with the entire company.

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So, how did we do?

1. 1,000 waitlist signups on launch day; BHAG: 10,000 signups over launch week; Super BHAG: 5,000 signups on launch day.

We destroyed this goal! We had 16,299 wait-list signups in the first 24 hours and almost 30,000 in the first 7 days.

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So, how did we do?

2. Get more site traffic on launch day than we’ve ever had.

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We also destroyed this goal. We had over 220,000 unique visitors on launch day (5/29) and almost 475,000 visitors in the first 48 hours.

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So, how did we do?

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3. Promote the launch on social channels and generate higher engagement than we ever have.

Twitter Stats:Inbound messages: 1729

Outbound Messages: 371Messages sent by Mozzers: 350#thenewmoz hashtag uses: 1086

Facebook Stats:1st post (launch at 7:15am):

Reach - 61664Comments - 115Likes - 692Shares - 71Clicks - 3636Engagement: 587% above average FB post

2nd post (10:32am):

Reach - 43888Comments - 43Likes - 540Shares - 168Clicks - 5659Engagement: 527% above average FB post

Key takeaways from our rebrand:

• Plan ahead and plan for the unexpected

• Involve everyone at your company

• Have a clear plan and goals for your rebrand

• Communicate that plan and the goals with the entire company

• Don’t make the project bigger than it needs to be

• Be transparent with your customers and community on why you are making

the changes you’re making

• Be responsive to your customers and community with their

feedback/questions regarding the rebrand

Last but not least, have fun and celebrate your hard work!

See what our launch day was like: http://seomoz.wistia.com/medias/oz6cpnlpwr

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Thanks for listening!

@justinvanning