How to Elevate and Grow an Existing Brand: A Strategic Playbook
- Andrew Burke
- May 7
- 4 min read
Once your brand is established, the real challenge begins: How do you keep it growing, relevant, and resonant?
Elevating an existing brand isn’t just about redesigning a logo or launching a new product—it’s about aligning your brand’s foundation, visibility, and experience with the direction your business is moving. Whether you're a few years in or decades deep, there are proven strategies to reignite growth without losing what made your brand great in the first place.
Here’s how I approach brand elevation strategically—and the first area we’ll focus on to drive lasting growth.
The 5 Core Areas of Brand Elevation
When working with growth-stage brands like Roll One, Momenta, or Well Groomed Lawns, I often start by auditing performance and positioning across five strategic pillars:
Brand Positioning & Story Refinement: Is your current message still aligned with where your market is headed?
Audience Expansion & Segmentation: Are you actively growing into new customer segments or deepening your relationship with current ones?
Product or Service Innovation: Are your offerings evolving with customer needs, or falling behind competitors?
Channel Strategy & Campaign Optimization: Are you leveraging the right platforms and optimizing creative for performance?
Brand Experience & Loyalty Building: Does your customer journey reflect your brand promise, from first touch to repeat purchase?
Let's dive deeper and explore the first and most foundational area: Brand Positioning & Story Refinement.
Revisit and Refine Your Brand Positioning
As your brand grows, the original story that helped launch your business might no longer match the company you've become, or the audience you're now trying to reach. Many businesses hit a growth plateau not because their products are off, but because their brand story hasn't kept pace with their evolution.
This stage of brand growth is all about realignment, not reinvention.
Why Positioning Matters (More Than Ever)
Your brand positioning is what customers believe about your company—and why they choose you over anyone else. When your positioning is unclear, outdated, or too similar to competitors, even loyal customers start to look elsewhere. Great positioning answers three core questions:
Who are we for?
What unique value do we bring?
Why should they choose us now?
Signs It’s Time to Refine Your Brand Positioning
You might be overdue for a positioning refresh if:
Your audience has grown or changed significantly
Your messaging sounds the same as your competitors’
Sales are steady but your brand isn’t gaining momentum
Your product offerings have expanded or shifted
Your internal team isn’t aligned on how to describe what you do
These are the exact signals I look for during a brand audit—and they’re often the source of a slow drift between marketing efforts and business growth
How to Refine Your Brand Story
1. Revisit Your Brand Promise
A brand promise should be more than a tagline—it’s the emotional and functional benefit your customer expects to receive. Ask: Are we still delivering what we promise? And does that promise still matter to the people we serve?
For example, in my work with Momenta, we evolved the brand promise from “scientifically sound solutions” to “relief you can trust, wellness you can feel.” That subtle shift made the brand more emotionally resonant and positioned it for broader appeal in the wellness market.
2. Refresh Your Messaging Pillars
I often help clients identify and document 3–5 core messaging pillars that underpin all communication. These are the main themes your brand should own in the market—whether you’re speaking on social, via sales teams, or through product packaging. Examples might include:
Transparency & Education
Innovation & Design
Results-Driven Performance
Community & Advocacy
Once these pillars are defined, they become the foundation of your voice, tone, and storytelling—no matter the channel.
3. Rework Your Positioning Statement
If your original positioning sounds something like “We offer quality products with great customer service,” it's time for a rewrite.
Here’s a basic formula I use to help brands create a sharper positioning statement:
[Brand Name] is the [category] for [audience] who want [specific benefit or transformation], unlike [competitor or alternative], we **[differentiator].
For Well Groomed Lawns, that sounded like: “A professional-grade landscape brand built for homeowners who expect reliability and excellence—unifying three legacy providers under one seamless experience.”
A positioning statement like this becomes an internal anchor and a launchpad for your external messaging.
4. Update Your Brand Narrative
Your brand story isn’t just “how you started”—it’s the journey you’re inviting your customers into. A powerful narrative frames your evolution as part of your value. Ask:
What challenges do your customers face today?
How has your business evolved to help solve them?
What do you stand for now that’s even more relevant than when you began?
Tip: Tie your growth back to your mission, and make your customer the hero of your story.
Tools for Brand Story Refinement
Customer Interviews – Hear directly how people describe your brand now.
Competitor Heatmaps – Map out messaging themes and tone across your industry.
Internal Messaging Workshops – Align leadership, marketing, and sales on your refreshed positioning.
Brand Voice Guidelines – Document tone, vocabulary, do's/don'ts to ensure consistency.
Recap: What Makes Positioning Successful
It’s simple enough to repeat.
It’s different enough to stand out.
It’s flexible enough to scale with your business.
It’s meaningful enough to inspire loyalty.
Brands don’t just grow by running more ads. They grow by aligning what they say, what they offer, and how they show up—with where the market is headed and what customers need.
This is just the beginning. In future posts, I’ll go deeper into the other pillars of brand elevation.
Want to elevate your brand? View case studies here.
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