When you start your business, you don’t always consider your branding a priority. But, even if you are creating a solid brand initially, some elements such as your brand values to logo design can stop working. That will result in slow sales and a struggle to get new clients.
If you are here, you’re not happy with your brand. So, it is time to give your brand a facelift. Rebranding is a good solution for many large companies, from Uber to Dunkin’ Donuts, which have proven successful in the past. So, let’s figure out what rebranding means and how to do it right for your business.
Table of Contents:
- What is Rebranding?
- Good Reasons to Rebrand
- Things to Consider When Rebranding
- How to Rebrand Your Company
- Wrapping up
What is Rebranding?
You know this phrase well: out with the old, in with the new. Rebranding is not just creating a new logo and new website design, but it rethinks the marketing strategy, including your brand values, mission statement, and new ways for increasing sales.
The concept of rebranding gives a new meaning to the company’s overall structure to present a new brand. When you’re starting to change things, try to define your ideal client and keep it in mind during this process.
Now you know what rebranding is. So let’s figure out the right reasons for a rebrand.
Good Reasons to Rebrand
Rebranding is a challenging task and can take significant risks. For example, after remaking Uber’s logo, 44% of people didn’t understand what its logo represented.
Suppose you opt for a rebrand because your brand awareness efforts aren’t cost-effective, or sales have decreased dramatically. In that case, you might need to change your current marketing strategy or do market research to define the problem. But if your brand’s mission, values, and the market doesn’t reflect your company, you might make the right decision.
Here are some good primary reasons for rebranding your company:
New market and audiences
Brands should connect companies with their clients. If you are sure about the potential of your new audience through price, product, or place, take time to reposition your business. Or your brand has introduced new products or services that sell well for new customers with unique interests. Then, it would be best if you reconsidered your brand to reflect your new offering.
New philosophy
If your brand doesn’t reflect your values, mission, and vision, it is time to re-evaluate your business and move in the direction that meets the standards for 2022 or 2030. If you think your brand is outdated, it’s time for a refresh. Take a look at the rebranding history of the McDonald’s logo:
Mergers and acquisitions
Suppose two companies work together and join forces, that means some changes to product or service focus, target audience, or strategy. You can’t allow two brands to battle it out. Creating a new brand that reflects changes will build credibility and avoid confusion.
You look like your competitors
Over time you may notice that the main competitors have the same look and feel, sell the same products, and even use the same brand colors. Therefore, they can follow the principles that make it more difficult to find you, among others. The rebranding will help you differentiate your brand from the competition, fuel inspiring content, and find a new position in the market.
New locations
If you expand your business to international markets, that’s the reason for a refresh. Make sure your company is associated with a suitable logo, messaging, etc.
Here are a few wrong reasons for rebranding:
Boredom
If you’re sick of your logo and design and feel motiveless to create new content, that’s not a good reason for a refresh. You can confuse your customers that might love your logo design and colors that, on the contrary, increase your brand linkage.
PR crisis
Whether you’re fighting against press blunders or persistent internal problems, rebranding isn’t a good way out of this mess: new name, new design, no mistakes. Unfortunately, people are smart enough to recognize it. The best way to overcome this crisis is to make changes internally, listen to customer feedback, instantly react to your mistakes, and apologize for them.
Internal changes
For new leaders, shareholders, or managers, rebranding is an excellent way to make their mark on the company. Unfortunately, they don’t implement a significant change that proves this rebrand in most cases. They do it more for themselves than the company.
If you still consider a refresh as the right solution for you, keep reading to discover things you should pay attention to when rebranding.
Things to Consider When Rebranding
A rebrand can be cost-efficient when you follow the rules of the whole process. Yes, it can be risky, but you should inform about all processes. So only this way can help you galvanize your purpose to be successful.
It isn’t obligatory to change everything about your brand. However, you can probably ginger up some aspects of your business. As a part of your rebranding process, try to consider the following things:
- Do you want to make a partial or total rebrand?
- Has your target audience changed or not?
- Do you want a new style? How will it help to reach your brand’s goals?
- Do you want to create a strong statement?
- Do you need to update your mission, values, and vision?
- How do you differ from your competitors?
Consider the digital assets during a rebrand like social media, website, invoice forms, email marketing campaigns, digital newsletter templates, business cards, printed marketing collateral, store signage, branded giveaways, and branded apparel.
It’s also important to not forget about your employees during a rebranding period. It is essential to educate them about the reasons for rebranding and generate enthusiasm to succeed in rebranding.
Try to create a long-term plan, and don’t make too many regular major changes, such as a logo change every year. That will make your customers confused about your brand.
How to Rebrand Your Company
Redefine Your Target Clients and Market
With the launch of new products, services, headquarters, or technologies, your target market and customers can be evolved for your brand. When you plan for a rebrand, conduct extensive market research to re-establish your new clients and market to focus on the most.
Take a look at the demographic age of people purchasing from you. Next, pay attention to competitors in a new market with their new products or services directly competing with your company. The goal is to determine the difference between your current brand perception and your updated competencies. Without this advanced research, rebranding can’t be done correctly.
Re-evaluate Your Company’s Mission, Values, and Vision
When you define your new target audience and market, it is essential to answer the following three questions:
What are you doing? How are you doing it? Why are you doing it?
Once you answer these questions, you can redefine your company’s mission, value, and mission. It is a keystone you should take for granted when you decide to change something for your company’s growth.
Vision is your “what” for each action your business takes. Therefore, it is essential to understand the overall picture before moving forward. It is ok if your vision has evolved over time. The main thing is to redefine it on time. Your vision can affect everything from your website redesign to your hiring process.
The mission is your “how”. It serves as your company’s roadmap. If your mission has changed, make sure to refresh your messaging for your brand. For example, a new Chobani mission sounds like, “The most important thing we make is a difference. It’s always been about more than yogurt.” They made a huge focus on nutrition and health in their ads and new products.
Values come with the “why” behind your company. It would help if you answered why you are directing towards your vision. During a rebrand, some values can be irrational. Your new values must reflect what your company is doing now.
The last but not least aspect to remember about rebranding is to define your brand voice well. If all the mentioned above have changed, make sure that your voice, tone, and vocabulary fit your message. The way you deliver the key aspects of your business needs to change.
Rebuild Your Brand Identity
For a rebrand, it is essential to rebuild your brand identity. The main idea is to consistently integrate your visual elements and brand features through all your marketing materials. Your brand identity is something that customers can conceive in your products.
To successfully rebuild your brand identity, keep the following things in mind:
- Rename your company: This is an integral part of your rebrand to support your long-term business growth. Your company’s name should align with your brand’s mission, vision, and values. To improve your renaming process, make sure to include a location, a new word, or an old word in new ways and add a suffix or prefix.
- Create a good slogan: It will make your brand quickly recognizable among others. To create the perfect tagline, try to stay metaphorical, use poetic language, make a claim, provide instructions, and compliment the target audience.
- Redesign your logo to reflect the significant changes for your brand. For a logo design, show confidence with a simple logo. Be adaptable for different channels and applications. Your logo needs to be consistent with your values, mission, and vision. Make it memorable in the long run.
- Select a new color palette. As you know, colors have a great impact on your brand. Probably, your competitors use similar colors. With competitor research and color psychology, look at your brand with fresh eyes and evaluate whether they are compliant with your brand image.
- Re-evaluate your typography. Check out whether your original fonts are compatible with your messaging and brand and why your old fonts don’t work anymore for your business.
- Reconsider your imagery and shapes to keep everything solid after a rebrand. They should support the key aspects of your brand identity.
- Build new brand guidelines that are very important for logos. For example, consider the following elements for your logo guidelines: color variations, logo elements, clear space, scaling, and rotations.
- Rebrand your videos to humanize the brand and stay in the minds of your customers. Therefore, they preferably engage with brands that deliver a great experience and evoke emotions using videos.
It is beneficial to have these guidelines on hand, especially when rebranding, redesigning a website, or updating marketing materials.
Conduct a Content Audit
Doing a content audit is an essential process for a rebrand to let you review all of your existing content on your website. Whether it is a blog post, an infographic, a social media post, images, or a white paper, all of the assets your company created for a specific purpose of distribution should align with your brand’s values, mission, and vision.
Try to renew all your marketing materials, and give a new look to your files, ads, posters, and other crucial documents for your business.
A content audit is a great way to get rid of clutter on your website and repurpose your valuable information that can be outdated. In addition, it can help you give actionable insights on how to improve your content and marketing efforts to move forward. Try to communicate the audit goals to your team and keep everyone responsible for executing the action plan.
Design for Accessibility
Accessibility for a rebrand is one of the most critical factors that affect your rankings and user experience. In addition, an accessible website should adhere to ADA compliance. Ensure to implement the W3C Accessibility Principles to your redesign to meet accessibility guidelines from the beginning.
When redesigning your website for accessibility, try to incorporate the latest updates. If you don’t know how to start with it, you can read and learn more about Web Fundamentals.
Track Brand Sentiment
When you’re refreshing the new elements for your brand, find out what your customer wants to see in a rebrand. Then, you can create focus groups or surveys to determine which branding images and messages align with your brand’s mission, values, and vision. Even if you get negative feedback from customers, you can take time to go back and ensure that your company meets their needs.
It is significant to track brand sentiment during and after the rebranding process. You can also use online brand management tools like Mention to track brand sentiment and determine your clients’ feelings about you and why they feel pessimistic. Keeping it in mind, you can successfully rebrand by incorporating new messaging related to your audience.
Launch Your Rebrand
Launching a rebrand is the final step. Once you have executed all of the aforementioned processes, it is time to let people know about it. Try to share through social media, newsletters, paid ads, TV, radio, and other means.
You can also launch your rebrand by writing a press release on your site and social media channels. Highlight what changes you’ve made, what new elements you’ve integrated, how the rebrand will benefit your customers, and how to use a new website.
Wrapping up
Rebranding serves as an incentive to stay consistent and on-brand for all your marketing efforts as we advance. Therefore, it is worthwhile as long as it’s done properly.
However, as rebranding is a collaborative process, be aware of what to do and not do to keep your brand on point. I hope that the following guide will help you achieve your company’s goals and succeed in the market.
