Ever get that feeling that something isn’t quite right with your company’s brand?
If so, it might be time to make some changes. Sometimes a rebrand can completely reenergize your company and put it back on the right track. When 84% of purchases come from a referral, you have to make sure you’re meeting the needs of your customers.
But realizing when it’s time to rebrand your company and then actually going about it are two difficult things.
Let’s take a look at how you’re going to know when it’s time to change and how you should go about doing it.
Reason You Need to Rebrand #1 – Your Message Has Changed
We know that branding revolves around the message you are trying to send. And your message is never going to stay the same all the time. It’s going to change because the scope of your business is going to. In fact, if your message isn’t changing and growing with your business you are doing something wrong.
And this means you’ve got to rebrand every so often. If you don’t rebrand, you are not going to be doing what you say you are going to be doing, and you’re probably going to lose money.
Reason You Need to Rebrand #2 – Your Focus Has Moved
To brand your institution, you need to have a solid focus. And this focus will let you become an expert and authority on your subject. For the first few months or years of your business, you might be an expert in something, but over time this could change and you could wake up one day to find that your branding is no longer relevant.
Your niche is essentially your target market and who you’re marketing to. We know that a lot of companies have multiple niches, and so you have to send a message to all those different people.
Reason You Need to Rebrand #3 – Your Platform Sucks
It’s easy to forget we need to move with the times. The biggest design tip for the non-designer is to never allow your website to age too much. Websites tend to age like milk.
Accepting that your squeaky clean website has become outdated and no longer reflects who you are is tough, but the longer you put it off the more problems you are going to have.
A rebrand doesn’t always have to come as a result of a change in your business. It may come as a result of the fact that your tools aren’t at the cutting edge of your industry.
So How Do You Start Rebranding?
Rebranding is about doing two things. First of all, to survive your rebrand, think about your existing customers. A jarring change might lose them, especially if it impacts their products and services. Don’t thrust the rebrand on them without at least some prior warning.
Go out of your way to tell them via email that you will be changing certain things about the brand. And then go one better by telling them why you are making changes and what it means for them. Keep them fully involved as to what’s happening at all times.
For your target audience as a whole, a rebrand is much easier. Take it slow. Don’t suddenly change every single part of your business in one day. Rebranding should be gradual so as to not cause too much disruption. If we move at a slow yet steady pace, you’re better prepared for a big change.
Keep Customers in the Loop
You never really know how well a rebrand is going to go down until it happens. This is where customer feedback really comes in handy. Ideally, you should have asked customers about what they want from your brand when thinking about how you are going to get to your goal.
But when it’s actually happened, make sure that you’re asking them what they think and what they want to change. It can turn into a PR disaster if you make changes and people hate them, which can happen. There’s no better judge than the person giving you money.
How Often Should a Rebrand Happen?
Rebrands shouldn’t be something that you take lightly. It’s something that you should be doing because you’ve got to. And it shouldn’t be something that happens often outside of your first year of entrepreneurship. If you’re going through it more than once every 18 months, you’re probably confused about what you’re doing.
And if you’re confused everyone interested in what you’re doing will also be confused. Good rebrands come rarely and happen on the back of major company changes, as well as staying in touch with the people who matter most.
Do you have plans to rebrand your business?
