Rebranding your business is a giant step but one worth taking to reach new customers, revive your brand and put new energy into the organisation. But a rebrand is not something to sneeze at. It requires thorough preparation, execution, and follow-through. You first have to understand why you want to rebrand. Are you distancing yourself from a negative perception? You’re expanding into new markets? Are you updating a name-brand dated, or are you going to be merging with another business? If you can clearly state your reasons for rebranding, then your strategy will have a guide, and you will know that your efforts are working toward the goals of your business.
Here’s a comprehensive guide on how to re-brand your business effectively…
Assess Your Current Brand:
Analyse your existing brand identity from your logo, colour scheme, and messaging to the look in general. What works? What doesn’t? A great deal of insight comes from your customers, employees and stakeholders, each addressing in full what is known about your brand in the market. Next comes the research of the target audience and competitors. Your rebranding should turn on your ideal customers and make you different from others. Do some research into the market to understand the likes, values, and pain points of your audience. Take a look at how your competitors have approached branding to identify gaps you can fill within the market. With this information at hand, it’s time to develop your new brand strategy. This should include your brand positioning, personality, values, and unique selling proposition. The new brand should express itself in regard to its being, its purpose, and the difference that sets it apart from its competition. You want to strike a balance between preserving some of your current brands that work and feel authentic for your audience while also introducing enough new elements that signal evolution and change.
Be Creative:
Now comes the fun part: designing your new visual identity. Your logo, colour palette, typography, basically all the visual elements that bring your brand to life in every medium. Unless you have in-house design, it is more than worthwhile investing in professional help. An experienced graphic designer or branding agency will be able to turn your brand strategy into an effective, relevant, and powerful visual identity. Your new logo should work on everything from very small business card sizes to extremely large billboards. Choose colours that elicit the right emotions and reflect your brand personality. Your typography should be legible, clear, and in line with your overall aesthetic. To help maintain this uniformity, online design templates can be very helpful. Keep in mind that quite often this is what most people will attribute to your brand, so get it right. On the other hand, even with so much connected to visual elements, don’t forget your brand voice and messaging. Create a tone that’s clear and consistent, reflects your brand personality, and speaks directly to your audience. This should come out in all of your communications channels from website copy through to social media posts and campaigns.
Shout About Your New Brand:
Once you have the new brand elements in place it is time to consider how the roll-out will happen. Develop an overall launch strategy document detailing how and when you will introduce your new brand to the world. This could include a phased approach to first internal communications to bring along your staff, followed by a soft launch to key stakeholders, and then finally a public unveiling. Consider organising a launch event or creating a marketing campaign to generate some buzz for your rebranding initiative. Take advantage of all channels in order to express your new identity through your website, social media platforms, email marketing, and traditional ad channels if relevant to your audience. It is very important to update all brand touchpoints as the rollout happens. This involves the website, social media profiles, marketing materials, signage, packaging, and any other customer touchpoint – consistency is everything in branding.
Communicate Effectively:
Internal communication is as important as external communication in the process of rebranding. Your staff members are your brand ambassadors and must be fully equipped with knowledge and key details of the new brand. Ensure they understand and accept the brand guidelines through training on the new brand and why there is a need to change it. If your team comes in line with your new brand identity, it can represent it more efficiently to customers and the general public. Track closely the reception of your new brand following launch, seeking out customer, employee and industry feedback. Make small adjustments as and if required but significant changes to a brand that’s been newly launched can confuse an audience and weaken your message. Far too often, people think of a rebrand as getting a new logo or colour palette. This is the part where the alignment of the whole business must be in accordance with the new brand promise. This could be through product offerings, service, customer service, or even organisational culture. Ensure all areas of your business meet the expectations of your new brand.
Measure Your Success:
Track relevant metrics that would signal the success of your rebranding, be it brand awareness, customer perception, website traffic, social media engagements or hopefully increased sales figures. You may want to compare these metrics to your pre-rebranding numbers to see the impact of your efforts, but be patient. While some improvements may be immediately obvious, a completely new brand will take a little time to get properly established in the market. With all your marketing efforts and consumer engagement, constantly reinforce your new brand identity. Further develop and improve your new brand with every step forward. Just like your company and the ever-changing market, a strong brand will grow and move. The real key to keeping your brand fresh and alive is to monitor its performance and make small course corrections as necessary.
Finally, protect your new brand. Consider trademarking your new logo and other key brand elements to prevent others from using them. Develop and enforce brand guidelines to ensure consistent use of your brand assets across all platforms and by all team members. A company rebrand requires some careful planning, tons of creativity, and constant execution. It is almost like an influx of new energy into the venture. Done right, and it may help attract new clients and position one geologically for long-term success. Following these steps and maintaining a focus on your new brand identity will help guide you through the process of rebranding to a more powerful and compelling brand that your target market requires and can differentiate from competitors. To the very core, a good rebrand is building a new story about your business that speaks to the very heart of who you are, what you do, and why. It’s not a facelift. Done well, a rebrand has the potential to point a way of entering new chapters in business expansion and success.