A new name, a new logo, new visuals, and, the marketer hopes, a new customer base: Rebranding changes the associations with your business in the minds of your customers.
Whether you're rebranding to promote a new product line, freshen up your look, or going for a complete brand overhaul, there are a lot of components of a rebranding strategy to understand if you want to keep your existing clients while also expanding to a new market.
Let's go through the rebranding process so you can make sure you get the most out of your rebrand.
Rebranding is creating a new identity for your business in the minds of your customers, your competitors, your prospects, your investors, your employees, and at large.
Experienced marketers know that everything visual about your company, the totality of your brand identity, is essential to your success.
First impressions are very important. Neuromarketing tells us that it only takes seven seconds to develop an opinion of a brand. Sometimes, that is just enough time to take in your logo and maybe the image of a product. You usually don't get a second chance.
User experience is also an important part of developing brand loyalty. Even if your product or service is great, if a customer struggles to buy it, they might not complete the purchase out of frustration. Bad website design can doom your business from the start, and sometimes rebranding is necessary for starting over.
Brand logos are more memorable than advertising. If your brand is unmemorable, your ad campaigns won't work.
Today, you also need to add social media to your brand strategy. You can build customer loyalty to your brand before their first purchase if they have a positive experience with you on social media. If you did not take social media into account in your brand strategy, a rebrand is a great opportunity to launch accounts.
Branding is very important to financial success, and most companies devote 5% to 10% of their budget just to maintain their brand. But that doesn't mean that they always get it right.
Some companies rebranded their rebrands when they receive significant backlash about their new logos. Other companies rebranded after a scandal to give themselves a fresh start.
But if you need to rebrand, that doesn't mean you are doing anything especially wrong. You just need to improve your image.
A company might decide to rebrand itself for many reasons, both positive and negative.
Suppose you built a thriving online business printing photos onto coffee mugs, and you wanted to expand your business to selling custom-printed T-shirts and framed photos. Your new brand should reflect your expanded offerings.
Sometimes businesses get a bad reputation after an event that was not their fault. Sometimes businesses get a bad reputation after an event that was their fault. Either way, rebranding helps them reset their public image and regain trust with a different set of customers.
In these situations, just changing your name is not enough. You will need to take a fresh look at your business strategy.
Pabst Blue Ribbon was once a popular, inexpensive brand of beer in the United States. Have you ever heard of it?
If you live in China, you probably have. Pabst Blue Ribbon is now a premium brand of beer in China.
Companies rebrand when they are acquired by other companies or when they take on partners.
They might also rebrand when they decide to go after a different market segment, for instance, deciding to go after the luxury market instead of sticking with bargain basement products. Companies rebrand when they start serving a different location.
But there are also times when it is not a good idea to rebrand.
Just changing your company's name or logo without changing the way it relates to the public will cause a lot of confusion.
There are some predictable problems with rebranding your business.
Have a strategy in place before you begin your rebranding efforts.
Understand your company's mission, vision, and values. Thinking about your company's values and what about them is essential.
Consider your brand voice. Think about how you will have to change words, images, tone, and voice to convey the values of your new brand.
Many companies don't have the luxury of starting with a clean slate. They have to consider which brand assets they want to carry over to the new brand.
Your style guide shows your designers, UX staff, and content creators which legacy elements continue to be viable and which define their new style. Make sure everyone is using your new fonts, color palette, logo, typography, and brand voice.
What's your value proposition? Do you offer something your competitors don't?
In marketing, there is a concept of optimal heterophily. This term refers to the fact that consumers are always looking for something that is different, but not too different.
Your new brand image must be fresh and relevant but still be something that your leads and prospects can recognize as the thing they are looking for, even if they just didn't know it.
It is easier to rally your team behind your new brand if it is a team effort. Seek input across your company. The most valuable insights may come from people you did not expect.
Remember, the people in your company will become the public face of your new brand.
Consider if you need to change your name, logo, social media profiles, and so on. You may need to change these elements of your brand because your name is not sufficiently unique to be memorable. Also, you might need to make changes because of trademark issues. Or you may need to change your business name because it is hard to remember or hard to spell.
Don't forget to change your tagline. Your slogan is what will stick with your customers as you build your new brand. If you have a slogan or a tagline you can't do without, consider whether you really need reputation management instead of rebranding.
If you sell physical products, you will need to redesign your packaging. If you leverage your brand with illustrations, you need to make sure that your design styles don't clash with each other.
The next step is to look at audience segmentation and behavioral targeting for your new, emerging customer base.
By narrowing your focus on specific subgroups in your target audience, you can tailor your messaging and work to build trust with your refreshed brand.
A rebranding might also mean new marketing strategies, so you need to re-evaluate your current marketing initiatives to make sure they align with your updated brand.
One way to evaluate your marketing is to get smart recommendations from surveys to see where you can improve your outreach and content. Depending on your rebranding, you might need to fully revamp your marketing, or you might just need to make a few small changes.
To the extent you can, connect your old branding strategy with your new one. This means looking over your branding basics, such as voice, tone, brand identity, visual branding and storytelling, and values.
Depending on why you've decided to rebrand and how much, you might be able to keep your brand voice or other elements with your new strategy, or you might decide to completely update your strategy.
A relaunch can have many moving parts as this is when you take everything you've updated—visuals, logos, slogans, marketing strategies—and put them out into the world.
Think about how these elements will be received based on the planned launch date and consider any global events occurring at the same time that might impact how your audience perceives your rebranding.
This is also a time to look into social media tools and running digital ads.
Because you are rebranding your company, it is possible that you will initially lose some recognition—but a rebrand is also an opportunity to regain customer loyalty and reach new clients. This is where public relations comes in.
Now that you have your branding ready, you need to distribute it. This can be in the form of social media posts, CEO interviews with news outlets, or another approach that fits the specific strategy you've established.
Company rebranding is a lot of work but it is a lot easier when you have the software tools and support you need.
Keep your entire team on board with your company rebranding business strategy as you integrate the best elements of your existing brand with the exciting aspects of your new business identity.