Rebrand Your Business Successfully
When it comes to revamping their branding and brand identities, businesses and brands unfortunately fall prey to the same procrastination fueled defeat that we all do. And it’s for much the same reason – it’s effort.
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Many successful corporations including Fortune 500 companies embrace rebranding and have used it to build thriving businesses. This is because rebranding is the best way to take your business from where it is to where you desire it to be. You just have to know why a rebrand is important and whether or not it’s the right fit for your organization.
Diving deep into the foundations of the brand or business is a mammoth undertaking, one that often leaves those tasked with carrying out the brand refresh scratching their heads and not knowing where to begin. Do you put the branded pens under the microscope? Do you go as far as to alter the pixels in an email signature? And that’s before tackling the bigger questions like, “Do we need to change the businesses color scheme and repaint everywhere?”
The good news is that a refresh doesn’t need to be as overwhelming as it first seems, and actually, it can produce tangible results for business efficiency and productivity. All you need to do is follow the steps we’ve outlined in today’s blog. You’re welcome!
Table of Contents
What is rebranding?
The formal definition of rebranding is “the creation of a new look and feel for an established product in order to differentiate the product from its competitors.” Rebranding takes your existing product or service and makes you more attractive to your customers than your competitors. Although many rebrandings happen as a company introduces a new product, some actually take a product out of the mix.
Why do businesses rebrand?
It may come as no surprise but most rebrandings are firmly rooted in the need to reposition the product or service in the marketplace. No matter how much the company may be tied to its own brand, at some point, it is time to give it a fresh new look. It could be because of a new product, a shift in focus or a new technology. Or as complex as as a major shift in target customers or business strategy. Take J.Crew as an example. Back in 2003, J.Crew badly needed a new business strategy. Competition in the retail space had left them scrambling for any bit of the market share. So with a new CEO also came re-positioning of the J.Crew brand. Within 5 years, revenue increased by 107%.
All businesses take a gamble when rebranding. The challenge is how to face that challenge head-on, while not alienating your core audience.
The Basics of Rebranding
There are a lot of different reasons that an organization might look to rebrand, and just as many ways to go about it. With the right processes and mindset, a rebrand can be the thing your business needs to improve marketing in the future.
You have to understand the key pieces to a rebrand in order to develop a successful message for your audience. Also, you have to be able to identify why you want to rebrand, in order to figure out the kind of rebrand to do. This is done to help you achieve your goals in the best possible way.
Rebranding can change your entire brand identity, or just refresh it. Depending on the message you want to get across, there are two kinds of rebranding you can focus on.
What is a brand refresh?
Before we get started, it’s best to take a moment to define what we’re talking about. A brand refresh is not a complete overhaul. Read that again: Not a complete overhaul.
Instead a brand refresh is like your house getting a Spring makeover, but for your business. The changes involved in a brand refresh are often minor, but do make a substantial difference to the brand’s visual identity, especially if the values, goals, objectives, or persona of the brand has been updated.
If you’re attempting to reach new customers, or want to inject a little bit of vitality into your existing business or brand to make something existing feel brand new, it’s a perfect low risk way of formulating growth and repositioning your business.
Rebrands shouldn’t be taken lightly given the legwork and potential risk involved. That said, they’re totally necessary and happen often for the reasons below.
Your business is shifting its focus and messaging
Maybe your business is pivoting to new products and services.
Or perhaps your current branding doesn’t reflect your voice or values.
Either way, these are legit reasons for a fresh start. For example, changes in your branding and marketing messages might reflect:
- Simplifying (or expanding) your product offerings and features
- A commitment to being more socially conscious
- Going from “discount” or “affordable” to “premium” or “boutique” (or vice-versa)
Whether motivated by new leadership or customer feedback, a rebrand on social is the perfect way to communicate your updated mission.
You’re struggling to stand out in your industry
This is a problem that many B2B brands and SaaS companies face.
Branding is everything when there are dozens of companies offering near-identical services like yourself. If you’re in an up-and-coming business among crowded competition, a rebrand can cement your identity.
Heck, ongoing rebrand are popular even among established companies. Doing so allows you to modernize your business and avoid being perceived as stuck in your ways.
Your customers aren’t thrilled with your current brand
Unfortunately, this is something you’ll likely learn the hard way.
There’s no good way to ask past and present customers “Why don’t you like us anymore?” That said, warning signs of a damaged brand include:
- An uptick of negative social comments (“outdated,” “disappointed,” “they fell off”)
- Getting called out as being the lesser among your competitors
- Dealing with a significant crisis or public backlash
When done right, a rebrand on social media can be the sort of “hard reset” you need to reestablish yourself. If you’re worried about your current brand health, social listening tools can clue you in via mention monitoring and sentiment analysis.
Rebrand vs. Redesign: What’s the Difference?
When it comes to rebranding, be careful not to mix it up with a redesign. While the two terms are similar at first glance, there is a big difference between the two.
A website redesign is often a process that one goes through during the branding process to recreate their site in the new look and feel. It is a detailed process of revamping your site, which includes updating content, refreshing layouts, and improving navigation for better conversions and site performance. This is often a process that one goes through during the branding process to recreate your site in the new look and feel.
A rebrand, on the other hand, focuses on the bigger picture. A rebrand is more complex and often takes longer. It can include updating the imagery, redesigning the logo, and changing the brand images.
A successful rebranding overhaul also involves redefining brand values, updating or rewriting the company mission, vision, and purpose statements, and creating a new target audience. if it’s an overhaul.
Types of Rebranding
So now you know what rebranding is and when a rebrand is and isn’t necessary. If you’ve decided that you need it for your business, there are two more things you need to know before you embark on the rebranding journey.
There are two types of rebranding — a brand refresh and a complete brand overhaul.
Let’s discuss the two, so you can decide which option is best for you.
Brand Refresh
A brand refresh or a partial rebrand refers to adding something new to your current brand or updating existing brand elements to make them more relevant.
For example, a brand refresh could involve updating your logo design, a new website or a reskin of your existing site or refining your brand voice. These are more minor changes that could help you attract new audiences without alienating your current brand followers.
Suppose your brand is well-established and you have loyal brand followers and advocates. In that case, a brand refresh is a perfect choice to ensure your brand remains relevant and timely without ruining your brand reputation and minimizing your brand awareness.
Brand Overhaul
A brand overhaul, or a total rebrand, is a complete transformation and change in your brand identity and your brand positioning and messaging. A full rebrand can even go so far as giving your business a new name and changing your target demographic.
As a result, a complete brand overhaul is more complex, more expensive, and typically takes longer than a partial rebrand.
A brand overhaul is necessary if you’ve completely changed the direction of your business. That includes changing your business model, expanding your original offerings, being acquired by another brand, expanding into new markets, and similar.
A complete brand overhaul gives you the perfect opportunity to change the perception of your brand, create a new brand story, reconnect with your audience, and attract a new following.
Consistency Is Key
No matter which type of rebranding you opt for, there’s one thing you must keep in mind — all the changes that you make to your brand need to be consistent across all your channels.
That includes all the touch points that your audience has with your brand, such as:
- Your social media profiles
- Your website
- Your email campaigns and newsletters
- Official documents and stationery
- Other brand collateral such as packaging, business cards, and letterheads.
By ensuring everything is consistent, you can provide your audience with a cohesive brand experience to keep your brand memorable.
Brand refresh vs rebrand
We reiterated our point about a brand refresh not being a complete overhaul for one reason: Often brand refreshes and rebrands get completely confused until what started as a simple refresh has turned into an all out, no expenses spared, crossed wires with every department, rebrand.
A company rebrand is a complete brand overhaul. It starts from the top and tears down everything, including tone of voice, color scheme, visual identity, and persona. A brand refresh doesn’t do that. It makes small tweaks, like a different shade to the color scheme and perhaps an updated logo, and that’s that.
To help you stay on track, here are some main differences between them.
A brand refresh might look like:
Updating your current logo or visual designs
Changing your slogan
Altering your color pallet
Updating and enhancing marketing materials
Trying out a new font
Whilst a rebrand will definitely look like:
Creating an entirely new brand persona
Adopting a new tone of voice
Choosing new brand values
Aligning the brand or business to present to a different market
Overhauling the brand or businesses entire image
If what started as a brand refresh is veering into overhaul territory, veer it back! Confusion between the two will greatly hinder the cohesiveness of your brand’s visual identity.
Why do a brand refresh
Okay so if a brand refresh is so minor, why bother doing one? Simple: Because sometimes things get stale. Existing brands who lead the market still need to reinvigorate themselves sometimes to stay ahead of competitors and continue appealing to new customers.
Brand refreshes serve as fantastic low risk ways to reconnect with your brand’s identity, and to reach new clientele or add a bit of pizzazz to your brand for existing ones. There’s always a younger, swisher model waiting to take over, and that’s true no matter which industry you’re in. This helps you prevent that. Like botox.
On the whole, your reasons for undertaking a brand refresh could be:
To maintain the same core values of your business, but to either connect with new customers, or reconnect with existing ones
To realign your staff with the values or persona of the brand or business (especially true in cases of significant expansion where there might be a lot of internal change)
To allow the brand or business to reintroduce itself to the market and potentially attract new clientele, as well as prospect potential partners without losing existing ones
To showcase a more cohesive brand image, identity and message
How to do a brand refresh:
There’s more good news about brand refreshes: Their process is simple. Compared to rebrands, where lengthy consultation and guidance is a necessity, brand refreshes need some limited (but accurate) research, a touch of competitor analysis and a concise creative brief.
Here’s the brand refresh checklist that you can follow to keep those changes strictly refreshing instead of overwhelming.
Undertake Research and Discovery
Any type of branding development needs researching before it’s implemented, and it’s still the same when it comes to brand refreshes. Businesses and brands need to research how the market views them, what USPs they still possess ahead of competitors, and what changes may need to take place to stay relevant. To help, brands can ask themselves:
Is our branding still meeting its initial objectives?
Is it still in keeping with modern designs?
What will indicate the success of a brand refresh?
2. Audit your Brand
Brand audits are powerful tools for any brand, which is why we at Huddle swear by them.
Brand audits may seem conducive to a rebrand, but they can still be particularly helpful when it comes to deciding what needs a touch up, and what can be left well alone. If your brand has hit a plateau and you feel it is starting to lack relevance, or you feel disconnected from your customers, mind-mapping methods such as in an audit can present you with brand new ideas that can be organized and analyzed.
In an audit, try to analyses these main areas:
The brands main competitors: Have they evolved? How?
Areas of brand misalignment, such as promises that your brand or business is not fulfilling.
The website: How does it look? Does it serve a purpose? What is it used for? Is it fulfilling that?
Your brand images strengths and weaknesses. (Could include website and marketing materials)
Current (and future) trends within the industry
3. Develop Customer Personas
A common reason for a brand refresh is to connect with new customers or reconnect with existing ones. But since your last refresh, your customers’ hopes, needs and desires may have changed so it’s worth reassessing to make sure that your brand can realign with those changes. Ask:
Have our customers’ priorities and tastes changed? If so, where to?
Has the type of customer we’re targeting changed since the last refresh? If so, how?
Can we reach totally new customers? If so, who are they? What desires and needs do they have? How can we fulfill those?
4. Assess brand positioning and messaging
Once you have the answers to the above questions, your brand needs to position itself so that it does meet the needs and desires of the customers you’ve identified, and it needs to talk to those customers in their language to persuade them that it can.
Brands should ask:
Does our messaging need updating? How?
How can we ensure any updated messaging connects to new customers, without losing existing ones?
How can we ensure our updated messaging communicates the persona of the brand, the values of your business and the promises it offers?
How is our messaging clearer and louder than competitors?
5. Upgrade your visual identity
Most of the time a brand refresh focuses on an updated visual identity which reflects any internal changes the brand or business may have undergone. When it comes to a visual identity, it needs to be relevant and it needs to be unique. Similarities won’t differentiate your brand from competitors, and could even lose you custom.
Any visual identity refresh must convey the persona, promises and values of the brand so be sure to leverage your earlier research to guide your design decisions.
Other elements to consider include how much time and money to spend. For example if you’re refreshing the color palette, fonts and styles, remember that this will expand outward across all marketing materials, your website and any brand touch points.
Review the above listed elements as well as your website, page templates and illustration styles and ask yourself these questions as you do:
Does the visual identity tell the brand story?
Does the visual identity communicate the brand values?
Is the visual identity liked or disliked (May need market research)
Is the visual identity practical for use every day?
Is the visual identity working? (i.e is it drawing in the customers you expected)
Is the visual identity the best it can be? (Nobody is ever satisfied, but if a plethora of changes come to mind this indicates a more serious problem with the identity itself)
Is the visual identity inspiring to you and your customers?
6. Roll out your refresh
Finally, it’s time to present your new lick of paint to the world. Begin by:
Creating updated brand guideline materials explaining how the refreshed elements align with the overall objectives of the brand
Introducing everyone within the business to the refreshed elements so that they can be comfortable adhering to the changes going forward (especially in things like letterheads or email signatures)
Supplying everyone necessary with refreshed assets (new logo files and font packages)
Updating existing design templates
Redesigning major design assets to fit into the new stylistic choices (e.g. main website pages, marketing materials)
And then that’s it! Soon enough you should see the fruits of your labour if tangible correlations begin to occur between the brand refresh and increased efficiency, productivity or new client prospecting.
Have a Strategy Before You Start
One of the biggest ways to avoid isolating your current audience is to make sure that you don’t stumble and trip yourself up on your path due to lack of planning.
The difficulties in branding usually start with the details and how you implement them. You don’t really realize how much goes into rebranding until you start getting into it.
Your beginning plans might just involve the new name, domain, and a new logo. However, a rebrand is much more complicated than all that. You’ll also have to tweak company products, website design, content, product guides, the services you offer, and the clients you pursue.
In order to make sure this process runs smoothly without losing your audience, you have to have your plan in place before you start.
Plan for the changes that will come, and which parts of your marketing and business strategy that will be affected. Pick specific members of your team to be in charge of these areas.
Anticipate Questions and Concerns
Another key to maintaining your existing audience is to communicate well with your customers during your rebrand. If they don’t understand why changes are happening, they might lose trust in your business, and you could see a big drop in your revenue.
While you are rebranding, keep your communication simple, straightforward, and speak to people’s fears and concerns. People often find change very scary, and they need clear explanations and reassurance to understand and buy into your new brand.
Also, ensure that you have a sound reason for rebranding like we mentioned before. All of your employees need to be able to easily communicate it to existing and potential clients.
Publicize Your Rebrand
You don’t have to keep your rebranding internal or private. Often, businesses find that talking about their rebrand publicly can lead to an increase in business.
You can use social media, press releases, and media contacts to talk with customers and the public in general. You might wind up seeing an increase in traffic to your website, as well as more interest in your company.
You might even find that your customers are excited to see you expanding your mission. You could find a positive reaction comes out of it, as long as you do it right.
Maintain Existing Customer Expectations
The best way to keep your business running smoothly while going through a rebrand is to focus on keeping your customer service excellent, no matter what is going on. Make sure that the rebrand changes things for your current audience as little as possible.
Your rebrand is going to take some time to take off, so make sure that you still have your starting audience in order to keep your revenue from dropping.
Your ultimate goal should be to grow your company by serving your customers better. That can sometimes mean that you have to put your client services ahead of your rebrand, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
This might mean that your rebrand takes longer than expected, but you have to keep your priorities in order. Your client and customer-facing priorities need to be front and center, ahead of the rebrand.
Your willingness to delay your rebrand to better serve your current customers will pay off.
Why has Web Targeted Traffic rebranded?
September 2022
Big news! We are excited to announce that as of Sep 8, 2022, we are rebranding with a new logo and color scheme as part of the ongoing evolution of our company’s brand. We’re releasing an updated brand identity, which includes a new definition of our logo and colors.
After careful consideration, we chose a new logo that reflects a more modern look and captures our mission to deliver and bring widespread growth and build a better future for online fashion shopping, The new logo evokes strong feelings of energy and excitement.
We are proud to announce the launch of the new company logo as part of the ongoing evolution of our company’s brand.
Our business has grown and evolved over the last 20 years, and we felt it was time for a change. We have refreshed our logo to reflect who we are today and to symbolize our future.
We are also glad to introduce our new Website to present ourselves better and create a clear picture of our technology and presence in the world.
We realize that changing a logo is a process that can involve many steps and take some time, so we will finalize it gradually.
We felt it was time for a change as our company grew and evolved over the years. We have refreshed our brand to reflect our journey until today and we are excited for the new opportunities the future will bring.The visual identity introduced today has been designed to better connect with our clients and represent the work we do.
While we have grown exponentially and will continue to grow, a few things remain unchanged: our unwavering commitment to deliver excellent service to our clients.
We’ve assembled a team of Certified Digital Marketing and Traffic Channel Experts to deliver you More Leads and More Sales! Yes, we are willing to lose time and money for the betterment of our clients.
Explore our revamped website and tell us what you think!
For more information on growing and building your business, get in touch with us today!
