As a business there comes a time when you need to rebrand and give a fresh or total new look to your brand.
Often it might be caused by the evolution of the business, new ownership, reposition your brand in the market or a bad reputation of the brand over time.
Whatever the reason, it?s important to understand, how your brand is perceived is vital to its success.
Rebranding to define it is the process of creating a new look and identity for a company, either in a product or a website.
It would involve a fresh or a total change in the company name, logo design, products, market and identity or, just a few minor changes such as a visual redesign or a new marketing strategy that addresses a new target market.
Therefore a rebrand?would either be a completely new look or a part of the brand?s website or a product.
Related: 4 Ways To Building A Strong Brand Identity For Your Startup
Why You?ll Need to Rebrand
Rebranding brings new life into your business or product. It is encouraged to do it with a focus on strategy, a clearly understood process, creative vision & thought, and most of all for the right reasons.
If you are stuck in deciding whether your business would need to rebrand, consider the reason to help you determine that before making a conclusive decision.
1. Repositioning your brand in the Market
How well your brand is positioned will determine the performance of your business.
How a toy store is branded compared to a law firm is quite different. Building the right reputation and positioning of your brand in the market lies in how you have rebranded your business, company, store, or brand.
When crafting a new identity for your brand, it should reflect on your values, and the market you are targeting.
2. The poor reputation of the brand
A poor reputation of the brand in its industry or the customers gives a negative result on the business sales, perception and its overall operations.
Poor reputation, might be cause by poor customer service, inadequate quality control, or questionable business practices.
With simply rebrand you might restore the brand image. Consider advertising after the rebrand on the change of the business operation, which is likely to improve the brand reputation.
Having a full rebrand for a brand that had a ruin reputation, provides the opportunity for a fresh start.
3. The evolution of your company
Over years companies and brands evolve too, and so do their branding. The Apple logo used in 1976 is not the same as the current logo. As the Apple brand evolved over time the current identity with their branding has been simple, timeless, appropriate.
With the growth of a company or a business and having attained an adaptive message and the new market share, they may consider revamping their current identity.
4. A change in ownership
For example, Telkom and Airtel plan to merge to take on Safaricom may result in a change in the brands identity, rebranding of their products or even renaming the brand.
A business or company may consider a rebrand after a merger, acquisition or de-merge. The new acquisition of a company might result in the rebrand to start things on a clean slate to the public.
However, this is usually not mandatory for every time there is a change of ownership.
A merger between small business with the purpose of increase on the market share or outdo a competitor in the market, may want to create a new identity and rebrand the products to create a new perception of the brand to the customers.
5. Change in your customers need
The shift in the market demand for your product or service that is not generating sales may be a result that your brand is not noticeable to clients in providing them with the necessary solution.
Building a brand for the people that solve their lifestyle problem with your marketing strategy is what would provide an improvement in the overall branding effort.
For instance, Your brand message, design and packaging may have been suitable for small business owners, but they?re less relevant to the large enterprises.
A product or service that was intended for a given gender, age groups or affinities with its expansion to curb a wider market a rebrand may be necessary to communicate this.
A small business that is aiming to scale on its market may experience the need to revise their services or products and rebrand them in order to generate a great reputation.
The visual image, the identity and how communication is managed, matters to win on customers.
How to Rebrand Successfully
If you?re planning to rebrand your business or company, it?s important to think about how to do it right for the success of your brand.
Rebranding often starts with the logo and visual identity of a company or business.
As this is the first element that the customers would interact with before getting to know more about your entity. It is important to have it right.
Choosing the right colour, type, visual style and pictorial that communicate your brand, would make the next phase of rebranding easy to work with.
Here are some of the factors to consider for a successful rebranding:
1. Create A Story For Your Brand
Your company or business objective should inform the story you craft for in developing a brand strategy.
Have a story that could be expressed by each customer or client who interacts with your entity.
Let your customers find the connection tied with your story and the services or product you provide.
2. Research
Research on your customers, clients, team, or funs on the best way to communicate your brand, company or business.
For example, One on one chat with the respective group and gather feedback from them and analyse your current branding strategy could be ideal. Introduce new concepts to your branding and find our the reacts to each of them.
Get to understand the perfection of your brand from the customers what are it could be improved to gain increased brand visibility.
3. Consistent and Coherent Strategy
Having a new logo or website isn’t all in branding, however, it is tied to how the entire package or both digital and print media communicate about your brand.
With a totally new or a partial rebrand, it is important to ensure that it is consistent and coherent with the other communication.
4. Build a brand for the people
A brand with a good visual image with no connection to the customers often would have low performance in terms of sales or website visitors.
The main focus on any branding tied to the business objectives should be creating a brand that resonates with people.
It would be important to consider what your customers think about your brand, your products or service and the areas to improve on.
People connect well with brands that relate and connect with them.
Related: Safaricom Rebranding Their Identity
5. Create a visual content strategy
Regardless of the environment, your customers interact with your brands from products, in a website, or even social media platform, they should be in a position to recognize your brand.
With all the visual content available at your disposal for your either marketing or brand promotion. They should depict the brand message and the value proposition that could be identified with your customers.
As people respond to visuals more than a copy of text it is important as a brand to utilize the visual content to create the bond between the customers and your brand.
The choice of colour, font and visual element should in synergy to building your visual identity as a brand.
Conclusion
When starting a business, rebranding is never a primary thought to your brand strategy.
However over time as the business scales up with a change in the target market and customers needs, it is when a business would consider changing their brand identity – logo design, website design, new visual element for the brand among other. All this is with the goal of improving the operation of the business.
Some tips for Small Businesses – a complete rebranding may require resources you don?t have or may take too long to be profitable. Consider building your brand from the existing branding effort and progress in improving it.
Let’s know your thought on When you would consider rebranding? And What Measures would you take to deal with the challenges in the process?
