Due to the increasingly transparent and accessible world driven by social media, business owners now have to figure out if their brand is relevant enough to navigate through new territory.
Rebranding is a scary topic for most business owners. It takes a lot of time and it’s not as simple as just changing your logos font and color. By rebranding, you are showing your company’s commitment to evolve and shift the consumer’s perception towards your brand and how your
progressing with an evolving market.
Instead of having your company stuck in the past and losing customers, it’s time to embrace the transparency and share your story and brand to the digital world. Here are 5 tips to keep in mind when you start considering rebranding that will make the process easier.
Give your brand a story
Every company has a story, make yours resonate with your audience. Consumers align themselves with companies they trust and believe in. We all keep our past close to our heart and you don’t have to stray far from your original mission statement if it’s relevant enough. But don’t hold on to old ways and old morals that get in the way of creating a new identity, especially if they don’t align well with how the market is evolving or where your audience is going.
Streamline your identity
Even the best of the best have made the mistake of having multiple identities for their company. This makes it confusing for consumers to keep up with who they are buying from. FedEx is a great example of a company that had multiple marketing identities. Up until 1994 FedEx had 7 different identities, they realized this was confusing consumers and took a year to rebrand and put all of their identities under one umbrella, FedEx. In 2016 they took it one step further and made a more subtle change of making all their logos purple and orange.
Avoid the clutter of too many brand names. If your company has too many names, it’s time to declutter your identity and streamline it under one. Having different names on websites, social media, business cards, and other advertising outlets is not only confusing but it’s harder to manage.
Don’t be afraid to move forward
It’s human nature to not handle change well. With a complete brand overhaul, you are looking at presenting yourself as a new company that can still leverage the assets you have built and attained. That is not only terrifying, it’s also extremely brave.
It takes a long time to rebrand a company, from trying to find the right direction to getting all the stakeholders on board, the time it takes is typically longer than you anticipated.
Don’t let this be the reason your company stalls on moving forward though. Don’t over analyze waiting for everything to be “perfect,” that could be something that never comes to fruition. Decide what the minimal viable product is and work towards that. Understand you can always tweak and change as you go along in the future, but don’t become paralyzed trying to get every detail “just right”.
Understand rebranding is an external and internal war
Sure, your end game goal is to win over the hearts of the many, but also realize you need to get everyone on board with this process even right down to your employees.
Brand ambassadors start from within, so getting employees excited and creating a personal connection to the brand is very important.
There are two effective approaches to getting your employees on board with the new branding and creating buzz to reach new clients.
- Implement a launch week. Create engaging ways that the staff can participate and motivate with by using incentives to do much needed mundane tasks like changing email signatures, changing out old literature, updating the voicemail, and taking photos to post on social media promoting and creating hype around the new brand.
- Have your employees engage in creating a new brand book. This is a great way of getting your employees to understand the new origin and meaning behind the rebrand. This provides them with the knowledge they need to move forward but also establishes a personal connection to the new brand.
Find your audience
It’s easier than it seems for companies to lose track of who is buying their product. You might have one demographic in mind, but it could be a completely different reality. This is what was happening to Old Spice back in the early 2000s.
While Old Spice was having fierce competition, they were seeing a major drop-off in revenue. They went to an advertisement agency and found that women were their primary audience, not men. This is what created their highly viral campaign “The man your man could smell like.” With this rebranding campaign, they were able to revitalize their brand and stay relevant.
Use an agency to help discover who your actual buyers are and plan accordingly. You can either brand to cater more towards them or do a more drastic rebranding to get the target audience you want.
Rebranding may seem daunting, but by utilizing these tips and making a commitment to the future of your company, you will be reflecting a forward-thinking mindset and creating an important statement of relevance for your brand. This will bring a sense of fresh energy which will open the doors to new possibilities, communicate new value, and reach a broader audience than before.