Once upon a time, rebranding was as simple as a graphic designer shuffling your logo around to give it a fresher look. Not so anymore. In today’s world, your branding must cover off a myriad of key communication points – both on and offline. It should convey your company’s values, personality, purpose and a whole lot more. In short, there’s a massive chasm between a logo redesign and taking your business through a rebrand.
Reading that, you’re probably asking ‘why the hell would we put ourselves through a rebrand right now?’ to which we would reply… read on, dear friend, read on. Ask yourself some important questions about your current branding and where it might be failing you (naughty branding!).
1. When your brand doesn’t talk to your audience
Branding is not just about colours, fonts and logos. It’s about how you speak to your clients, how you get them to stay with you and how you get them to tell their friends about you. It’s also about your digital presence – what you say and how you say it. And it’s about your imagery, videos and newsletters. In other words, it’s flaming loads.
Your branding might work for your current clients – but what about the people who don’t know about you yet? Rebranding your business so both existing and new clients find you interesting and worthy of their time and hard-earned cash is vital for business growth.
Ask yourself:
Does my current branding and communication plan appeal to my target audience? What more could we be doing with our brand to attract new customers?
2. When your brand doesn’t reflect your company values
More and more people want to know they are involved with brands with strong ethics and values. Your clients want to know what you stand for. They want to know your history as well as your future goals. You can convey everything through your branding. Branding can drive conversation, loyalty and action. But not if your branding is completely ignoring all this important stuff.
Ask yourself:
What does my branding say about the business? Will clients place importance on our values? Does that come across in our branding and communications?
3. When your brand doesn’t show your business in the best light
Clients want to know that you’re up to date in the services, products, trends, materials, technology, advice – whatever it is that you do. Keeping current means you’re relevant and that keeps clients interested.
Even if you don’t rely on new technology or modern twists, if you stick to classic, tried and tested methods, you must tell your clients. Your branding should do this for you, instead of hiding all the juicy stuff.
Ask yourself:
Does my branding tell people how we add value? Will our prospects get a feel for the quality of what we do and how we got here?
4. When your brand is no longer relevant to your business
Businesses change all the time. Named partners or directors retire, services can become obsolete (ah, fax machine. How we used to marvel at you). You might buy a new business or move into a new region. Suddenly, your business branding doesn’t tell the complete story.
Rebranding helps you fill in the pieces of the jigsaw that have been missing. A complete picture means your customers know exactly what you offer and how to buy it from you, instead of from your number one most annoying competitor.
Ask yourself:
Does my branding give customers looking for X, Y & Z the info they need to buy from us?
5. When your brand limits your business growth
As your business grows, chances are you offer services now that you didn’t when you started out, or vice versa. But, your branding tells customers you only offer plumbing when you actually offer plumbing, cake baking and jazzercize classes (you are so dynamic!). Rebranding gives you the chance to pull everything together into one jazzy, delicious, non-leaky dream of a business. Now there’s a website we’d love to work on!
Ask yourself:
Does my branding show the full services we offer? Are customers inclined to use us for some of what we do, but look to our competitors for others? How can we trap them in our honey pot and keep them there forever?
6. When your brand just looks old fashioned
It doesn’t matter how great you are at what you do, if your branding looks like you’re rolling around in the past wearing brown cords and Jesus sandals (in a non-ironic way) then you’re going to get left in the dust, old timer!
Your branding should tell the complete picture of your business, but it should also look like you care about how you look. “It’s not how it looks like on the outside, but what’s on the inside” is a really great adage when your teenager is having a meltdown about a bad hair day, but when it comes to your branding – it needs to be what’s on the outside AND the inside.
Ask yourself:
what do my friends, family, kids, colleagues, competitors think about my branding? Am I proud of how it looks? Does it reflect the hard work and effort that goes into the business behind the scene? Would I ever get a t-shirt printed up with our logo on it? And would I wear it in public??
7. When your brand is not a, er, brand
If you love your logo, if it’s fresh, shiny, modern and says exactly what it needs to – then you might think your branding is bang on. Not so. Branding, as we’ve discussed, needs to be way more than this. Or to put it in a different way – your business deserves so much more from your branding. Your branding is your social media pages, the way you communicate with your clients (existing and potential), how you speak to them, the tone of the newsletters you send, the adverts you place, the photos you post. It’s your website, your blog articles, your voicemail message – and yes, it includes your logo, colours, fonts and style.
In short – your branding is the whole kit and kaboodle and if you get it right, your branding is the first thing your clients will think of when the services you offer come into conversation.
Ask yourself:
Does my branding make people think about my business straight away? How does my branding stand out from my competitors on Facebook / Twitter / Instagram? Will my branding help people remember me when they search for my products on Google? What is my branding missing that my competitors have sussed?
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If you’ve dug deep into these questions and now feel that the time is right for rebranding your business – then hold onto the seat of your pants! You, dear friend, are about to embark on an exciting phase of world-domination business development.
Rebranding is awesome, it’s exciting and invigorating – but it needs to be right, because you only get one shot at rebranding – for a while at least. That’s exactly why rebranding can seem intimidating and why you might avoid thinking about it.
But it doesn’t have to be this way! Not when you bring in the rebrand professionals. That’s us, by the way. We’ll work with you on your business goals to make sure the whole rebranding process is pain-free and exciting as hell!
Ready to talk about rebranding strategies and workshops?
Let’s go!