5 Keys To Successfully Rebranding Your Business

By Brandon Garcin, Content Marketing Manager, Continuum

The New Year often brings with it new business ambition. Whether it’s setting new financial goals, planning for growth and expansion, launching a new product line, or anything in between, chances are that branding and marketing are going to play some sort of role in the process. And if you haven’t touched up your logo, refreshed a tagline, or optimized any marketing or advertising campaigns for some time, it might be time to consider a rebrand.

Rebranding your business isn’t an overnight process, and the more established you are in your industry — and the longer you’ve been using your existing branding, style, and marketing collateral — the more careful you’ll want to be when kicking off any new branding initiative. Here are five important things to consider when looking at a potential rebrand.

Ask Questions Before Doing Anything

There are some important questions and considerations to look at before diving into a rebranding project. Why have you decided to rebrand? Are you looking to change your overall business strategy or alter your core messaging and value proposition? Why? Are there market pressures, industry changes, or things happening in your competitive landscape that are affecting your decision? Has there been a change in leadership looking to bring a fresh perspective and brand to the organization? And once the decision to rebrand has been made, what resources will you need to allocate to the project?

Make sure you’re defining a clear need and a reason to rebrand — don’t make the decision on a whim if you’re just feeling bored with a logo and want to change things up. As the old adage tells us, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

Tread Carefully When Enhancing Your Logo

This is extremely important for well-established brands with some level of recognition already in place. A rebrand is a time to be innovative and creative, but it’s critical that you carefully consider and weigh any potential damage that might be caused by a complete redesign as part of your decision-making process. Clothing retailer Gap learned this the hard way in 2010 after attempting to launch a new logo for the first time in 20 years — it lasted about a week before the company reverted to the original design we all know and recognize.

Sometimes slight changes can have the largest impact, and things like optimizing fonts or making small design modifications can often have a greater payoff than a complete logo overhaul. Don’t feel that you have to reinvent the wheel to be successful.

Know — And Talk To — Your Audience

Your customers and prospects are perhaps your best focus group when looking for inspiration or validation that the ideas you’re considering as part of a rebrand will be successful – and it’s never been easier to connect directly with these audiences. 

Remember, your brand is a key component in your overall marketing strategy – and your messaging has to strike the right balance between what you want to say and what your customers want to hear. Who better to provide feedback than the people you’re hoping will actually end up purchasing the solutions or services you’re offering?

Find Your Value Prop — And Stick To It

What makes your business unique? How do you differentiate from the competition? What value are your products or services bringing to customers that others don’t have? Your value proposition should be clear and concise and showcase both what it is you do and how you’re doing it differently than the next company.

Once you’ve identified and established a core value proposition, don’t stray from it. Remember, a rebrand isn’t an overnight project — and there’s no better way to confuse customers than by sending mixed messages or continually changing the way you present yourself and bring your offerings to market.

Follow A Creative Checklist

There’s a lot that can be impacted by a rebrand or a design refresh, and creating a checklist is a great way to stay on top of everything and make sure you’re not missing anything.

Laying out the rebrand process itself — setting deadlines for when drafts should be completed, outlining who’s responsible for review and approval at each step, and ensuring that all key stakeholders are in agreement — is essential. But you’ll also want to create checklists to ensure that all existing content and collateral is updated and distributed as needed. 

Rebranding can be a great way to make a bigger splash in your market, increase brand awareness and presence, and get a fresh new spin on things that can help attract new customers.

When looking to rebrand, don’t underestimate the value of conceptualizing, meeting, planning, reviewing and optimizing it can take to really take things over the finish line and be successful — and make sure you’re realistic in allocating the right resources and budget that you’ll need to complete the project. Last but not least, remember that your brand and your style help define who you are in the eyes of your customers — and their needs should always be a key driver and influencer of branding, design, style, language, and more.  

Brandon Garcin, content marketing manager, is responsible for the creation and execution of a variety of educational deliverables at Continuum designed to both win new business and support existing customer accounts. With an education and background in journalism, his approach to marketing blends traditional newswriting practices with data-driven creative writing to create content that stands out and effectively delivers its message to readers.