Is it time to rebrand?
A rebrand is something that every business undergoes at some point. With branding being the way you attract customers, tell your story and market to your target audience, it’s so important to make sure your branding is working for you.
It’s easy to look at social media and compare your business to others. You might see a competitor launching their shiny rebrand and automatically think that’s what you need to get more business too, but a total rebrand might actually not be what you need.
By definition a rebrand is ‘to change the corporate image of a company or organisation. But branding is about so much more than that.
It might not be that a rebrand means a complete overhaul of your business either, but that small and more subtle changes might need to be made to add to your branding or bring things back in alignment.
The benefits of rebranding can be enormous in helping your business evolve, to start appealing to a new audience or to help take your business up a level.
Let’s take a look at how to identify whether it’s time your business had a rebrand…
You feel like your business has evolved
It isn’t always possible to invest in your branding right from the early stages of your business. If you do get a branding designer involved from the get go, that’s great. Chances are you may have done something quite DIY or low cost to begin with due to the lack of budget. If this is the case for you, you’ll more than likely reach a point where your growth might start to feel quite limited by the quality of your branding or you simply feel as if you have outgrown it.
Businesses are just like us humans; they’re dynamic beings that change along the way, and so the thing you started out doing in the beginning may not be what you’re actually doing now. Your visions for your business, your goals and your mission might have developed as time has passed. Your focus may have changed and the ideas you had right at the beginning or customers you thought you’d be serving actually turn out to be different. It’s definitely time for a rebrand if you feel your current branding is holding you back, and you feel things are misaligned.
If you want to take your business to a new level, scale up, increase your prices or refocus on attracting a new type of client, your branding will need to evolve alongside every other aspect of your business.
You’re not attracting the right clients
It’s highly likely that if you did a DIY job on your branding the first time round and you’ve tried to put your prices up at some stage, the two no longer align. Your brand is what establishes your image and expectations to your audience. If you want to change the kind of audience you are attracting, it’s important to identify who your ideal clients are and consider what you need to change about your branding in order to reach them.
A branding designer will help you by getting an external pair of eyes on your business to see where this misalignment might be, by getting more strategic about your branding and helping you identify who your ideal clients are.
Your branding isn’t consistent
You’ll know if you read this blog post, that brand consistency is so important to building a strong and successful brand. If you don’t establish a professional looking brand with a clear message that’s consistent across all platforms and touch points with clients, it’s time to look at the strategy behind your brand.
It could be the case that you don’t need a complete rebrand, but that some brand guidelines should be put in place to keep this consistent. Consider getting a brand style guide put together. This will help make sure you keep things constant with your branding across all the platforms and media you use.
Your branding doesn’t help you stand out
If you take a look at your branding, do you think it stands out above that of your competitors? One of the things your branding should do is show how you and your business are unique in some way.
It’s easy to fall down the trap of making your branding look the same or similar to someone else’s in your industry and to imitate what’s working for them. But being unique in your business and branding is the best thing you can do to get noticed.
It’s worth taking the time to focus on what makes your business unique and what will help you stand out from the crowd. Your branding should reflect this and this is one of the ways a branding designer can really help.
As a branding designer myself, I’m definitely not telling you that a total overhaul and shiny new brand is the only way forward. Being strategic about your brand and reassessing things within your business is always the best way. Ultimately, a rebrand can look completely different from one business to the next.
While it can be helpful to get a professional pair of eyes on your business and branding whether that be for a rebrand or simply for advice, it could be as simple as remembering by yourself or within your team that keeping your brand consistent is just as important. Continuously referring back to your goals, mission and remembering who your ideal clients are will go a long way in helping you achieve a successful, professional brand.
If you’d like more advice on what a rebrand might look like for your business, you can find out more about working with me, my process and how I help creative businesses build bold brand identities to turn the heads of their ideal clients here.
