Do you want to rebrand your business to overcome the success of your competitors?
Rebranding is a crucial step in the development of any business, and in today’s economy, it’s becoming more common than ever. If your business feels stale or out of touch with contemporary trends, undergoing a rebranding is something to actively consider. There are 7 elements that will accelerate your brand growth.
Revitalized branding allows businesses to improve brand voice, connect with newer audiences, and improve competition levels within an industry. However, knowing when to undergo a rebranding and understanding the reason behind it can be difficult.
In the following sections, we’ll highlight reasons why you may need to rebrand, and explain how to do so in an effective manner.
Rebranding: The Essential Strategy for Business Growth
Changing your name or logo isn’t all there is to rebranding: aligning and restructuring your identity completely is necessary to meet the needs of the market, customers, and even business goals.
Many are skeptical, thinking rebranding is something outdated companies do, but it’s actually a hyper proactive strategy adopted by many successful businesses on a routine basis.
Rebranding is a powerful tool regardless of whether your product portfolio is changing, or your company has already gone through a market shift and a leadership change. Realign your business with its audience strategically.
Let’s take a look at what steps are necessary to refresh your brand identity, and dissect why a brand refresh can be equally as important as a full rebrand.
When considering whether or not you should undergo rebranding, keep in mind the following:
Although not always needed, rebranding does not always require a complete identity redesign. Brand relevancy tends to be maintained without losing brand identity if only a brand refresh is executed. Take note of the indicators below that suggest it is time to rethink your brand strategy:
1. Your Brand Looks Outdated
Does your visual identity (color palette, logo, or typography) resonate with your audience? If these elements worked five years or more into the past, chances are they need an update.
Audiences and consumers tend to pay attention to whether a brand’s image is modern and up to date, so ensure your company puts in the effort to accomplish this. Rebranding allows you to change your image while keeping the foundation of your brand.
You have to understand that your brand is not just a logo. Logo is your business visual representation in the online world.
2. Your Audience Has Evolved
With the passing of time, audiences adapt. New generations are welcomed into the market. Each audience has their own set of values. As younger audiences start growing older, their needs and values change.
Your brand might become less popular over time if it is not in sync with all these changes. Rebranding helps you reconnect with your older audiences all while being able to tap into new ones.
3. Your Company Has Shifted Direction
Most businesses and companies face a situation where they need to sell new products in different markets or add new tools to their existing services. Changing your brand can greatly help in portraying the attempt to diversify products or services.
Whatever the new direction is, it needs an identity change for the brand so everything stays streamlined and easy to understand.
4. Negative Brand Perception
Assigning outdated messages or having PR disasters can greatly damage a specific brand perception. Shifting attention away from the old identity one associates with a brand can be achieved by changing the message and image through rebranding.
This allows the company to create and portray their values in a helpful manner.
5. Mergers or Acquisitions
Newly acquired or merged companies require coming together of various brands. New identities are formed and require all parts of the company to function under one logical brand strategy. Rebranding becomes fundamental to solidify all parts into a single identity.
6. Stagnation
There are signs your business needs a rebrand: stagnant sales, low customer interaction, or loss of interest from the target demographic. This change can help establish new appeal and brand identity, as well as garner new customers.
Steps for Successful Business Rebranding
Now that we understand `when’ to rebrand the business, let’s try to dig into `how’ to do it. A successful rebrand requires a vision and planning, execution, and ongoing evaluation. Follow these steps to effectively refresh your brand identity:
Step 1. Evaluate Your Brand
Before starting any rebranding process, conducting a brand audit is crucial. This looks at whether or not something works, which includes logos, messaging, company websites, and customer perception.
Solicit the views of important stakeholders and the employees. More importantly, ask the customers. Their feedback can open doors to new opportunities.
Step 2. List your brand’s goals and objectives
Before you start thinking about new logos and designs, what do you hope to achieve with the rebrand? Do you want to reach a new audience? Is your brand trying to adhere to a new set of values?
Do you wish to update your visual identity to keep up with trends in your industry? Having clear set objectives is important for guiding the process so your brand has purpose.
Step 3. Do Market and Audience Research
To understand your audience, you should have done competitor analysis and followed trends in your industry and monitor the changing requirements of your customers, therefore effective audience understanding is pertinent for effective rebranding.
Feedback from the audience you are trying to market to is the most important. Surveys or focus groups will give you that information, thus giving you the chance to appeal to the people that will help you redefine your brand identity.
Step 4. Create what your brand identity will be
At this point you should be engaging designers and branding professionals to update your visual identity which includes changing the logo, adding some font, color or types of fonts that resonate with your business. You should not lose sight of your brand values and try as much to keep your brand new and refreshing.
Step 5. Change Your Tone
Once your brand’s visual elements are designed, work on the words that go with the picture to match your brand voice. That means the narrative, the tone, and the body of content associated with the brand. Maintain uniformity from the web and social media profiles to email and advertisement communications.
Step 6. Getting feedback, improving, and rolling out
Before you launch your new brand identity, test it with a particular group of customers or focus groups. Refine your branding based on the feedback you receive.
After perfecting the brand identity, roll it out across all touchpoints, such as your website, social media pages, and marketing materials. It is important to announce the reasons for the rebranding and tell the audience the benefits they will gain afterwards.
Step 7. Keeping track and changes
Updating your branding is not done once and forgotten. Keep track of customer engagements and sales in order to evaluate how successful your rebranding is. Don’t hesitate to change things based on what the data tells you.
These changes go hand in hand with relevant changes that need to happen to evolve the brand, ensuring that it stays relevant.
The Part Played by Vox Magna in Your Rebranding Process
We at Vox Magna appreciate the complexities involved in refreshing your brand while at the same time preserving the essence of your brand. Our specialized team focuses on rebranding strategies that transform your vision into reality.
We cater for both ends of the spectrum, from complete brand makeovers to subtle brand refreshes. Sleek Designs will seamlessly support you through every stage of brand identity creation, from visual identity to messaging and ensuring that the brand identity that is created is appealing to both new and old customers.
Allow us to empower your success and market relevance in a constantly evolving industry.
Final Thoughts
Keeping your audience engaged, touching back on market trends, and changing internal branding helps renew life in a business. All of these things can create or break a business.
Setting a goal like enhancing your reputation through altering your visual brand and business focus will lead you to inspect your brand’s position which is a positive thing in the long run.
Whether you are ready to renew your business or refresh the core of your branding, Vox Magna is here to assist you through it all.
Our goal is to make sure your identity does not change while we redefine your brand for the current market.
FAQs
How do I know if my brand needs to be rebranded?
You might need a rebrand if your businesses’ goals, audience, or design shifts perceived itive changes. If the current target audience does not relate to your business or if your brand feels disconnected from your values, then maybe a rebrand is the right decision.
Can rebranding be done without changing the logo?
Definitely, you can do this through subtle tweaks in the logo or even the visual identity. In a complete rebrand, your logo and name and messaging will change a lot, but you can also do a refresh and build on the identity you already have.
How long does the rebranding process take?
This varies based on the amount of resources available, how drastic the changes are, and how much is being done. A refresh usually takes months, while extensive revisions will take a lot longer.
Do I need a complete rebranding or just a refresh?
That depends on your objectives. You might consider rebranding your business if it has changed or your brand no longer connects with your customers. On the other hand, if your identity is still firm, a brand refresh may be the more fitting solution.
In what other ways can Vox Magna assist me for my rebranding needs?
At Vox Magna, we provide complete rebranding solutions that include market research, brand strategy, visual identity, messaging, and more. With us, you can be sure in Vox Magna that your new brand identity will meet your company objectives, engagement, and sales goals.
