Brand identity is important for any business, big or small. It represents the visual appearance of a company, its values, its communications, and the customer experience it delivers. If you are a business owner yourself, then you are probably familiar with the process of creating a brand identity for your enterprise.
There are situations when your brand is not delivering the results that you want. That is when rebranding is a good option. We understand how much it costs to create and maintain favorable brand identity in the market. Rebranding means that you are doing it all over again. In this guide, we will give you some fresh tips on how to rebrand your small business and establish on firmer grounds.
What is Rebranding?
Rebranding is a marketing strategy that involves a complete overhaul of a company’s image, values, and messaging. In more objective terms, that means making notable changes to the company’s name and logo, operations, and positioning. Rebranding is basically a revival of the existing brand identity to fit the current needs of its target audience.
As you can already guess, rebranding means more than just creating a new name and logo. For this reason, we recommend working with a professional branding agency to help you create a strong brand identity for your business.
Reasons to Rebrand
Here are a few reasons why rebranding may help to grow your business.
New Segments: You want to attract more customers. For instance, you may want to entice younger people to your brand who represent a large segment of your target market, or older, affluent citizens who may give you more sales per transaction.
Investor Calls: You may want to attract a new investor for funding. Investors may ask you to change your brand or rebrand to appeal to a broader audience.
New Markets: Entering a new country requires you to consider adapting your brand to local trends. You should also consider rebranding if you are diversifying into a new product type different from your primary offering.
Updates to Your Old Brand: Times change. So do employee and customer expectations. Keeping a fresh image is key to getting attention in such cases. Your competitors might also be rebranding, so you should adapt your brand when such a shift comes around.
Differentiating from the Competition: Your brand identity and positioning may be unclear. That makes it hard for your brand and/or company to stand out from the competition. Rebranding can help your business establish a clear identity that offers customers a reason to consider it over other brands in the market.
Averting a PR Crisis: Bad publicity can hurt your business and make it hard to recover from. Use a new name to create a positive image.
When to Avoid Rebranding?
Rebranding can be a costly process. That is why we feel that you should never consider it lightly, as it can potentially cause some confusion among stakeholders. If you are unwilling to change the brand, you should be clear about why you do not want to go ahead.
Don’t rebrand just because you are bored, or at the whims of the new management. Consider consulting with a branding agency when there are such pressures.
Key Rebranding Tips
Rebranding your business involves a lot of steps. Here are the important things you need to keep in mind when rebranding. Hiring a PR firm will be your best move here, as you can cover most, if not all, of your bases.
Research Your Market: Market research is critical to understanding your customers and competition. It gives you key insights into your cushier preferences and current market trends. Conducting qualitative surveys (through focus groups and interviews) and quantitative surveys through online capture metrics and questionnaires), is the first thing you should do when rebranding.
Make Sure Your Purpose is Clear: Before committing to any change, review why you want to make those changes in the first place. A clear mission helps you identify the right customers you want to approach along with the objectives you want to achieve.
Keep Everyone Informed: Everyone on your team, including employees and investors, and outside your team such as third-party partners and customers, must be brought on the same page. Executing your rebranding campaign will be easier with less confusion.
Make a Checklist of Assets and Documents that Need to be Changed: As we’ve mentioned earlier, rebranding isn’t just about creating a new logo or packaging for customers. You have to make changes to internal documents such as contracts, operating guidelines, and communications as well. You may require major infrastructure changes when your business is growing, like your website and email resources.
Refresh, But Don’t Reset: Make sure that your rebranding is instantly recognizable to your customers. It helps to retain your brand recall.
A drastic change to your marketing materials can alienate some or most of your existing customers, which will be disastrous to the business. Keeping things similar is especially important if you are running a small business. Leave the risk-taking to the bigger players in the market.
Communicate across Every Channel: When you are rebranding, be sure to go all out on communication. Try to communicate through every means at your disposal, especially at the start.
Send an email to everybody on your contact lists, put it out on all of your social media feeds, and organize a contest to increase engagement. If you have the budget, consider giving giveaways. You might be surprised at the feedback that you get!
Some Rebranding Trends in 2022
Short Names: A few brands like Dunkin’ Donuts and Eir Telecom have recently ditched their descriptive element name in favor of a simpler name. These brands have kept the essence of their identity while removing the bit about their product.
Minimal Design: Minimalist designs with few colors and simple fonts are common now. In other words, the designs look uncomplicated.
For example, Volvo changed its brand to a simple black logo, removing the silver and blue elements. Warner Brothers did something similar. One advantage of doing this is that your brand’s insignia becomes very easy to recognize and remember.
Dropping Offensive Stereotypes: Customers these days are disturbed or offended by names that have racist or other offensive imagery. Mars recently rebranded Uncle Ben’s to Ben’s Originals over concerns about racial depictions. Here are some examples if you want to find out more.
Current Affairs and Concerns: Some brands take advantage of ongoing events or recent social and economic developments to help their rebranding efforts and create awareness for a specific cause.
Ukrainian-American company Grammarly is one recent example, which rebranded its theme in support of Ukraine during the Russian invasion. While this is a temporary trend, we think it will continue to rise and gain popularity in future.
Radical Rebrands, Unique Symbols, and Controversies: In 2022, we saw Facebook rebrand itself to Meta to shake off its negative image with its new VR-focused aspirations. We expect to see more of those in the future.
A central theme for these rebranding adventures is a modernized symbol coupled with a big shift in public image. As we mentioned earlier, this type of modification is undertaken best by the bigger players. But it also means that extreme rebranding is now a visible part of a mainstream discussion, as it involves some established names too.
How to Rebuild a Small Business: The Way Forward
Change is never easy, but sometimes, your brand needs it to grow and become stronger. Keep your goals clear and precise when rebranding your small business, and be ready to collaborate with others to execute your rebranding. We hope this brief guide has helped you to understand rebranding and what it entails.
If you looking for a top branding agency to give your business a fresh start, check out Arturo Digital, a full-service web-design consultancy for your brand. If you want to know more about how to rebrand a small business or how much does it cost to rebrand a small business, our experts will be happy to guide you.
Contact us today to learn more about repositioning your brand to stay current, stay fresh, and reconnect with your audience.
