The following post comes to us from Jennifer Hahn Masterson, an experienced content strategist with a focus on business communication. Learn from Jennifer’s best advice on how to rebrand. your business effectively.
Whoever claims that rebranding a company is an easy process that doesn’t consume much time, either have never participated in rebranding or was part of a very bad one. Since most of us will have to deal with rebranding at some point in our professional careers, we can only hope that we’ll encounter it once we’re stacked with experience. With this in mind, here are some helpful ideas to help you rebrand your business.
Are You Sure about Rebranding?
Sometimes, the best possible solution for rebranding your company might be to not rebrand it at all. Perhaps the current design and workflow are just as good as they should be, and you’re just having biased second thoughts. It’s way more efficient to run a thorough analysis to make sure whether you need rebranding or not, as the consequences could be greater than you expect. Perhaps raising brand awareness with audience expansion might do the trick.
Complete a Brand Audit
Every successful rebrand starts with thorough research, and having more insights and knowledge will allow for a better rebranding strategy and creative approach. As a current master’s degree in interaction design explains, branding solutions should be well-rounded and challenge the status quo. Before you commence your rebrand in earnest (design, messaging, etc.), you need to get a clear understanding of what’s working and what’s not, and how and why you need to grow. In other words, you have to comprehend the current state of your brand, and then adjust accordingly. The insights that you gathered during the audit will have a strong influence on your decision-making. Once you’ve completed your brand audit, you’ll know exactly which areas need to be improved.
Set Smart and Clear Objectives
Stay away from the people who say that planning isn’t that necessary – it most certainly is. Not only that you’re going to save a lot of time by setting smart and clear objectives in advance, but you’re also going to be way more efficient. Once you know both your short-term and long-term goals, it will be easier to focus on accomplishing them.
Perform a Competitive Analysis
Successful rebranding is all about smooth and effective communication, i.e. knowing both how to present your business and what to say and to your target clientele, especially in relation to competing brands. To this end, you should analyze your competitors by taking a critical perspective at each and every aspect of their brands, from the tagline and logo design to the tone of voice and brand messaging. This is particularly helpful because it shows you how you can differentiate your brand from the rest. You’ll discover many similarities amongst your competition. For instance, if almost everyone is using a green logo, opting for a different color can really help you make a statement.
Arrange a Brainstorming Meeting
The members of your company are like small pieces of a huge puzzle – all of them matter. Try getting all of your employees together and listen to what they have to say. Brainstorming is a very popular method that’s produced many great ideas throughout the course of time. Not everyone’s idea will be a world-changing one, but make sure that everyone knows how important they are and how much their commitment means to you and your company.
Design a Convincing Visual Identity
For most people, doing a rebrand means improving a brand’s visual identity – they tend to focus primarily (if not solely) on what a brand looks like. But you should see your visual identity simply as an extension and reflection of your brand. As the “face” of your brand, your visual identity should represent your business well at every touchpoint. To this end, you need to design an identity that is accurate, intuitive, comprehensive, and flexible. What this practically means is that certain things may need to be updated, revised, or added to the existing visual identity, including elements like colors, logos, typography, video and motion graphics, interactive elements, photography, etc. The graphic language has to be perfected to properly conceive ideas and transmit them to your target audience, teaches a distance learning course in the creative process in graphic design.
Work in “Sprints”
Working at full speed is a great way to fulfill your short-term goals, with regular checkups and reports, also helping you with accomplishing your long-term goal. There’s a major flow of information and content going on between employees, no matter what kind of project they’re working on, so you need properly trained professionals to take care of that. As this innovative master’s degree in visual design smartly puts it, design is the art of change, responsibility, and commitment, so it’s tremendously important that these are always fair, constructive, and interesting.
Don’t Forget About Your Clients
Your company and employees are not the only ones being affected by the big change, as your clients will feel the change as well. Seriously taking their needs and thoughts into consideration while performing rebranding can be a great way to keep your current clients and attract new ones. Make sure that, by the end of the day, your clients still know who you are, what exactly your business is, and how they can reach you.
Prepare for the Big Announcement
Rebranding itself isn’t a simple task, but neither is announcing the news. Regarding this, rest assured that your priority should definitely be your current clients. Let them know that something big and new is about to happen, but that things are going to be better than before. The press might also want to know what’s going on, especially if it’s some big company’s rebranding, so be prepared!
The Last Day Is Not the Last Day
If the rebranding was performed well, it would mean that from the moment you launched your updated brand, you know precisely what to do and how to do it. Most of your target audience won’t even hear about the change on the day you launch it, but that’s completely expected. Stick to your new goals and activities, and the time will show what your hard work has accomplished.
In case you expected to see some magical formula for rebranding your company, this is not a place where you can find one such thing. These guidelines are here to help you go through this hard and time-consuming process while paying close attention to the things that might get you to rock bottom, or to the absolute peak, depending on how you handle things.
Author’s bio: Jennifer Hahn Masterson is the Lead Content Strategist at Spread the Word Solutions, holding an MA degree in business communication. She is always doing her best to help her clients find their place in the ever so competitive business arena, insisting on long-term sustainability rather than on some questionable get-rich-fast scheme. You can check her out on LinkedIn.
