How to Successfully Rebrand Your Company

Rebranding your company is often overlooked by business owners. This could be because rebranding can be expensive, takes a lot of time, and can feel insignificant compared to other tasks you may have on your plate. But, a successful rebrand can improve your image by attracting new customers, keeping current customers interested, and setting you apart from your competition. Keep reading to learn some helpful tips on how to rebrand your company.

Why Rebrand?

There are so many reasons why you may want to rebrand. Whether you are a start-up or an established business, a company refresh can do wonders for enhancing your business strategies. Rebranding can influence your current customers to check out your company again and gain more interest. It can also lead to enhanced visibility which will attract new customers. Plus, when you are looking to hire, having an updated website, logo, social media, etc., can attract a more talented team.

What is Your Current Identity?

One of the first steps you should take when you are wanting to rebrand your company is to analyze your current identity. Sitting down and going through your logo, slogan, company colors, website, etc, can help you see what is outdated and what you want to change. It can also be beneficial to record the date that these items were last updated. Additionally, when your business is considering a rebrand, you should also go through your goals. Some goals are short-term and may not represent what your business is working towards anymore. When you rebrand, you should evaluate your goals and see what you want to focus on moving forward.

What are Your Competitor’s Identities?

When you are going through your brand assets, you should also take a look at what your competition is doing. If you compare your website to theirs, and theirs is more attractive, user-friendly, and has more key information, that can be a sign that it is time to update your website to include these attributes as well. It can be helpful to create a spreadsheet to compare your company with your top three competitors and see where the gaps in their brand identities are.

Partial vs Total Rebrand

As the name implies, when you are rebranding you should choose which assets you want to update or if you are going to update everything. A partial rebrand can be helpful when your business is well established, but you may need a refresh. This can be helpful if you are updating some of your services, want to change just graphics, or don’t want to be too drastic with your efforts. On the other hand, a total rebrand will take a lot more time, money, and work to complete (but well worth it!). Planning a total rebrand may take months or even years to complete, and it can be helpful to reach out to a business that can help. Pilot PMR is a great example of a business that specializes in helping businesses achieve their rebranding goals.

Brand Identity

Brand identity refers to the aspects that your customers will see. When you are rebranding, you must keep in mind the brand identity that you want to convey. If you change too much, your business may not seem relevant to your current customers. On the other hand, if you don’t change enough, your customers may think “what’s the point?”. When you are dealing with your brand identity, there is a happy medium between too much and too little. Below, we will go into further detail about some of the most important parts of your brand identity.

Logo

Your logo is one of the biggest aspects of your brand identity. A logo should be memorable, attractive, and different from other brands with similar names and/or your competition. If you are thinking about updating your logo, you should consider keeping it in the same color family so it’s not too much of a difference. You should also keep it similar in size and design, just updated. New fonts and more attractive colors are a great place to start. Check out how Visitor Queue recently updated our logo. As you can see, it is similar but it looks more aesthetically pleasing and represents where we want to go with our company.

Colors

Brand colors are also a key aspect of brand identity. It can be helpful to get more opinions on new colors for your brand since what colors look nice to you might not look nice to everyone else. It is also important to ensure your brand’s colors are different from your competition. For example, if you see that two of your three main competitors are using cool-toned blues as their colors, you’ll want to avoid those colors to ensure your business doesn’t get mixed up with them. Think about Hubspot’s iconic shade of orange. There are no other CRM tools out there using orange because they could get mistaken for Hubspot.

Website

In this day in age, a good website can make or break a sale. This is why your website should be updated with your rebrand. Even simple updates will help guide your customers throughout your website. It’s a good idea to check out your website’s data on Google Analytics, HotJar, your CRM, or any other tool you are using to find out what pages are the most and least successful. It’s also beneficial to regularly update the content on your site, to keep it fresh and new to your current customers.

Email Designs

You are probably sending emails to your clients daily, so updating your email signatures is important to remember with your rebrand. Aligning your email signature with your updated brand will help create consistency with your brand. It’s also a good place to keep your customers in the loop, and slowly introduce them to your new brand identity. Including your social media links in your email signature is also helpful, because your client will hopefully click on them, and see your updated social media accounts that match your rebrand.

Get an Outside Opinion

This may seem self-explanatory but getting an outside opinion can help you find out what others may think. Of course, it will be important to get the opinion of your team members, but you should also ask your friends who do not work for you, and that you know will be brutally honest. You’re working on your brand for months, so it is easy to get caught up in the details. Bringing in a fresh pair of eyes can help you see things that you might not have realized, and you can get a different perspective. Plus, if you get someone who is in your target market to look at your rebranded assets, they can tell you if they understand the changes and if you can do anything to improve.

Talk to Your Team

When you are considering a rebrand, you should talk to your team to let them know what’s going on beforehand. The decision to rebrand will be a lot of work for them, and they will all need to be on board with the change. Plus, their opinions will be important. If you are looking to update your logo, you could create a few mock-ups and your employees can vote on their favorites. This can help you narrow down tough decisions, and everyone can be happy that they were involved in decisions.

Marketing

When you are finally ready to release your rebranded company, it can be a great opportunity to share on your social media. The people who follow your company are involved and care about you, so they will love to be the first to find out about your rebranding. Plus, you can get any last-minute feedback. For example, when Visitor Queue decided we were ready to update and release our new logo, we shared it with our followers on LinkedIn. This is a great opportunity to thank your followers for being loyal and supporting the growth of your business.

Wrap Up

It is a huge task to rebrand your company. But, in the long run, it can lead to an increase in customer retention and even acquiring new customers, leading to an increase in happy customers and sales. I hope you were able to find some helpful tips on how to rebrand your company.