The Only Guide You Need for a Successful Rebranding in 2020

Are you thinking about rebranding your company?

There are many reasons for a brand refresh or full company rebrand. Maybe you want to expand your customer base, or perhaps your brand needs an update to keep up with changing times.

Rebranding doesn’t have to be intimidating. You may even find the process energizing. A brand refresh gives you a chance to breathe new life into your marketing and realign your business around its core identity and values. The process can reanimate your whole operation, and a good marketing design team can take care of a lot of the work for you.

NOTE: Make sure you and your designer define rebranding in the same way. A full company rebrand involves significant changes and can be very disruptive. It could involve changing your company name or even redesigning your products. A total identity reset might be in order if you’ve been through a PR disaster, or if you’re under new management. Most companies can get by with a brand refresh that might include an updated logo, a website redesign, and some tweaks to social media presence and general communication style.  

Branding works best when you begin by analyzing your company’s mission, values, audience, and goals, then build your plan from the inside out.

 

Understand Your Audience

Knowing precisely who you’re speaking to is a vital part of effective communication.

Has your target market changed since your business started? In what ways does your current brand image speak to them? How could you personalize your brand to appeal to that market even more?

Marketing works best when it’s personalized and aimed at a very specific group. Some experts recommend creating a buyer persona for your customer and directing all of your marketing efforts toward that individual to strengthen your communication.

 

What Are Your Current Goals?

Before you get very far into your brand refresh, you should review your company’s goals and complete a brand analysis. 

What milestones have you already hit? What do you hope to achieve in the short and long-term? 

If you have any plans for expansion or new products, your rebranding should be designed to help them move forward. 

 

Outline Your Positioning Message

At its simplest level, a brand positioning statement is a short description of who your customers are and what your brand does for them. 

To create this statement, you’ll need to know what kind of company you hope to be, how you want your customers to view you, and what benefits you offer them that no one else can match. 

Your brand positioning statement will bring clarity to all your communications, even though your customers will never see it. It should include your target market, the unique benefit you offer to customers, the industry or category you work in, and the reason customers should believe in you. 

A good example includes, “Giraffe Publishing makes eco-friendly learn-at-home materials for environmentally conscious parents. Our earth-conscious educational stories are printed on recycled materials using biodegradable inks.”

 

Outline Your Brand Identity

A brand refresh is more than just a logo redesign. It’s a new personality that will influence everything your company does.

If you’re not consciously working to keep everything on brand, you’ll be diluting your image instead of strengthening it, and you’ll lose the chance to build an emotional connection with your customers. 

The best brands can be summed up with a single word or phrase. Apple: simplicity. Disney: magical. Nike: determination. 

Your brand identity can be reinforced — or weakened — by every touchpoint where your customers connect with your business. Your rebranding guidelines should encompass your colors, fonts, and the types of photos you choose for your advertising and social media. Also include the voice you use in your blog posts, e-mails, videos, and phone scripts to keep all of your messaging on target.

 

Redesign Your Logo

Your logo redesign should distill your company rebrand into a single image. An effective logo is recognizable and simple, and it conveys the energy and emotion of your brand instantly.

• Color choice can trigger strong emotions in customers. It can be used to represent concepts like stability, peace, energy, youth, or freedom.
• Fonts should be readable, and should also convey your brand personality at a glance.
• Shapes also deliver meaning. Circles are warm and connective, squares are stable and structured, and triangles are energetic. 

Your designer may be able to incorporate echoes of your former logo into the new one so that it’s recognizable to your current customers. 

 

Audit Your Website

By this time, you should have a clear picture of which colors, fonts, and design elements support your company rebrand. Evaluate every aspect of your site, including:

• Overall design (or theme, if you’re using WordPress). Is the design airy and spiritual, somber and professional, or energetic and youthful?
• Fonts
• Color palette
• Photos (color, weight, faces)
• Word choices in menus and headlines
• Contact options: Do they reflect the way you want your customers to interact with your team?

Which elements of your site work well with your new brand strategy? Which needs to change? 

 

Treat your social media channels as an extension of your website and include them in this audit as well.

 

Ready to Launch

Once all the elements are in place to rebrand the customer-facing aspects of your business, you are ready for your launch. 

 

Here are some factors to keep in mind:

• Your entire staff needs to be on board. Give them the tools they need to understand how the rebrand will influence their jobs. Meet with them and answer their questions.
• A company party or event could help build enthusiasm.
• Your board, shareholders, key customers, and other “insiders” might expect to hear about the rebrand before the general public.
• If you’ve made significant changes to your logo or even your company name, work out a transition plan to make sure your existing customers and vendors recognize you.
• Set a date to switch over to new materials, and schedule follow-up meetings with your teams to keep their energy up during the transition.

 

Branding Made Easy

If you’d like to get some guidance from a team of experts who know exactly how to breathe new life into your brand, ask for a consultation with the marketing pros at Blue Meta. 

They can guide you through the creation of new brand identity and marketing plan that will help you connect and engage with your market like never before.