How Do You Know When You’re Ready to Rebrand?
Your company’s brand is its visual identity. It has the important job of quickly telling potential customers your story and your message through its design. If your brand isn’t communicating your message effectively to your audience, then it may be time for a rebrand.
Before spending hundreds or thousands on a rebrand, you need to assess whether your current brand is having the impact you want. Invest in a brand audit to evaluate how well your brand is performing. By looking at data and collecting customer and stakeholder feedback, you can form answers to questions such as:
- What story does the brand tell?
- What do people understand about the brand at first glance?
- Who identifies with your brand?
- What do people like or dislike about your brand?
If you discover during the brand audit that your vision of your brand and the reality of its impact don’t align, it’s time to reassess.
Reasons to consider changing your brand identity
Why start the rebranding process? There are many reasons why companies decide to invest in a rebrand:
- Streamline multiple services or products under one identity: If your company has always been known for making thingamabobs, but you’re expanding into widgets, you may need to broaden your brand.
- Your brand story is no longer relevant to your brand: People change, and what once resonated with them may not anymore. As you grow with your audience, your brand may need to adapt to keep up with that change.
- Your target demographic has changed: Part of keeping up with your audience means expanding and evolving. Perhaps your target teen demographic has grown into young adulthood and you want to stay relevant. Or, while you once only marketed to men you now want to reach women too. A rebrand can help you to reach more customers.
- Your visual assets are outdated: Fonts, colors and graphics can become outdated as quickly as fashion. If your brand signals that you’re behind the times, you need a rebrand.
- You experience bad press: A brand reset is a good way to signal the company is ready to move on from negative publicity. Perhaps a rocky time led to a leadership change, or the company name was unfortunately coopted by something negative. Take control by refreshing the company image – literally.
- Sales have decreased: A steady decline in sales is usually a sign that one of situations above has occurred. Either your audience is no longer interested, or they don’t understand (or actively dislike) what you do. A rebrand can help you win back those customers.
Reasons you should not rebrand
A rebrand can be a big risk that doesn’t always end well for companies. There are some scenarios where it may not make sense:
- A rebrand would compromise your brand equity: If you already have invested clients who know your brand well, you need to be careful not to upset what they’ve come to enjoy and respect about your brand.
- You just don’t particularly like your brand: Rebranding shouldn’t happen on a whim. It should only occur after plenty of research and for a reason.
- You don’t have the resources to do it properly: A sloppy rebrand is more damaging than no rebrand at all.
Rebranding requires changing all of your brand’s assets, including websites and applications. That’s where IDMI.Net can help. Contact us today for a free quote.