Let’s start off simple, what is branding?
Branding defines who you are and how your customers perceive you. Through creating a logo, deciding on your brand colours, your vision and more, you can distinguish your business against competitors and begin to build a relationship with your target audience.
So, rebranding involves working on changing the identity of your brand to help re-position yourself in the mind of your target audience and the market.
Do I need to consider rebranding?
You may find that your business isn’t attracting as much traffic or that you haven’t had any quality leads in a while which could lead you to consider rebranding. But, deciding to rebrand your business is a big decision that requires a lot of time, research, cooperation and above all changes. If your business is heading in a new direction after setting new goals or introducing more products for example, then it would be a great way to show that your brand is developing and help to position you in front of the right audience. However, looking into new marketing techniques and investing in in-depth market research could be the answer to increasing sales without the big brand changes.
If you are stuck, we offer a free digital marketing audit to help guide you to make the right decision for your business or you can take a look through our other services.
How to rebrand your company
So, you’ve decided that rebranding is the way forward. Where do you begin?
Step 1: research
Competitive research – getting an insight into who your top competitors are, what they are doing and how you stand out from them. At this stage it is worth going through their website and other platforms to see what is trending within your industry and working out how you can adapt this. It is important to be aware of trends when rebranding but try not to focus on them too much as trends come and go which could leave your brand looking dated very quickly.
Keyword research – looking into what keywords will help you to generate the most organic traffic to your website, or the best options for paid advertising campaigns. Using relevant keywords is the key to getting in front of your target customer, so be sure to include them in the copy of your website through blogs, FAQs and webpages.
Consumer research – finding out the needs, behaviours and preferences of your target customer will help you to identify customer expectations and allow you to successfully meet these requirements. By gaining this full understanding of your buyer you will be able to discover the most effective ways to market your brand for complete visibility and impactful results.
Step 2: brainstorm
At this stage, you want to agree on who you are as a brand and what you stand for as this is the foundation of your rebranding. Understanding your mission, vision and values will help to guide you through the process of rebranding. It’s important to get your team together so that you can gather different opinions and ideas as each team member and department experiences something different within the company, so getting their insight is highly valuable. From this, you can also gather what you do well and what needs working on which can be split into strengths and weaknesses and applied to a SWOT analysis. Creating a SWOT analysis will allow you to highlight any opportunities that you can take advantage of and give you some insight into the competitive environment along with any other threats.
Step 3: brand messaging framework
Using this simple framework will help you to visually plan out your brand guidelines based on your brainstorming sessions in a more formal manner. Going through the exercise of creating a messaging framework helps to determine the true purpose of your business and the unique value that you can add to the market.
Step 4: rebuild
Combining all of the research, resources, and ideas that you have gathered you should now be able to start designing and creating your new brand identity. This could include your colour palette, company logo, and typography. Once that is all completed it can be applied to all elements of your business to create a strong and consistent new brand!
Step 5: launch
To minimise the risk of any confusion amongst existing customers, your rebrand launch needs to be carefully planned and should include exactly why this decision was made. Case studies are a great way to explain the story behind the rebrand and give your customers a sense of belonging in your new journey.
