Your brand is one of your company’s most valuable assets. It represents your company’s ideals, values, characteristics and even personality traits. It is how your target audience perceives your company.
A successful brand creates a positive impression with customers that keeps them coming back.
Even with successful branding, however, there comes a point when a business needs to change the way its target audience perceives the company.
- It may be that the company’s vision or scope has outgrown the original brand.
- Or, the company wants to refresh a dated look.
- It could be that the company has received negative press and needs to start anew.
- It might be time for your company to change up its brand.
Here are nine questions you can use to help you determine if it’s time to Rebrand:
1. Do you want to tap into a new demographic?
If your brand is strongly associated with one generation or you’re primarily marketing to one age demographic, reaching out to a new one can prove to be a difficult move. This is a classic situation where rebranding is an effective solution.
Changing up the graphic elements, adjusting a tagline, updating marketing materials, and refocusing the website will refresh the brand and make it more appealing to your new demographic while not alienating the old one.
2. Have you outgrown your original mission?
Many small businesses start out selling a very small set of products, focused on a specific niche. In time, they want to expand their focus to include more products to appeal to more consumers.
For example, a company specializes in selling ropes used by adventurers to go rock climbing. However, over time, the company decides to expand its inventory to include all types of climbing gear, as well as adding apparel and accessories. Now What?
When the company is ready to make that kind of mission change, it is time for an overhaul of the brand.
3. Is your market changing quickly?
Some markets evolve quickly, especially in the technology and IT industries. New brands come up all the time, touting their cutting edge technology. That can leave other, more established brands, in the dust.
Rebranding is sometimes the only way to stay relevant in an industry where quick evolution is the norm.
4. Are your marketing elements looking dated?
Trends occur in marketing just like they do in fashion and automobiles.
If your marketing elements were designed a few years ago, you may find they include typography or colours that are no longer in style. In fact, they may look dated.
Trends also occur in website design. Your website may be screaming it was developed a decade ago and has never been updated.
When your marketing elements are looking aged and tired, it is time to freshen things up.
5. Does your brand match your company culture?
Is your company culture quiet, professional and reserved? If it is, then your branding cannot be loud, vivacious and cutting edge. That kind of mismatch causes confusion among your target audience and diminishes the quality of your brand identity.
Your brand must reflect what your company stands for. If it doesn’t, your brand needs to undergo an evolution.
6. Do all of your marketing materials match?
This quite often happens to older companies.
They build a website 5 years ago using the branding they had at that time. Then, a few years later, they updated the marketing elements they used on their brochures and business cards, but didn’t bother updating their website.
Some companies end up with 2 or 3 different generations of elements being used in their marketing materials. This diminishes the way customers perceive the brand and that has to change.
7. Are you embarrassed to give out your business card or website address?
- Is your website or business card cringe worthy?
- Perhaps you have a cheesy cartoon character smiling out from your logo.
- You might have a screaming loud neon pink business card that looks unprofessional.
- Don’t hang your head because of the sarcastic tone of the tagline of days gone by (Change it).
- If you cannot hold your head up high when dealing with your company’s brand, it’s time for a change.
8. Is your brand associated with something negative?
Negative events can radically change a target audience’s perception of a brand.
For example, Firestone tires became associated with SUV rollovers in the late 1990s. This perception radically reduced the market value of the Firestone brand, which has never fully recovered.
While most negative events aren’t that radical, it shows how perception of a brand can change quickly. If your company faces negative press, you may need to rebrand in order to re-establish your company in the marketplace.
9. Have you grown outside your original region?
If your company’s original focus was serving a specific area, your original brand might reflect that restriction. Therefore, if you decide to expand outside that region, you may need to change your brand to appeal to customers in your new region.
For example,
- Let’s say you ran the Anywhereville Plumbing Company.
- You served Anywhereville for a decade.
- You decided to expand your operations into neighbouring Otherville.
- To appeal to customers in both Anywhereville and Otherville, you decide to rebrand to something that is not location specific, such as the ABC Plumbing Company.
Only you can determine if your current brand is doing its job or not.
If you think it’s time for rebranding your business, be sure to get the help of a qualified digital marketing agency. They can help you make the best decisions for giving your brand a new look and feel.
