If you are looking at changing your logo, brand colors or tagline; then you can safely say that you are looking to ‘re-brand’ your business. Now you may think that re-branding is a big word and not something you can associate with your small business, but truth is that such terms are irrelative of a business’s size and scale.
So that said, here are top 5 things you should consider while going ahead with re-branding.
Firstly, know the answer to the question : Why re-brand?
This is very important as change of any kind is bound to have an effect be it positive or negative. Therefore you must have a solid reason to go ahead with this move.
Companies usually tend to re-brand when faced with one of these circumstances
• Entering a new line or market
• On account of a merger or acquisition
• When the target audience(TA) has changed
• Negative Publicity
• When they feel they are irrelevant to the current time
• Legal issues
Your reason does not necessarily have to one of these, but make sure you a good enough one!
Invest in research
This is crucial beyond words; many businesses have suffered from poorly researched re-branding and you don’t want to be one of those. So shell out some time and money to truly understand your customers and know what they would love to see as ‘change’.
Don’t shock your customers or change too little
Change is initially unsettling and can go either way. So be careful to have at least some semblance to the previous branding. Your customers should welcome the change without feeling uncomfortable with it. On the other hand, making insignificant changes will not do any good either. If at all people notice, they would only be left puzzled at the change. Ideally, you should look at achieving the effect of a ‘makeover ‘rather than producing a completely different brand.
Look at re-branding as a change to redeem your flaws
If you have plans to implement changes which you know people have been waiting for, then this is the perfect opportunity to bring it into practice. Re-branding has the ‘new factor’ which in a way erases the negative impressions you may have made previously. Make your customers happy this time and renew their faith in your brand.
Lastly, follow through!
Once re-branding is done, it is not to be pushed aside and forgotten. Remember that with a new look comes new expectations which you have to live up to.
These few things if considered, is sure to result in a fairly successful re-branding effort. However, the design factor is also extremely important to make this a complete success.
You can now safely go ahead with changing the ‘look’ of your brand as long as you know what you and your customers want!
