Deciding to re-brand your company can be an exciting but also daunting process. If done strategically, thoroughly and with a recipe for success in mind, it offers your company a wealth of commercial benefits now and in the future.
What is a rebrand?
This is a good question and one we get asked often by our clients. What constitutes a rebrand varies greatly, and depends on the needs of your company. A business can decide to change a significant element of the brand e.g. a new name or logo, or could simply make a subtler change such as a slight shift in the logo and messaging to better communicate a more relevant brand promise. Either way, the key to a strong re-brand lies in following a proven plan and sticking to it. Here are our six steps to ensuring your re-brand has impact, meets the needs of your market and is successful:
The 6 steps you need to know about for your rebrand
1. Research the Market and Consumers
If you truly want to improve the impact your brand has in a crowded or competitive local market, you need to fully understand your ideal audience and who you’ve got to compete with. Don’t assume you know what your employees and customers want. You need to talk to them to be certain – a survey is a great way of gathering feedback to achieve this, whilst re-engaging your audience and letting them know you’re doing something about it. Once you have the valuable information, make sure you listen to it – and show them that you care!
Carry-out thorough research to validate the need for a re-brand. Understand how you fair against the competition, what your strengths are, where you are potentially weak (SWOT) and use all of this to create a strong brand and value proposition if you are going to go ahead with it.
2. Identify brand values and develop your unique value proposition
Your brand is the public face of your business. When it fails to reflect your vision and values, customers can get confused – assuming you’ve fallen behind the times or forgotten about what it means to be unique. After you’ve researched your market and competition, use this insight to create a set of messages and a value proposition that reflects who you are, what you stand for and above all will stand your brand out from the local competition – providing you with competitive advantage and connecting emotionally with your target audience.
3. Create brand messages and image
The exciting part of the process – bringing your brand to life verbally and visually. Use everything you have learned to create a new, relevant, engaging and impactful brand identity and messaging based on the research findings and your strategic goals for the future.
How much could your company benefit from a timely rebranding exercise? A rebrand certainly isn’t something to be taken lightly! If you’ve enjoyed reading this and found it useful, stay tuned for Part 2 of our ‘The 6 Must-Follow Steps for Rebranding Your Company’ which will be coming very soon!
We’ve recently challenged ourselves to push the creative boundaries with some rebranding work for our clients. Here’s how we recently helped a local florist to launch their new business. If you’re in need of further inspiration, check out how we’ve helped other businesses get online and get their messages out there.
For help getting creative with your brand, please get in touch.
