So you think it’s time to rebrand your brand. That’s not a small decision to take, but it’s a big step in the right direction. As a business owner or head of marketing, revamping or rebranding your brand image are important milestones in your organization’s journey.
Rebranding and revamping are the two different options open to you, and you can take a call on which one’s the choice for you at this point in your story.
Rebrand or Revamp?
Let’s get started with figuring out the difference between revamping and rebranding.
Rebranding means transforming the complete look and feel of your existing brand. You will need to alter the messaging significantly because of changes in leadership or ownership. It could be because your organization has undergone a culture shift, or your customer landscape has become completely different from when you started out.
Revamping on the other hand is more of a makeover, with additions, deletions, and a process of more emphasis on some areas and less focus elsewhere. When you need to give your brand more muscle and a shot of social media vitamins, reach out to a new generation or target group, that’s when you revamp – you could say it’s a wardrobe refresh, that makes you look better and more attractive. If you’ve discovered that your messaging isn’t consistent across different channels, or you want your website to get in sync with new products and services, that’s the time for revamping.
When And Why Revolutionize?
Revolutionizing is a big ticket exercise. It carries a huge set of risks, take time and become highly complicated as you go along. It may not happen overnight, but if you’ve noticed the signs, rebranding or revamping is the only way to stay alive and relevant in the marketplace. Sociabble can give you the turbo boost you need.
The problem creeps in on you gradually. Something seems not quite right, but you can’t put your finger on it. Sounds like we’re talking about health and fitness, and in fact we are. The difference is that it’s about your brand and not the human body. How long has it been since you did a health audit on your brand? If you haven’t, these are the things that an audit will bring up:
Drought: Have you noticed that the customer stream is drying up? That’s one of the most noticeable symptoms of a sick brand. No new customers, less traffic, few repeat businesses, declining sales and low conversion rates all translate to a brand that’s no longer doing its job.
No Clarity: Neither your employees nor your customers are clear about what your brand means or what your corporate vision is. This translates to inconsistent and sometimes contradictory messaging. If you have a public relations disaster brewing or ongoing, this is a good time to give your brand a shot of adrenaline.
Customer Disappearance: If your customers are in large-scale flight, and more importantly, to your competition, it means your brand doesn’t resonate with them anymore.
Recognition Deficit: Has your brand got lost in the crowd? If your brand is not getting the instant recall that it did in the early days, it could be broken. This could also mean that you’re not as visible on search engines, and the brand isn’t connecting enough across all media platforms.
M&A: If you’ve recently merged or been acquired, it’s essential to rebrand or revamp in keeping with the new realities. This means your existing target audience, products and services are no longer in alignment with the new face of your company.
Tech Troubles: If yours is a legacy brand it may not be in sync with the digital universe of today. Your brand isn’t hitting all the touchpoints, feels clumsy online, is overloaded with text content rather than video or graphics, it’s time for a makeover.
Other situations that call for a change could be legal or statutory requirements, perhaps you plan to scale up your operations to reach a higher-level customer, or you’ve just hired a bunch of younger, keener experts.
How To Revolutionize Your Brand
Once you’ve decided that the time is right, it’s wise to think of simple, cost-effective and workable strategies, rather than consider large-scale, expensive and disruptive ones.
Chalking out your game plan needs a buy-in from your employees because they will need to rework their own strategies and business methods.
Key ways in which to transform your brand:
- Know the reason why you’re embarking on this exercise
- Research all aspects before you begin
- Put in incremental rather than drastic changes to make the transition smoother
- Examine your core values and check that proposed changes don’t clash before incorporating them
- Focus on new content that adds value and provides information to your customer
- Ensure consistency across media
- Add more marketing channels
- Keep your target audience connected with the process
- More entertaining content that doesn’t always convey a message
- Use social media for customer support, making it more public and transparent
- Create a buzz with competitions, quizzes, gifts and freebies
- Look at repositioning your products/services to discover what differentiates you from your competitors
- Test launch your new brand before you spring it on the world
Challenges
While the process of revolutionizing your brand is no doubt exciting, don’t forget to take a look at the risks and challenges involved. You will have to go through the complex, exhausting and often frustrating delays and problems of updating stuff wherever you have a presence. The changes have to be clearly conveyed to your customers and your employees well ahead of time.
Rebranding or revamping can be an expensive exercise and you will certainly have to plan and budget for the costs. These would include consultancy, legal costs, new materials with the new name and logo, marketing blitz, packaging and more.
You could lose hard-won brand equity that you’d built up over time, and maybe even lose some customers. A new name and logo could confuse people unless they’re kept in the loop. Trust issues are one of the major pitfalls in revolutionizing your brand where customers, especially the loyal brigade, may feel let down by changes they don’t agree with or understand.
The final decision should be a well thought through one, for both logical and emotional reasons, and one that keeps your customer right up in front with every move you make.