The corporate rebrand of your business is a massive undertaking. It’s a process that requires you to examine every aspect of your business and pinpoint where it may be lacking. While it might seem like an unnecessary risk at first glance, rebranding your business can have a huge impact on your future success. If you feel like the image and reputation of your company is holding you back from reaching new opportunities or giving you the best possible chance of growth, updating how your business looks and sounds is essential.
Let’s take a look at what steps you need to take in order to get started with a corporate rebrand as well as reasons for rebranding.
Reasons for rebranding
Rebranding your business is all about creating new perceptions. It’s about taking the knowledge, resources, and capabilities you already have and using them to position yourself in a new light. When you rebrand you:
- Create the opportunity to completely redefine your business
- Get to establish a new brand identity
- Can reposition your offerings
- Make your business memorable in a new way
This can go a long way in helping you attract the right talent, customers and close more deals. You can get rid of lingering negative associations, break through any barriers that may be holding you back, and position yourself for future success. As well as this you can build on all the positives as the organisation grows.
When not to rebrand
Before you get started with the corporate rebrand process, it’s important to define your goals. If you don’t know what your end goal is, then you can’t get there. For example, if you’re looking to increase your brand awareness, you should know exactly what kind of customer you want to reach.
You need to know where they’re located, how old they are, and what their interests are. If you’re struggling to answer any of these questions, then rebranding isn’t the right solution for you.
Get to know your audience
One of the most important steps in the rebranding process is getting to know your audience. To rebrand effectively, you need to understand who your customers are and what they respond to. You need to know what will draw them to your business and what will cause them to turn away.
Therefore, it’s important at the beginning of your project to conduct customer research. This can involve interviews and polls, creating focus groups or perhaps recording customer service calls. Another great option is to examine your website analytics to see who is currently visiting and engaging with your brand.
Rebranding checklist
Okay, you have your reasons for rebranding and you’re ready to start. The next step is to follow a specific process from beginning to end. This will provide you with a clear path and help you avoid missing important milestones. See our suggested checklist below:
- Define your business: Before you can rebrand, you need to define your business. What is your business model? What sets you apart from your competitors?
- Define your audience: After you’ve defined your business, you need to figure out who you’re selling to. Who is your target audience? What are their interests? Where are they based? What are their pain points?
- Identify your current brand shortcomings: Understanding who you are as a business and knowing your audience can help you evaluate how your current brand both represents your business identity and speaks to your audience.
- Develop a vision: After you’ve defined your organisation, your audience and identified the problems in your current branding, you need to formulate a vision for your corporate rebrand. What does the brand you want to become look like? What does it sound like? How does it feel?
- Get feedback: Once you’ve defined the above, it’s time to get feedback. What do your customers like about your current branding? What do your employees think? What do they dislike? What do they wish you had? This is the information you need to make informed branding decisions.
- Create a mood board: A mood board is a visual representation of your branding. It’s essentially a collage of images, video clips, and text that illustrate the overall feel of your company. During our recent rebrand we developed several unique routes that went further than mood boards. Read about it here.
- Start planning your rebrand: Now that you have feedback and a mood board, it’s time to start planning your routes. You should pinpoint any areas where your brand needs improvement, find solutions to those problems, and begin to make changes to your overall image.
How to find the right branding agency?
Your corporate rebrand can be conducted inhouse. You can organise it and execute it to a high level. But then a project of this size takes a lot of time and resources. This is where a dedicated marketing agency could be the better choice. Choosing an agency that has experience in rebranding companies in your industry will be able to fully understand your challenges and be better prepared to solve them.
Remember, it’s your brand, your face to the world. You want to feel proud of it. Finding an agency that speaks to you, that makes you feel comfortable, and that has the skills to execute your rebrand is essential. And while rebranding is a big undertaking, remember it’s an investment. If done right, it will more than pay for itself in the long run.
Got your reasons for rebranding? Want to see some of the corporate rebrand work we’ve done for our clients? Check out our talent.ai case study here.
Thinking about rebranding?
Talk to us! We have an excellent development team that can help you figure out if your brand needs refreshing. Why not give us a call?