15 reasons to consider (re)branding

What are the reasons your business should consider branding or rebranding? We’ve taken a look at some of the most common factors driving business’ branding decisions.

Branding is an integral part of your business. It is not only your identity, but the driving factor to increasing your customer loyalty, improving your awareness and building connections with your audience.

We previously wrote about why branding is important for business, but what are the reasons for branding or rebranding? In this post we will discuss why businesses will consider creating a brand or transforming their existing.

Business Management driven – Leadership

The decisions that business leaders take can have a significant impact on a brand and cause all sorts of headaches for brand managers and marketers to unpick.

More often than not, these business management led branding exercises require a full brand creation or transformation project.  

Start-up

When a business leader creates a new company, branding is likely to be towards the top of most to do lists. Having a strong identity from the start will encourage consumers to buy from you, businesses to invest in you and staff to work for you.

Merger/ acquisition

When two brands become one, it is often the practical changes that get thought of internally – departments merged, changes in direction, staff made redundant.

But it’s vital to make sure that attention is paid to the new brand strategy. Making this clear before these changes are announced, with the outcomes of a brand transformation project needed to be implemented quickly ensure that customers can transition to the new brand quickly.

Did you know: According to Label Insight, 94% of customers are more likely to show loyalty if businesses are transparent. So, use this opportunity to properly introduce your company and your team. This will help you to build rapport with your customers and help create that brand awareness.

Leadership changes

When the leadership of a business changes, more often than not there is a change in approach and direction to the selling your products and services. While your visual identity may not change, managing the proposition and messaging requires a clear brand strategy.

Restructuring

When a large corporate or an SME restructures their business, it often impacts their overall proposition. Carefully considering the impact this can have on your brand is vital. Again, it’s time to review that brand strategy and assess the changes required – there are likely to be some – to your identity.

Business Strategy driven – Diversification & Repositioning

As the driver for how you communicate your identity to your audiences, your brand should always be aligned to your business strategy.

So, when your business strategy changes, your brand is nearly always going to need to pivot too in order to ensure consistency and effective positioning.

Here are some reasons for rebranding or branding which are driven by your business strategy.

New products/ service offering

Launching new products is the perfect reason to think about whether your brand strategy is still appropriate for your business. If you’re just adding a new variant to the range, it’s unlikely you’ll need to make many changes, but if it’s a whole new offer, then it’s time to think about your brand.

Did you know: According to Nielsen, 59% of global consumers surveyed prefer buying new products from companies they trust. So, consider whether you have built up this rapport with your consumers. If not, this is a good reason for improving or implementing branding to promote your new products.

Market changes

The world around us is constantly evolving, making changes to the lives of our customers all the time, so it is perfectly normal to notice a change in your market.

Successful businesses change with these market changes, and these changes can often have an impact on your brand.  If you see this happening, make sure you keep with the times and consider how your brand is serving your audience to stay on top of the market.

One of the key factors which you need to take into consideration is social change. We have seen many changes in 2020 from the way we interact to the way we tackle important social issues. Forbes has written a great post on why you need to embrace social change.

Business culture

When business strategy impacts your business culture, it’s likely to impact the identity that your business has. From how you’re perceived externally to how you behave internally, exploring your values and how you communicate is vital to ensure that you’re people and audience understand the value of your brand.

Marketing Strategy driven – Performance

drawing of question mark in lightbulb

New website – Reskin or restructure

So you’re thinking about making changes to your website. Have you ensured that you’re aligning it your brand strategy? It is important that you effectively apply your identity across all your channels to engage and connect – and your website is the place people go to really understand what you stand for.

So consider this, does your brand stand up to your expectations of your new site? If not, why not use this as an excuse for a (re)brand?

Share of Voice – Recognition

Do you know how much Share of Voice you currently own? An important part of growing is recognising what your Share of Voice is and how you can improve it.

Maybe it’s time to give the company a fresh message or launch a new brand campaign to shake things up a bit? First, consider your brand strategy and whether or not you need to revisit your brand.

Brand Driven – Identity

Your brand is your promise to your consumers. It should tell them who you are, what you stand for any why they should buy from you.

However, just like everything else in life your brand should grow and evolve over time to prevent it from becoming stagnant and old news. Don’t be afraid refresh your image. If you don’t already have a strong brand, here are just a few reasons you may want to start a rebranding exercise.

Time

As time goes by, your branding should grow and evolve with your business. Brand Orbit has conducted some research and found the average lifespan of a website is 2 years and 7 months to stop it from becoming stale and outdated.

Maintaining the same brand identity for the entirety of the company’s life is just not possible if you want to move with the times.

Growth

As the business becomes bigger, consider reassessing your branding to reflect the growth.

The branding you may or may not have created for your small start-up all those years ago may no longer work for a larger corporation. If you haven’t got a brand strategy, then now is the perfect reason to create one and reflect this in your identity.

Competition

Always be aware of your competition and what they’re doing with their brand strategy is vital. Does your brand stand out from theirs with your current message and visual identity?

Are they trying to steal the space you currently occupy? Making sure you differentiate your brand from the competition requires constant monitoring of both your own and your competitor’s strategy, and if you’re losing out, it’s vital to pivot to regain that space. That doesn’t mean a whole new logo, but it may be time to think about your core message.

Internationalisation

When you start up you may only be dealing with your home country. But if you start branching out to international clients make sure you reassess your branding.

Is the culture and language still appropriate for other countries? If not, it may be time to start creating separate brands for each country and redefining your brand architecture.  

Customer driven – Image

Unfortunately, despite all the work brand managers put into carefully crafting identities, it’s your customer that decides what your brand really stands for. So if you’re struggling to connect and engage your target audience, it might be time to consider your brand.

Simply asking them for some feedback is a great way to find out what they think of your brand and whether they feel you need to change. Here are a few reasons to rebrand from a customer perspective.

Customer expectations

What does your customer expect from you? According to a Harvard Business Review article, 64% of consumers who feel they have a connection to a brand state shared values as the reason.

So, look at your target markets values, do you share these? If so, how can you show these mutual values? These are some of the expectations you should consider coinciding with your current brand strategy or new identity.

A fresh display of mutual values shared is a great reason for rebranding or branding as it will show you in a different light and help consumers connect with you on a deeper level.

Reputation Management

Consider your current reputation as a company, then think about what reputation you want. Are they different? If so, look at your branding to see if you can change this.

A rebrand can do wonders for customer opinion and your reputation.

How we can help

As you can see there are so many reasons to consider re(branding) and these aren’t all of them.

You might also notice that a rebrand doesn’t require you to create a new visual identity or tone of voice every time – it might be as simple as refining your brand strategy and implementing some new core messaging that better represents your brand.

Your brand is one of the most important assets you can have as a company. It’s illustrated in everything from your website to your customer’s experiences. If the brand you adopt is not on point and effective it makes company growth and brand loyalty difficult to build upon.

We understand the importance of your brand and how to both create and build upon an impactful identity to create a successful, memorable business.

We also believe in the power of personalisation and treating each brand as an individual. Because of this, our branding services are tailored for each client to ensure you receive the correct approach to achieve your business objectives.

To learn more about our branding and brand marketing services, get in touch to speak to our branding specialists.