The brand that you have established is your identity. It is actually the values and characteristics that make up your brand. You attract what you present through your brand and this need to be relevant to your target audience and brand strategy should be strong enough to let the business sustain and grow for years to come. But sometimes the business lacks branding and identity and the business somewhere lacks strategies to make the brand find its place in the world among the customer base. Even the most beloved brands go under crises and their growth pauses and becomes stagnant to a point. They fail to meet the audience standards and expectations. They often find ways to promote their business but get into the trap of failed branding plans.
Is It Time To Rebrand?
A brand is the foundation of your business ideas you incorporate into your business, it is the business marketing ideas, business advertising ideas, content marketing strategy and brand building strategy that makes the brand stand out in the pool of businesses. But instead of going through these crises, you should focus on a rebranding strategy. A successful rebranding can be done once you note down all the points that are responsible for the downfall of your brand. Thus, there are many benefits of rebranding as it can shed the past image and build a new one based on the recent business marketing and strategy plan. Remember to rebrand on a good time rather than at any point of time because if you change your marketing plans and strategies too quickly you might lose the trust of few customers upon your brand.
Here are the indicators of when and why you need to rebrand:
Your Brand Has Become Stagnant:
Design and trends change very quickly in a span of time and you need to develop tastes according to the trends prevailing. If you are not able to move further from your old image and you are still using the fonts, colors, tools or even logo that you have been using since the starting of the company, then you absolutely need to design your own logo in a new and modernistic way defining your brand identity and updating the brand identity with a pinch of recent or modern trends. If you have lost change in your brand and its products and services carrying that old perception in your mind then rebranding can be a catch up.
Rebranding is obviously difficult for the small companies as they need to rebrand in the set budget but for large scale companies they can put a lot of money in rebranding the business through consultants.
Your Vision Has Changed:
One of the biggest reasons for rebranding is when a company has changed its vision and mission and the products that you are offering don't stand and align to your vision and mission then maybe it is the right time to rebrand your business. You might be thinking of expanding and finding regrowth of your business to have new business goals and new direction. For this, you need to expand your idea of business and make sure you formulate the new business strategy as to what you are offering now in the present time and not what you have been offering in the past.
So, start communicating new direction, values and future offerings.
Your Product Or Service Has Shifted To New Consumers:
Earlier your brand might be producing goods and services for Gen-Y, but now it has been focused to the millennial and zillennial. Due to the generation gap the products, the brand strategy and the marketing strategy changes. Rebrand allows you to redefine your brand and give it a new energy which helps in targeting untapped audiences. One more reason could be that you might be serving everyone but now you want to target a specific demographic of people. In this case, to make the brand relevant and relatable you need to evolve. Thus revising brand strategy and target audience will make your brand stay alive.
You Have Been Merging With Another Brand:
If your company is planning to merge with a brand, it becomes hard to follow the old content marketing strategies and business advertising and other marketing strategies. You get a clear view of all the business and marketing strategies once you reformulate them due to acquisition or merger. Try to align the brand with the sub brand to keep it related to each other as one part of the company and make necessary changes accordingly. Often businesses are not able to grow and require merging of business. If the new marketing and advertising strategies do not mix with the new coalition brand then both the brands could suffer due to this step.
You Are Planning To Rescale:
To compete at a higher level with higher-tier brands, you need to leave your old brand identity behind and merge with such good changes. Increasing the scale of the brand brings new opportunities and new customer base to outshine your brand. You will also gain unexpectedly to a higher level if you plan to upscale your brand and compete with bigger brands.
Competition:
If you think it's time to stand out from the crowd and be seen to the target audience to be unique in their view then change your brand strategies and bring in new formulations. You also need to keep a check on your competitors to emerge as a striking company. If a similar brand emerges, users might get confused as to which company to buy from. Thus, you need to meet standards and appear more appealing and be differentiated. To conquer over your competitors, rebranding will help to give direction to your business. Your competitors might be coming out with new products and services and even new marketing ideas to make their business prosper, in this case you need to rebrand your business to come in the eyes of the target audience.
To Disassociate Your Brand From Negative Image:
In the world of social media you brand prospers due to word of mouth and it can even fail due to that. The negative connotations spread lead to your company to be in bad books. Unfortunately it can take time to build a business and one business faux pas can damage the entire brand identity which you have taken years to establish. Rebranding after such an image is not easy because you have lost the trust of the customers but you can show that the company has growth prospects and this step can leave a positive impact on your audience.
Your Business Model Has Changed Due To Technology:
Sometimes when the company has founded on technology or business strategy keeping in mind, the same goals cannot be taken further for 10 years or more. So, if your company is undergoing technological change your business model needs to be changed accordingly.
Brand Has Become Complicated:
If your design or marketing strategies are confusing to the people and you are serving over complicated designs with no brand narrative, then you need to simplify it to have a good connection through the brand identity to the consumers. A rebrand is the only remedy due to such changes. To bring the focus of people on your brand you need to build connections and give a clear message regarding the new business strategy you are adopting. Some changes in cultural context can change the meaning of the brand. Hence, it needs to be dragged to have proper changes.
No Increase In Profit Due To Fixed Price:
Sometimes the clients do not want you to change the price of certain products and you don’t do it either to lose the customer base. But rebranding can let you change the price of the product with new policies and business strategies and thereby earning profits more than before. If you are struggling to raise prices and profits are hopelessly fixed then rebranding is the only solution for such a sign. It can help reshape your brand and change consumer perceptions.
The value of rebranding holds greater importance for the long term and helps infuse marketing upgrades to reach and attract new customers.