When Is It Time to Rebrand Your Business?

We focus a lot on the importance of brand design—the process of giving your business a distinct identity that resonates with your target audience and sets you apart from others in your field. If you’ve been doing your homework as a business-owner and marketer, you’ve probably spent hours thinking about your logo, color palette, font choices, and even the voice behind all your digital and printed copy.

So, what are you supposed to do if it feels as if none of that is working? Or at least not working the way it used to?

Brand design is not a one-and-done kind of thing! Good branding evolves and grows just like people do. Think about the brands that have been around for 10, 20, or even 50 years or longer. Do any of them look the way they did back in the day?

Good branding typically requires rebranding or at least small refreshes. You need to re-evaluate your brand and make appropriate changes every so often to stay relevant and align yourself with market dynamics.

So, how do you know when it’s time to rebrand your business? Let’s dive in…

What does it mean to rebrand a business?

What is Rebranding?

When you rebrand, you’re going to be changing or refining the image of your business. There are specific reasons you want to do this (don’t worry, we’ll get into those), but to start you off, we want to note that there’s a difference between a full rebrand and a brand refresh.

With a full rebrand, you’re changing the entire image of your business. In some cases, this might be necessary, but be careful with this approach and only take it if you’re sure you need to. The last thing you want to do is lose your recognizability with your customers.

For many businesses, a simple brand refresh is the best option. This is where you keep the concept and heart of your brand the same, but you make tweaks to it as necessary.

Why Businesses Choose to Rebrand

We’ve found that the primary reason a business wants to rebrand is to reach a specific clientele or customer. One of the most common reasons businesses reach out to us is to make sure their online presence matches the elevated work they produce. For instance, a photographer might feel like she has elevated the aesthetic of her work and wants to make sure that her brand and website reflect that in order to appeal to a luxury or more refined clientele.

Other businesses choose to rebrand because they feel like their current brand has become outdated. This is a particularly common reason we hear from business owners who have recently acquired an older business and want to give the brand a facelift. For instance, several years ago glittery calligraphy logos were very popular, but that popularity has since waned. If somebody has a glittery calligraphy logo today, it looks a little bit as if they aren’t keeping up with the times.

It also might be that your company is moving in a new direction, embracing new values, or trying to reach a new market. If your brand has always been popular with a specific age group, you might have to make some changes to appeal to customers who are older or younger.

How to Determine When It’s Time to Rebrand

There’s a Mismatch Between Your Brand and Current Identity

Let’s face it: A business changes just like a person changes. They grow older, more mature, and evolve. In these cases, aspects of your brand may no longer reflect what you have to offer or what you do. If you previously offered photography and design, but now you specialize solely in design, you need to update all your branding to reflect that. If you’re a husband-and-wife team working together, but you two are no longer running the business together, you’ll want to make sure your brand identity reflects that.

You could also be hearing constructive feedback from clients: They don’t understand what you do or why. Your name is hard to read, or it’s misleading and confusing. In some cases, you have a name that’s the same as (or very similar to) another business, and people keep mixing you up.

It might just be that something about your brand isn’t clicking with your target audience. They see you and either feel nothing at all or (worse) feel something negative.

When any or all of this happens, it’s almost as if your brand is in an identity crisis, and it’s time for things to change.

You Notice a Decrease in Sales or Bookings

Is business in a slump? Sometimes when there’s a decrease in sales, web traffic, or social media engagement, it’s because something about your brand isn’t resonating. The market could have gotten more crowded, and you need to do something to stand out. If there’s been a decrease in activity around your business, this is a signal that it’s time to rebrand.

This, of course, could also just be a signal that it’s time revamp your marketing efforts, too.

Your Business is Pivoting or Growing

On the flip side of a decrease in sales is business expansion. Maybe you’re now offering new products or product categories, or you now have an entire team in place making your business happen, rather than the one-woman solopreneur endeavor you had previously.

Maybe you moved in a completely different direction altogether. For example, many people might be surprised to learn that Play-Doh started out as a material for cleaning soot and other buildup off walls (you can use that one at your next cocktail party), but as soon as business heads found out that children were playing with it as arts-and-crafts material, they rethought their entire business approach and (in turn) their branding.

Your business pivot might not be this extreme, but you could be doing something different from what you originally envisioned, and a wall cleaning product will never be branded the same as a children’s crafting material.

The Risks of Not Rebranding

Rebranding can be a tough choice if you really like what you currently have in place. It’s comfortable. It’s familiar. It once brought you a lot of success! But the reality is that sometimes it needs to happen in order for your business to grow.

The Rebranding Process: Steps to Consider

Step 1: Pull together a Pinterest board of images and brands that your brand aspires to be like. Ideally this board would include a mix of your work, outfits, wallpaper, accessories, clothing brands, invitations, interior design, other visuals (such as illustrations) and a few other brands. If you want to explore this process, we go into a lot more detail in this post.

Step 2: Grab a pen and paper! Write down how you hope someone would describe your brand in 3-5 words. There should be congruency between the Pinterest board and the words you’ve chosen. For example, it might be refined, elegant and timeless. When we’re working with clients one-on-one to customize their brands, we also like to have our clients ask their clients for keywords. The answers you receive from your clients can be pretty enlightening!

Step 3: Compare your Pinterest board to your website (or other marketing materials):

• Does your website have the same look-and-feel as the Pinterest board?
• Does your website evoke the same emotions?
• Would someone describe your website using the same or similar words as the ones you chose?

Step 4: Do the Pinterest board and words match? Wonderful! But if you notice a mismatch between what your brand aspires to and where it is right now, it miiiiight be time for a refresh. Thankfully we have a few easy ways to help you do that, so don’t worry!

Monitoring and Feedback

The process of rebranding doesn’t end with the official launch. Now’s your chance to see what kind of impact it makes. Pay attention to that important data like sales numbers, web traffic, and social media engagement, and listen to what your customers are saying. Ideally, your rebrand will achieve the goals you set, but in some cases, you may need to keep tweaking and trying something new.

Conclusion

Think of branding as an ongoing process. It’s something you need to keep working at, developing, and perfecting if you’re going to stay updated. Let it be cyclical instead of stagnant.

While the thought of a rebrand might sound a little bit stressful—of course, it’s always a little scary to change something about your business, especially when it comes to your public image—there are so many potential benefits you stand to enjoy. Undertaking a successful rebrand could lead to increased visibility, customer loyalty, and business growth. Who wouldn’t say yes to that?

Call to Action

Have you had a chance to evaluate your own brand’s current standing? If you haven’t, take a day or two to have a critical look, especially after reading our insight into the process. If you’ve decided it’s time for an evaluation, or if you’ve already done it, we welcome any thoughts you have on the branding process—or any feedback you have about our approach! Rebranding works differently for everyone, and we want to hear from you.