Many of my clients come to me because they are looking for a re-brand. They always have a really good reason for this, the most common one being that their image isn’t professional enough to get them to where they want to be.
What is a re-brand?
The Oxford Dictionary defines a re-brand as “Change the corporate image of (a company or organization)”
Sometimes this means a complete change of EVERYTHING, however, depending on your situation, this might not mean a complete overhaul, sometimes it just means tweaking or bringing up to date what you already have. It may mean changing your name very slightly and adding sub-brands, altering the colour, actually creating a style guide so you can be more consistent and have a stronger business image, adapting your icon… It depends very much on what you already have and on what your plans are.
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There are a variety of different reasons why a business might feel that it needs a re-brand. Here are the five most common reasons that my clients come to me for a re-brand.
- 1. Your business image isn’t going to help you to meet your goals. This is a great reason to have a rebrand, as you can see why you need it and it means that you know what you want. You might have a particular client in mind, or a new sector that you want to work in, or you might have changed what you do so much that your goals have changed since your brand was created and so your business image is not inline with where you’re headed anymore. For example, you might want to move from working with children and their parents, to working within a school setting. Or you might want to move from working with the public, to running workshops in large companies. If your business image isn’t polished enough you might not feel that you’ll be taken seriously – especially if part of the process for getting in front of these people doesn’t allow you to be there in person and you need to send in materials that grab the attention of the right person.
2. Another reason might be that you’ve bought the company from someone else. This doesn’t automatically mean that you need a rebrand, the brand identity might be amazing, you might love it, it might be very attractive to the client base – but – there are times when people buy a really good business which has a lot of potential but the business image doesn’t live up to how great it is and you might feel that having an improved brand would strengthen the business and help you reach out to the right people.
3. Change. This could be a change in reputation, service, product, business direction, management, values… the list goes on, but if the change is not inline with your current brand, then you will need to fix that so that your brand is actually relevant to your focus and offering.
4. You’re not attracting the right people. Maybe you’re wanting to target a specific type of person but instead you’re constantly attracting people who you know are just not the right fit. Working on your brand to ensure that the right people are attracted to your business will help with this.
5. Your brand looks amateur. Often at the beginning of a business, you’ll create the logo yourself or go to somewhere cheap because, quite rightly, you need to spend what little money you have elsewhere. There is nothing wrong with this at the beginning when you just need “something” to get started – but after a while, unless you did your homework really well in the first place, have been totally focussed and haven’t changed from course, you’ll find that you outgrow your DIY brand and need to develop something which is a lot more “you”, that relates to your business and that looks really professional.. Not only will you have more confidence in your business image, but you’ll also find that your prospects take you more seriously… If this is the case for your business then you’re probably embarrassed to hand out your business cards. This is definitely not how you should feel about your business cards – or anything to do with the visual appearance of your business – if you’re feeling like this then you’re less likely to put your business out there, so you clearly need to do SOMETHING. You should feel proud and confident about your business, not feel terrified of what people think.
There’s just five reasons why you might need to consider a re-brand. If you’ve gone through this yourself then please let us know in the comments what your reason was!