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Rebranding is a big deal. Whether you’re only changing your brand’s visual look and logo or you’re going for a total rebrand (complete with new messaging, audience focuses, unique selling proposition, and maybe even an actual new brand name), you’re making intentional changes that can impact how users may perceive you.
Any kind of rebranding is a high-stakes activity. It also is often expensive and time consuming, even if you’re doing a smaller revamp instead of a complete overhaul of your brand.
Because of this, it’s difficult to know exactly when it’s time to rebrand and what reasons actually mean you should follow through. And even once you do know, it’s crucial to know how to justify that a rebrand is needed to the company’s executives, who may be loathe to spend the money or risk rocking the boat.
So how do you know it’s time for a change? Let’s talk about the nine reasons you need to rebrand and how to justify to the higher-ups that it’s a needed shift.
When it comes to things to consider when rebranding, we need to address the elephant in the room: The risks.
First, we want to acknowledge that rebranding isn’t entirely without risk. While rebranding is well-executed in most cases, and is done as a result of a clear need to make a shift to reach higher-value audiences or position the business better in the market, it can theoretically go wrong.
Sometimes there’s a bit of a misfire, where you end up losing a chunk of your target audience segment but fail to engage your new ideal customer profile successfully. When this happens, you just end up with higher churn rates, period.
There have been a few cases where it also feels pointless or it’s underwhelming overall. I personally felt this was the case when Ebates became Rakuten; it felt like a strange shift from a smart name, and a new interface that didn’t really make a difference.
If you change your brand name, there’s also the risk that you’ll lose a significant chunk of brand awareness. It’s essential to have plans in place to combat that and to ensure that the payoffs of the new branding will be worth the risks.
If you’re going for a rebrand, you want it to be executed well and to know that it’s needed, so let’s look at some reasons that indicate it’s absolutely time for a change.
These are nine reasons why the answer to the question “should I rebrand” should be a yes!
When revenue starts moving in the wrong direction, it’s a sign that you need to take a close look at what’s happening.
There are plenty of causes for decreased revenue that don’t involve branding, including:
When none of these factors seem to be having a significant impact on decreased revenue, it may just be time for a rebrand. If your brand isn’t jumping out at users, you’re likely to see natural churn rates, but you’ll struggle to acquire more new customers. That’s when it’s time to shake it up.
Are customers raving about your brand like you want them to? Or does it seem a bit like customers are just settling?
Are you having trouble generating a lot of excitement from potential leads, or struggling to generate leads as it is?
Low customer interest if your product is solid often means that your brand just isn’t engaging them. You don’t want your brand to be just fine, you want it to be a standout.
This ties in with the point above.
Do you have the same features (or more) as a direct competitor and at a similar price point, but they seem to be growing significantly while you’re just kind of treading water or growing at a much slower pace?
Again— your brand needs to stand out. Your branding needs to back up everything that your business is, including highlighting your brand’s USP and really speaking to your target audience. If your brand ends up being too generic or underwhelming, and if it doesn’t positively impact how potential customers see your business, it’s time for a rebrand.
A lot of branding— including both visual branding and the USP that businesses focus on based on market trends— may not necessarily stay in style forever.
Even basic elements— like rounded corners on a logo (or circular logos) as opposed to razor-sharp edges— can have a massive impact about how users perceive you.
Image source
The last thing you want is to be a cutting-edge SaaS brand, for example, that has an outdated logo and interface. You also don’t need a brand that speaks to a USP that’s no longer on-trend or valued by large segments of your target audience.
Sometimes, it’s not the market that changes, but your business.
Does your brand currently reflect:
This is true even for small B2B businesses.
I originally started out as a site copywriter, and I shifted pretty early on to a content marketer. This required a complete rebrand of my site, my messaging, and even my business’s LinkedIn profile. Even though copy and content are similar, and the clients I was targeting were similar, I had to shift my branding to speak to the audiences that wanted to hire me for the services I wanted to offer.
As soon as I changed my site messaging from looking at each word in a sentence like a puzzle and that I wanted to practice long-form essays in elementary school (and all the other changes that went with it), my conversion rates increased.
When you have a substantial new product launch that is becoming a crucial part of your business, it may be time to incorporate that into a rebranding marketing strategy.
Grove Collaborative, for a non-B2B example, has been around for years. They sell environmentally-friendly and “green products to customers, and they rebranded to just “Grove” towards the end of the 2010s.
They have since launched a “beyond plastic” line of products that became the forefront of what they offer, which helps solidify their brand as a leader in the natural products space— which they’re currently intending to keep and grow by acquiring other companies.
Merging with another company? Sometimes that necessitates that a rebrand is in order.
You may, for example, have acquired a brand that offers a feature that aligns with your brand’s current software. Social media management software Hootsuite, for example, acquired AdEspresso, which created ad management software.
While they kept the well-established AdEspresso brand due to its loyal following, they also used the technology to add that tech to their own software.
No matter what, a merger or partnership can mean it’s time to either combine the brands, rebrand one, or create a total rebrand overall.
Sometimes new leadership wants to move things in a new direction in a big way, starting with rebranding.
If a new executive is forging a new path for your business— and especially if that’s part of the reason they were brought in— there’s no time like the present to consider a corporate rebranding strategy!
When you’re scaling up and down, it goes without saying that a lot about your brand is going to change. It can mean a change in audience demographics, or a change in what you’re going to sell.
Maybe you don’t want to target large enterprise companies anymore and you want to focus on small businesses. That is a huge benefit shift, and it may mean that you need to at least consider a rebrand.
Sometimes new leadership comes in and announces that they want to make a big change in branding. There’s no need to justify it at that point; it’s coming from the top down.
But if you’re on a team that needs to convince a few executives that it’s time for a new look or new messaging (or both), here are a few steps you should take to justify the rebrand:
If you’re ready to rebrand, make sure that you follow these tips to help increase the odds of success:
The latter tip is particularly important. You need to be thorough when engaging in a rebrand, and the last thing you need is to have high-value resources or sales materials that aren’t updated or consistent with the new imagery, brand voice, or core selling points. This goes for email templates, blog posts, and sales materials.
Content Camel can help with that. Our content management system makes it easy for you to find and review every piece of content your business owns from a single dashboard, and you can even give content different labels, including “updated after rebrand” or “needs to be updated.”
Your sales team can also send your content creators direct requests for new or updated content from the dashboard for a streamlined experience.
No matter, make sure that every department is onboard and up to date with what’s involved with the rebrand and what it means for them. Cross-department teamwork is important, especially when it comes to sales and marketing alignment, if you want your rebrand to be a success.
Want to ensure that your rebranding rollout is a success? Start your free trial with Content Camel here!
Rebranding is a great time to get organized
Content Camel is a sales enablement tool used for sales content management. High-growth sales teams use our system to quickly find and share the right content for each specific sales situation and measure content use and effectiveness.