How to Successfully Rebrand Your Business in 2021
Check out the original blog post, here.
Brand identity is essential!
And a poor or outdated image can be damaging to your reputation and cost you sales.
When it’s time to update your brand identity, rebranding is a smart and common approach. Many major brands such as Instagram, Uber, and Burberry, have successfully rebranded in the past.
In this blog post, we’ll show you when to rebrand your company, how to rebrand successfully, and two examples of successful rebrands to learn from.
When Should A Company Rebrand?
Companies are living, breathing entities. While they may technically be concrete buildings or online organizations, they’re made of real people offering products or services to real consumers.
And just like humans evolve throughout their lives, companies evolve throughout theirs too.
So how do you know when your company should rebrand?
There are three main reasons a company chooses to rebrand…
- To update an outdated image.
- When you’re going in a new direction.
- When it’s time to outgrow a poor reputation.
Like we stated earlier, rebranding is actually a prevalent marketing strategy among Fortune 500 companies.
In 2010, Comcast rebranded as Xfinity to distance themselves from their reputation as a cable provider with “the worst customer experience imaginable.”
When they realized they needed to do something about the growing number of complaints regarding technical difficulties and terrible customer service, they decided rebranding was their best option.
Xfinity’s Executive Vice President of Operations Dave Watson stated, “the notion is that we are going to keep getting better [and] we’re going to keep improving….”
When Rebranding is NOT Necessary
While rebranding is often essential throughout the life of your business, there are times when it’s not necessary.
One of the most popular reasons companies rebrand when they shouldn’t is boredom. Consistency is one reason customers continue to buy from certain brands and businesses. Coca-Cola, for example, is universally recognized because they’ve been using the same branding for over 100 years!
Here are some reasons why you shouldn’t rebrand…
How To Rebrand A Business
Now that you’ve determined if a rebranding is good for you, let’s get into how to rebrand your business successfully…
Re-establish Your Product or Service, Audience, and Market
If you’re changing your product or service, your audience and target market might change as well.
Do extensive market research, including focus groups, competitor research, and demographic research, to determine how you’ll be changing your product/service and how you’ll be marketing to them.
This will give you a solid foundation to start your rebranding.
Redefine Your Tone, Voice, and Identity
Now that you know who you’ll be selling to, it’s time to decide how. Will your identity, tone, and voice be witty and youthful? Will it be educational and mature? It all depends on how your target audience relates to your product and service.
Once you have determined how you’re going to relate to your audience, it’s time to change your logo, brand colors, and maybe even your brand name.
These steps should be relatively easy if you’ve done the proper research, but here are a few helpful tips if you need some more aid…
Complete Your Rebranding Strategy
If you haven’t already, check out our previous blog post, ‘How To Create a Killer Marketing Strategy (with step-by-step instructions!)’ here to complete your rebranding strategy!
Also, make sure you minimize the risk of customer confusion through a carefully planned launch that showcases the story behind the rebrand.
Are you giving your audience a narrative they can follow to understand why you rebranded?
Did you tease a rebranding on your channels to ensure they have plenty of time to ready themselves?
Collaborate With Your Teams
Your new branding may be for your audience, but don’t forget to include one of your company’s most valuable assets — your employees.
Your strategy should include every aspect of your company, including your own staff.
Include voices from within your company and gather feedback from every department. It’s easier to rally your company behind a rebrand when they feel their voices were heard and considered.
Launch and Evaluate Your Responses
Congratulations! You’ve officially learned how to rebrand a small business.
Now it’s time to evaluate your responses and determine how your audience responded to your rebranding and new image.
How did they respond to the narrative?
Can they relate to your new image and direction?
Were your employees able to successfully communicate the rebranding message?
Depending on how your rebranding is received, you might need to change your strategy. If you do — that’s ok! Marketing strategies are often altered and changed over time.
Examples of Successful Rebrandings
Chobani
When talking about successful rebranding examples, one has to think of Chobani.
With almost 50% of yogurt aisles being dedicated strictly to greek yogurt, Chobani knew they had to make themselves stand out.
But instead of opting for bright, bold colors, they decided to soften their look and shift from a yogurt company to a wellness company.
While brainstorming new packaging, Chobani’s Chief Creative Officer, Leland Maschmeyer, and his team found themselves drawn to the folk art of the 1800s — “hand-painted artwork and color palettes that come from nature,” as he puts it.
Chobani didn’t just scrap the white plastic; it got rid of its old typeface and block-style lettering in favor of a serif font that’s softer and heavy on the lower-case letters.
Browns and off-whites predominate, and, most noticeably, the fruit is rendered in a hand-painted style that actually celebrates the natural imperfections of fruit.
Walmart
To rebrand its imaging from cheap products to low-cost products, Wal-Mart changed its “Always Low Prices” slogan in 2007 and replaced it with “Save Money. Live Better.”
Doing so put a positive spin on the company’s reputation for offering merchandise at lower than average prices.
This rebrand came at the perfect time, and they were one of the few companies that didn’t suffer major blows during the economic recession of 2008.
Zoek’s 2021 Rebranding
Similar to why Walmart rebranded in 2007, we decided in late 2020 to shift our focus from customer acquisition to customer education.
While we still offer services such as SEO, Web Design, Graphic Design, and other Small Business needs…we wanted our audience to feel like they could depend on us even if they don’t use us.
We felt as though our branding was also outdated. Nothing about our website or socials stood out from our competitors, and we weren’t making as big of a splash in our industry as we wanted.
While we were still winning awards from companies like topseos.com and becoming partners with WiX and Google, our reputation wasn’t as big as we wanted it to be.
So in late 2020, our CEO, Sam Riemer, decided to pivot our direction from focusing on customer acquisition and services to customer education.
We interviewed and hired a Marketing team based all over the world to really understand different markets and opinions.
From there, we created branding and marketing that fit our goal and our vision.
Once we decided on our new logo, brand colors, and aesthetic direction, we surveyed our current customers to ask their pain points.
And every single one of them said brand awareness.
With this information, we decided to create new social media accounts to give out small business advice, create new SEO and Web Design bundles, and expand our services to include what small business owners were looking for: graphic design work, social media marketing, and more.
To create anticipation for our rebranding launch at the end of August 2021, we released teaser videos on our social media channels and newsletter to our email list over the course of a few weeks.
Bringing your customers along with you on the rebranding journey drastically improves their experience with it. When they feel like they’re a part of your launch rather than a bystander, you’re able to successfully launch without needing to worry about if it will be accepted.
Now That You’re Ready to Rebrand Your Business…
Remember, Zoek is here for you! Regardless of if you’re doing a partial or a complete rebrand, you’re in the research phase of your marketing strategy, or you’re still trying to figure out if a rebranding is for you… we got you covered.
Our social media, blogs, and newsletters are excellent sources of information for small businesses. We offer advice, tips, tricks, and other bits of information to help make it easier to run your business.
Make sure you subscribe to our newsletter and follow our socials to get the latest news and information. And when you’re ready to take the next step, contact a Zoek consultant here.
