When should your business consider rebranding?

By DONALD WILLIAMS

Williams Accounting & Consulting

You’ve been in business for years and have established a brand that has served you well. It’s exactly what you wanted in terms being clean, recognizable and right on the money. Everything is cohesive and makes sense. However, even the best of companies find that there is always a reason to rebrand.

A lot of times when people think of rebranding they associate it with something negative, such as a bad reaction to a company, product, facility or person. But, rebranding can also be a good thing.

Companies can use rebranding to address their growth or a change in the market, introduce themselves to a new audience demographic, reintroduce themselves to their old audience, or simply to create buzz.

Here are some reasons why your company might want to consider rebranding:

Has your audience changed?

Needs and wants can shift just as easily as the seasons do. With that being said, what the consumer of your brand needs and wants is no exception. Observing key insights on paid advertisements and social media posts can help you observe some of these changes.

If you have a strong presence, one of my favorite tools to find out if my audience is changing is social media listening. Checking out a sample of my brand’s social media followers’ profiles can give you some valuable data. General data-collecting tools such as surveys can also give you insight into your audiences as well.

If your audience is slowly shifting over time, that can be a great indicator that you should start looking into a rebrand, as some of the tactics you use to keep the attention of your previous audience might not work anymore. Reevaluating the type of content you put out can potentially put you in a better position to grow your following and/or boost sales.

Have you changed?

It’s completely normal to want to change the direction of your brand, especially if you’ve been on the same course for a long time. Even if you don’t hate what your current brand puts out to the world, if it doesn’t resonate with you anymore, it might be time for a change.

Pivoting can be harder for some brands than others, especially if the consumers who respond well to your brand are accustomed to a certain type of content. This is why it’s important to test the market you’d like to shift to before you pivot. Going in blind can result in unnecessarily heavy losses in engagement, sales and brand-to-consumer trust.

To avoid this, try posting your “pivot content” once a week in between the regularly scheduled posts. Observe the insights for that day over the course of a few months. Are the results positive? Are consumers asking for more of that type of content? If so, you might be headed in the right direction.

Has the overall market changed?

There are also instances where the market for your brand isn’t as popular as it used to be across the board with consumers. If you still enjoy your brand identity and aren’t as concerned with “popularity,” then stick with what you love. You might find there will always be a level of interest in what you have to offer.

But if you want your brand to continue to evolve with the market, you might consider rebranding. In-depth research will be paramount in order to do this successfully. As mentioned before, the majority of the information needed for a successful rebrand will need to be pulled from your clients. Many rebrand disasters were caused by not understanding one’s target audience and wanting to force a concept that might be considered tone deaf to existing clients. With the right team and proper analysis, you will be able to get ahead of the market when it comes to shifting trends and consumer interest.

All of this to say, there is nothing wrong with going in a different direction with your brand; it’s how you do it that matters. Conduct thorough research and, most importantly, have a passion for what you’re doing.

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