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At least 81 percent of consumers believe they must first trust a brand before buying from it. However, while the importance of branding is a given for any business, being able to adapt to changing market sentiments is the real game-changer. This is where rebranding proves essential.
Rebranding involves much more than a quick logo or website tweak. It requires thoughtful, well-planned steps to align your current values and objectives with those of your target audience.
It calls for an overhaul of your identity as a business, from your verbal and visual messaging to the products and services you offer to the customer experience you offer. When done right, all these will reignite interest in your offerings and restore momentum to your bottom line.
This article suggests expert tips for breathing new life into your business image through rebranding.
Table of Contents
Conduct Comprehensive Market Research
Conducting comprehensive market research is the wisest way to start rebranding your business. Dig deep into your target demographics and their psyche. Who are they? As consumers, what do they seek or expect? What do they believe in or stand for? The more precise the answers you get, the more relevant you become in your industry.
On top of attuning to your target audience, outperforming your competitors demands as much work and attention from you. Are there any unmet needs in the market that you can turn into golden opportunities for your business? Identify and maximize them, but only after conducting market surveys or interviews.
Once you’ve gathered enough information, extract qualitative insights to guide your next steps. To detect trends and patterns, use data analytics for your quantitative analysis.
You need this total approach to ground your rebranding efforts on facts and reason instead of guesses or baseless speculations. Realigning your brand identity with consumer expectations and market movements will help you design and implement a highly effective rebranding campaign.
Define Your Brand Identity
Conducting market research is something you do externally as part of your rebranding efforts. Internally, you define your brand identity, beginning with a review of your core values, mission, and intended audience.
Again, it helps to ask questions. What do you have that your rivals don’t? What message are you putting out there for your precious audience? The answers to these questions must be deeply ingrained in your brand identity. More importantly, they must be consistent across all touchpoints, from logo design to customer experience.
The results of your market research come in handy here as you try to understand your audience’s views and preferences, which will now be the centerpiece of the whole new brand personality you’re creating.
Craft Compelling Messaging
No matter what information you have collected through your market research or how strongly you think your new brand identity resonates with your audience, it can only matter if you capture their attention. To do that, you must learn to craft compelling messaging.
You want your brand to communicate with people in a way that arouses their interest. Such is another aspect of rebranding that can only begin with your understanding of their wants, needs, and pain points. With these in mind, you can use techniques that let you connect strongly with them, such as emotive language. Numbers have told us so, according to Gitnux. The market research platform says emotional content is twice as effective as purely rational content.
Whatever your messaging style, ensure it captures your unique value proposition and why they should choose you instead of your competitor. Compelling messaging grabs your audience’s attention and makes you more trustworthy in their eyes — a strong foundation for a successful rebranding campaign.
Refresh Your Visual Elements
Humans are visual creatures, thanks to our ability to process entire images for as quick as 13 milliseconds! That goes without saying that refreshing your business’s visual identity is necessary for effective rebranding. More than anything, your new “look” must reflect your new direction as a brand.
Review your current branding assets, such as logos, website design, etc. See whether they still accurately reflect your brand values and target audience profile. If something no longer fits, update it to send a message that you are in tune with the evolving dynamics of the market.
With a fresh visual identity, you can be more effective in attracting attention, standing out among your competitors, and achieving growth through innovation. The golden rule also applies here: keep everything consistent across all touchpoints and channels for stronger brand recognition.
Enhance Customer Experience
Understanding your audience is hardly enough when rebranding. The question is, what do you plan to do after putting yourself in these people’s shoes? How do you intend to improve things so they are more likely to stay around for your brand?
One answer could be as simple as streamlining your website. Make it easier for them to use, whether they’re just browsing around or making a purchase. Make the experience more enjoyable. Avoid frustrating them with links that aren’t working or buttons that wouldn’t click.
If you weren’t so big on personalization before, make it your strong suit now as part of your new brand. Aside from making your audience feel more valued and understood, personalization helps you address their specific concerns, increasing their satisfaction with your brand.
Engage Your Employees
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While you may be the brain behind your business, your employees are its arms and legs. They get things done, from pleasing your customers to driving your numbers. Most importantly, they are your brand ambassadors, your direct link to your customers. Hence, engaging them in the process maximizes their positive contribution to your rebranding success.
Engaging your employees means getting them involved or giving them an active part in your project. It means being transparent about the path you’re taking and your motivations for doing so. Offer them a good grasp of your objectives and ask them their two cents. This way, they will feel more important and invested in your success.
However, you may have to do more than tell them about your rebranding goals. They may need training and resources to understand your new brand identity and messaging entirely. Above all, empower them to embody everything your brand stands for when interacting with customers and stakeholders.
Remember, engaged employees don’t only make the transition smoother. They also add to the overall positivity of your rebranded image and your success as a business.
Measure and Iterate
At the end of the day, none of your rebranding strategies hold weight unless you know how exactly they performed in the market. In short, track your results using concrete metrics. When working with scientific data instead of opinions or perceptions, you can make wiser decisions for your brand, minimize risks and losses, and increase your bottom line.
Refining and perfecting a process based on feedback and insights is known as iteration. In rebranding, defining a baseline is the best way to begin. Your baseline is an initial set of metrics or performance indicators that serve as references for assessing your efforts’ success. Standard metrics used in rebranding include conversion rate, return on investment (ROI), customer lifetime value (CLV), etc.
Once you have established your baseline, you can systematically apply changes where you think they are necessary. Suppose you used to specialize in SEO services for business law firms, but now, you have also expanded and worked with personal injury lawyers. One simple yet powerful change you can make in your own strategy is adding “SEO for personal injury lawyer” to your list of focus keywords.
Since rebranding tends to attract a new set of potential clients — in our example, personal injury lawyers looking for SEO services — you may adjust your messaging. Perhaps add more emotion to your tone, considering that feelings tend to be involved more in lawyers’ relationships with personal injury clients than with business clients.
The secret is to remain agile and flexible. That means being constantly on your toes, ready for a shift of focus when real-time data demands it.
Even without prior rebranding knowledge, it’s easy to see the power of this process. If you plan to rebrand for any reason, the above strategies couldn’t make a better starting point.
