22/02/2022 | BRANDING & DESIGN
Why re-branding takes time and our top tips.
Written by Lauren Rogers | Brand Designer/Founder
Re-branding your company is time consuming and involves alot of steps, read on for our top tips to make it a seamless transition.
Let’s start by addressing what exactly is re-branding and why you might find yourself in the position of needing to re-brand in the first place. Re-branding is a strategy to change your brand image by developing either a new name and/or your logo and branding assets. There can be many driving factors behind re-branding, you need to go through a discovery phase first before jumping in and keep touching base throughout the process and even after you launch.
Re-branding takes time, we know! It’s a really big commitment and once you’ve made the decision you have to stay focused and commit to the roll-out. You need to dedicate tasks every single day or week towards the launch, there will be lots of busy work in the background and a long list of admin tasks before you’ve even made the big announcement. This will be more in-depth for larger companies who will need to think about where the brand shows up and make a plan to update every touchpoint, this is also why it’s so important to get it right the first time but that’s a whole other article.
Tip 1. Get clear on why you’re re-branding
A re-brand won’t allow your business to grow if you jump into it without first asking some crucial questions. It’s important to reflect (ALOT) before jumping into a re-brand. What are you hoping to achieve by investing in a new corporate brand identity? Having a goal for the re-brand will really help when you brief in your designer, you can also invest in a brand strategist to assist you in updating your companies vision & mission and target audience first. This is highly recommended if you have some budget so you have copy and a clear direction.
A few questions to ask are;
- Are you re-naming and creating an entirely new brand?
- Are you doing a refresh and need to remain familiar to your existing customers?
- Do you want to appear more premium?
- Are you upgrading from a DIY and need all your collateral to work as a cohesive identity system?
- Is your image is too premium and doesn’t reflect your current product?
- Do you want to sell your product for more?
Tip 2. Invest in an experienced visual brand designer
As designers writing this, we will obviously always recommend this step. But honestly, we’re not just saying it because we are designers, we have seen first-hand brands gone wrong and have done plenty of re-designs because this crucial step was skipped trying to save a few bucks.
Please don’t go to 99 Designs or Fivvr, you will get a logo yes but will it be thoughtful, strategic, and set you up for growth, probably not. Will you have to go through another re-design process a few years down the track, probably.
You will have your new brand for years to come so it’s a worthy investment to make sure you get it right, we recommend setting aside a budget so you know what you want to spend and start looking for the perfect designer to work with you to create your killer brand.
When looking for a designer make sure you pay close attention to their portfolio and the brands they have rolled out. Someone with a page of logo’s most likely won’t understand the importance of building a brand identity over designing a logo. And no, you don’t want “just a logo”, this will not help you move forward and will really leave you feeling flat when you start to market yourself.
“Please don’t go to 99 Designs or Fivvr, you will get a logo yes but will it be thoughtful, strategic, and set you up for growth, probably not.”
Tip 3. Get Organised
File your brand guidelines and any other assets that were included in your brand identity project in a neat filing structure which will make using or sharing them with your team easy. I have a Brand Assets folder which contains;
BRAND ASSETS
- Logo Suite
- Brand Guidelines
- Collateral
- Image Library
- Social Media Assets
This way I can share my whole brand assets folder with my team or remote workers and they can hit the ground running.
Tip 4. Plan the launch and stay on track
Your launch plan will be broken into many parts, my recommendation is to start from your launch deadline and work backward. What date do you want to launch? What needs to be completed each week to ensure you hit this deadline? A lot of re-brands run over their deadlines, it’s no small feat refreshing a brand, but having a rough deadline in mind will ensure the needle keeps moving and it doesn’t get put on the back burner.
You don’t want confused customers landing on your website and wondering who you are? Work out which tasks need to be done and structure them most to least important, for example, your online presence and first touchpoints will be most important, your staff back end operations least important and possibly can be done after you launch.
I always recommend a Gant chart which will set your deadline and plan the key dates of what needs to be done. I also use Asana boards to assign tasks and keep track of what’s happening within the team.
A few tasks in the roll-out will include;
- Building your new website
- Create a redirect from your current website, which will tell your customers you’ve re-branded and take them to the new website. You may need to enlist an IT team to assist with this.
- Update your name and logo on your Google Business Suite
- Admin tasks like updating your email signatures and emails
- Update your re-brand across your online platforms, this can include Instagram, Facebook, Behance, Pinterest, Linkedin, and anywhere else you have your brand listed.
“You don’t want confused customers landing on your website and wondering who you are.”
Tip 5. Tell your customers
One of the most critical steps is to keep your customers in the loop, you don’t want to lose loyal fans if they think you no longer exist or have not considered them in the process. Explain how the re-brand will impact them and how it will improve your services or product. If they know things will get better through re-branding they’re more likely to move over with ease and not make assumptions or move to the competitor. Also if they need to action anything, tell them clearly what needs to happen. For example, contact you at your new email address or if processes are changing you can let them know now, most people just care about what they need to do, and if it’s nothing they’ll move on with their lives but continue to use your services.
Tip 6 Maintain and grow your new brand
Now it’s all about growing your new brand, keep nurturing it and checking back in with your values to ensure it’s aligning with your newly created company vision. Now is the time to also have a team meeting to ensure everyone is in-line with the business goals and vision. If you had brand guidelines designed you can print these and give them to your staff which ensures they’re always checking in with the companies values too, this will be worth its weight in gold.
Other ideas are to create a suite of posters to hang in staff areas, create an internal reward system for those showcasing the new values, get staff excited about it and your customers will notice.
“Now is the time to also have a team meeting to ensure everyone is in-line with the business goals and vision.”
We hope this article will help you get on your way to a successful re-brand, as a summary below are the top tips to help with your re-brand;
Tip 1: Get clear on why you’re re-branding
Tip 2: Invest in an experience visual brand designer
Tip 3: Get organised
Tip 4: Plan the launch and stay on track
Tip 5: Tell your customers
Tip 6: Maintain and grow your new brand
If you need a design team to help you on your way, be sure to book in with us for a complimentary phone call or send us a message, we’d love to talk about how we can help you achieve your next goals.