What Are the Top Reasons for Re-branding a Business

Re-branding is one of the most effective ways to help your business grow. However, it is a complicated process, which can often bring unwanted results. Nevertheless, in some situations, it is the only way to induce or continue growth.

Situations like change in business ownership, expansion to a foreign market, even a bad reputation could be good reasons for re-branding a business. Still, it is a very risky move that should be done with a lot of planning and strategic analysis. Moreover, it is a perfect time to hire a professional digital marketing consultant to handle the process.

It is not a simple task. You need to ensure you are in a situation where it is necessary to change the image of your business. Therefore, take a look at the top reasons for re-branding a business and see if your company is a suitable candidate.

Change in ownership is one of the top reasons for re-branding a business.

A change in business ownership is one of the top reasons why companies re-brand. Of course, sometimes it is necessary to comply with legal requirements. Most of the time, however, companies want to make the change visible and mark the new beginning for their business.

If you have a new owner or you are merging with another company, creating a completely new brand is probably the best choice. Hire an experienced digital marketing consultant and start developing a strategy that will lead you to success.

Changing the image of your company might help to stand out from the competition.

There are many reasons why your business might be slow. You’ll often need an extensive analysis to figure out the problem. Maybe your market is oversaturated, perhaps you are not using the benefits of digital marketing, or you are just selling a product that nobody wants.

Still, these are not situations where company re-branding could help. On the other hand, if your analyses show that the main reason why your company is stalling is that you do not stand out from the competition, completely transforming your company’s appearance or corporate identity might be a good way to restart.

Of course, in this situation, re-branding might be more complicated as it requires an in-depth analysis of your competition as well. Nevertheless, if you are successful, soon you will be under their radar. A rebrand in this situation should be done with care and common sense.

Reaching out to a new audience might be your reason for a makeover.

Sometimes the decision to go after a new target audience might be the reason for re-branding. If you own a specific brand, but you want to attract a new type of clients, it is more important than ever to do proper research and analysis.

Maybe your current brand is good enough to attract the desired clientele as well. Perhaps you just need to have a good advertising campaign or use the advantages of social media marketing. Of course, when you want to attract a new group of customers without re-branding, it is vital not to skew the image your old customer base had.

Still, changing your brand or corporate identity is probably the best way to reach a new target audience. Especially if you have no former clients to worry about. Reaching out to a new audience might also help you grow your market share.

Reaching out to a foreign market is another good reason to update your brand.

When it comes to finding a new audience, reaching out to a foreign target market can often lead to re-branding a business. Of course, it mostly depends on whether your old brand is recognisable in this country and whether a new brand could be more successful.

For example, in some countries, a brand name may have an unfortunate or negative association. This will require a change of name. This is why you should give a lot of thought into choosing a suitable brand name in the first place.

Major companies handle internationalisation very carefully. They consider culture, customer habits, even favourite colours before they form a new look suitable for the local setting. This might also help to increase your market share.

Significant growth could be a reason for re-branding a business.

Changing your brand is an excellent way to mark the expansion of your company, especially if the growth is significant and visible.

On the other hand, maybe you are feeling restrained by your current visuals. If you feel that old appearance doesn’t reflect your current business, it is definitely time to change it.

Of course, to match your expectations and aspirations, you need to look a little bit into the future and make sure that you will not have to do it again after a few years.

Having a consistent, strategic branding allows your business to grow strong brand equity that customers can interpret as your business has a higher value than the competition. In this situation, brand equity is priceless.

Merging several trademarks into one is one of the reasons to create a new brand.

Sometimes companies develop new brands. Over time, it becomes increasingly difficult and expensive to run separate marketing for every brand they own. Therefore, they decide to re-brand and make their portfolio more coherent.

Of course, merging several different brands into one requires the help of digital marketing experts, proper preparation, thorough planning, and superb execution to be successful.

Make sure that you hire reliable marketing experts before you decide to re-brand your business, primarily when you work with multiple brands.

A website update can surprisingly lead to re-branding

When it comes to online companies, updating their website can often be a reason for a complete makeover. Web technologies change rapidly these days.

One day your web developers might come in and say that it is time to update your webpage because of dwindling customer engagement.

Of course, the reasons for updating a website are not always primarily cosmetic. Still, since updating a website often means modernising it, a change in appearance will impose itself.

If your website’s design and aesthetics are not captured in your brand guideline or style guide this can lead to an inconsistent experience for all stakeholders.

Also keeping the same business name and domain name on your website is vital for your brand. This ensures that your customers can find your business online.

Modernisation might be a reason to change your company’s image.

When it comes to modernisation, it doesn’t always have to be related to your website. If your company is on the market for a long time, your logo, colours, visual language or even your slogan might be outdated.

Even though this is a legitimate reason for re-branding, it is often hard on the company’s owners, employees, and customers. Therefore, a thorough analysis is required before you execute this.

The strength and recognisability of your old brand are crucial in this situation. It happened more than a few times that the company made a mistake and had to return to their old style after a few years of wandering.

Do not let this happen to you. Schedule a meeting with professional digital marketing experts and do a complete analysis of re-branding your company to see whether you are going in the right direction or not.

Be careful of brand infringement when building your brand.

Sometimes legal matters might be a reason to re-brand. Brand infringement is one of the most common situations when this happens. Of course, borrowing an idea isn’t always intentional.

Nevertheless, everyone should do thorough research before starting a company and building a brand, or they could quickly be faced with expensive lawsuits and court-directed re-branding.

Following trademark laws, especially if you are an international company, can be difficult. Every country has its rules and regulations, so you need to be well informed if you do not want to be caught in brand infringement.

Re-branding cannot fix a bad reputation.

It doesn’t take a lot of effort to earn a bad reputation in the business. And the impact on your business operations can be disastrous. At the very least, it is easier than creating a trustworthy and reputable brand name. When a company starts to feel the customers’ distrust, they often try re-branding their business.

However, this is not a good way to regain customers’ trust. In the digital age, such tricks do not work anymore. If you want to fix a bad reputation, hiring a team of experienced digital marketing experts is probably the only way to do it. Still, no one can guarantee success in this situation.

Boredom is one of the surprising reasons for re-branding a business.

When it comes to small or family businesses, they often have the most unlikely reasons for re-branding—for example, boredom.

Small and family companies’ owners often become bored with looking at the same colours, logo, graphic design or slogan every day. So they decide to make a change.

Unfortunately, most of the time, this doesn’t end well, especially without a professional marketing expert who will lead them through the process.

In essence, you need to have a good reason for your re-branding to be successful. Boredom is certainly not on that list.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many reasons for re-branding a business. Sometimes, with a change in ownership or a brand infringement, it is a reasonable and necessary thing to do.

Another good reason is when you want to expand into a new market. Alternatively, you may want to stand out from your competition.

Still, because of the complexity of the process, the cost, and the uncertainty of outcome, it should be one of the last things to do when trying to induce growth.

There are easier ways to help your company expand. Hire professional marketing experts, and you should see satisfying results quickly without going through all that hassle of re-branding. Even better, take a digital marketing course and learn how to promote your business on your own.

Originally published at mauconline.net

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