Essential Rebranding Guide: Steps, Benefits, and Examples

The business world is dominated by cut-throat competition. It’s no longer news that establishing a unique brand identity has become crucial for any company that wants to grow and survive in the industry. 

It’s already very challenging to launch a brand and maintain relevance with the always-changing customer preferences and economic landscapes. This is where rebranding has been proven to be an effective tool for businesses. For easy understanding, you can take this idea to simply refer to the revamping of various aspects of your existing brand like its name, logo, vision, products, brand marketing strategy, and more. 

When rebranding is done strategically, it can help shift your customers’ perceptions positively and boost your sales significantly. 

If you’re thinking about remodelling your business, then keep reading this blog. It will provide you with a comprehensive overview of the most necessary rebranding concepts. 

The key takeaway is that rebranding is not just doing some shallow makeovers, but a well-defined transformation with the aim of staying relevant in customers’ minds. Leveraging the right technique can go a long way in helping you establish a stronger brand identity and eventually increase your sales.

Defining Rebranding

In simple terms, rebranding refers to all the processes involved in revamping or redesigning various facets of your established brand. The aspects considered for remodelling include name, logo, tagline, colour scheme, messaging, and general visual identity. 

It involves shifting your customers’ existing perceptions by communicating the brand’s new position, value proposition, and relevance in the market. A potent rebranding strategy will reshape how your target audience perceives and interacts with your brand. 

Different Forms of Rebranding

Rebranding can be carried out in different forms. It depends on the degree and scope of the changes that are required:

• Logo rebranding: This is when you update only your logo and retain other brand elements. 
• Sub-branding: It means introducing new brands or products under your parent brand. 
• Brand extension: Refers to leveraging your existing brand into a new category.
• Corporate rebranding: This involves making clear changes to your overall brand strategy, identity, and positioning. 
• Acquisition rebranding: This is when you acquire another brand and merge its identities with yours.

Reasons to Rebrand a Business

There are lots of reasons you should consider rebranding your business. Here are some common triggers that make it necessary:

1. Changing image and perception

It is possible for your company’s image and perception in the market to change over time. Even if your brand was well received before, customers’ tastes and preferences always change. A rebranding exercise will allow your business to refresh its image and message to align with current market trends. 

Your old branding may seem outdated and fail to resonate with modern customers. Rebranding is the best way to reinvent your company’s messaging and visual identity to connect better with your target audiences. It will help send a signal that your business is modernising and adapting to stay relevant.

2. Shift in business focus or offerings

Sometimes your company may choose to expand into new services or product categories over the years. This could mean that your original branding no longer accurately represents everything you stand for. Rebranding will give you an opportunity to communicate a change or expansion in your business focus. 

It will help customers understand what your company does now versus what you initially set it out to do. A redesigned brand identity and messaging framework will consistently integrate your brand’s transformation. 

3. Entry into new markets  

If your business is looking to target new geographic markets domestically or internationally, then rebranding is sure to make good strategic sense. 

What worked well for you in one region or country may not communicate very well elsewhere due to cultural differences. Localising your brand experience through rebranding will help boost recognition and impact the way you resonate with customers in new markets. 

4. Improving financial performance

Though it’s not definitive, research indicates that rebranding frequently yields financial improvements. It can generate for your business, free and earned media coverage that is difficult to acquire otherwise. 

Rebranding also can lift employee morale and engagement. This will support enhanced customer experiences and improved productivity. 

With these four reasons, it’s clear that rebranding will provide your business with multiple strategic benefits when it’s done the right way. It remains a powerful tool to update your company’s image, combine additional services, enter new markets seamlessly, or improve overall profits in the long run. Rebranding will also help in keeping your business relevant and adaptive to changing commercial environments.

Objectives and Goals of Rebranding

Some key objectives that rebranding can achieve for your business include:

• Reviving your customers’ interest and boosting your brand’s awareness.
• Improving your brand recall and top-of-mind recall. 
• Establishing a new brand positioning and making your company stand out. 
• Impacting your expansion and penetration of new markets. 
• Strengthening your credibility and building a positive perception of your brand. 
• Driving your brand affinity and increasing customer loyalty. 
• Supporting your business growth objectives like revenue expansion. 
• Enhancing your employee morale and attracting top talent. 

Significance of Rebranding in Business

In recent times, rebranding has become essential for businesses for the following reasons:

• Staying relevant: One major thing rebranding will do for your business is help you align your brand with changing customer preferences to remain relevant in your industry.
• Overcoming crises: When you rebrand, it provides you an opportunity to move past challenges because your customers can only perceive the new you.
• Reinventing brand image: Outdated brand image negatively impacts consumers, a rebranding will help get rid of it and give the positive perception you want for your brand.
• Regaining competitiveness: Your rivals may consistently innovate, rebranding will help you to keep up the pace always when taken with optimal strategic ways.
• Appealing to new segments: Rebranding gives you an advantage when you tap into new segments since that requires an updated identity.
• Pursuing international growth: When you want to localise for global markets, rebranding is a must-do to gain the attention your brand needs.
• Aligning with mergers: If you want to acquire new business, of course,  rebranding is needed to unify brand identities. That’s how powerful a rebrand can be.

Benefits of Rebranding

If you strategically implement rebranding, it can help in augmenting your company’s brand awareness, positioning, and overall market standing. That’s just the basic truth.

It will strengthen how your brand is perceived and differentiated in your industry, by boosting recall and affinity amongst your target customers. This in return, leads to increased revenues and sales as your brand is better able to attract new customers while retaining existing ones. You know this is exactly what you want.

In addition, new branding opens doors for you to expand with opportunities across products, services, and international markets. 

Effective Strategies for Successful Rebranding

To ensure your rebranding yields desired results, adopting the following method is recommended:

• Conduct extensive market research: Make sure to understand your customers, competitors, and opportunities better because this will help you achieve the purpose of rebranding, seamlessly.
• Define vision, mission, and goals: This is extremely important. Your rebranding exercises should align with organisational goals.
• Analyse strengths and weaknesses: Try to narrow in on existing blindspots for correction. This is very important because you will be able to perform better.
• Establish brand identity framework: Be sure you make careful decisions on important facets like name, logo, colours, tagline, etc. This shouldn’t be taken lightly.
• Craft messaging and branding guidelines: Clearly explain the core of your brand to both internal and external stakeholders.
• Develop supporting creative assets: Come up with collaterals, stationery, website, that’ll reflect your new brand identity.
• Train employees: Let your workers be aware of changes so they can consistently present the remodelled brand. Carrying them along will help your brand identity a lot.
• Run diverse marketing campaigns: Ignite excitement as you introduce your new brand identity to target audiences. Yes, because the outcome will be worth it.
• Track metrics and analyse ROI: You must measure rebranding success, both qualitatively and quantitatively. 
• Continuously improve: Make sure you adapt brand identity to match ongoing changes. This is important to avoid your audience getting confused.

Steps and Process of Rebranding a Company

Rebranding requires careful planning and execution for it to be successful. Here’s a guide you can follow and implement:

• Assess the need for rebranding

The first step you need to take for rebranding is to assess if it is truly needed. Evaluate things like your company growth, change in a target market, outdated image, loss of brand recognition, etc. Then you can determine if a refreshed brand identity will help meet your new business goals.

• Define brand strategy and vision  

You must define your new brand strategy and vision clearly. Identify your target audience, communicate key messages, position your brand, and establish brand values. This will guide all your creative and marketing decisions.

• Update logo, colours and fonts 

Update your brand logo, colours, and fonts to make them modern, memorable, and in line with your new brand vision. You should also test multiple design options and get feedback. It’ll help you finalise your refreshed brand visual identity guidelines.  

• Rewrite tagline and slogan 

Come up with an inspiring tagline and slogan that will capture your new brand vision to the point. You should make sure it communicates your core brand message and positioning.

• Revamp website, collateral, and communications 

Another important thing to do is to refresh all your online and offline materials – website, stationery, uniforms, signage, etc. according to your new visual guidelines. Make sure there’s a consistent brand experience across all touchpoints.

• Launch and promotion  

Plan a promotional campaign to announce and launch your new brand identity. You can promote it through digital, print, PR, and events to build buzz and introduce your new branding. Remember to track effectiveness and make changes as needed.

Examples Highlighting Effective Rebranding

Rebranding has been around for years without numbers. Most of the big brands you see out there have also undergone revamping. Here are some branding success stories that may inspire you:

• Google: The company transformed from a mere search engine to a leader across product categories.
• Starbucks: It was generally known for coffee, but now it has become a place for community, work, and experience.
• Apple: We all have heard or seen how Apple successfully evolved its identity from a technology to a lifestyle brand through consistent innovation.
• FedEx: The company revamped its entire visual identity, communication style, and perceived experience.

Learning from Rebranding Failures: Examples

Yes, rebranding brings a lot of advantages, however, not every redesigning exercise will meet set objectives. Below are some examples of failed makeovers:

• The new Coke experiment of Coca-Cola was rolled back because it got negative feedback.
• MSN Messenger to Skype transition that faced public criticism for discontinuing a popular platform.
• Gap’s logo revamp in 2010 which confused its target audience with an abstract representation.

Conclusion

To wrap up, in the current fast-changing business world where grabbing attention is getting harder, rebranding is a go-to solution. It gives you a chance to fix mistakes and adapt to new situations. Even though it requires many responsibilities, using smart planning and research can lead to big rewards that you definitely won’t want to miss.