When you start your business, it usually begins with a company name, logo and website. The website is focused on one or two of your business’s core offerings (services or products) in store for your customers.
Once that is set up, you move quickly onto the selling bit (assuming you have the service or product ready to be deployed to the customer when required).
That’s the most that new businesses think of when starting up. Some companies do the sales bit and then move on to the name, logo and website.
As your business grows, you realize that a lot has changed, and your website (or sometimes even the logo and name) could be more representative of your current business.
This means that you will likely need to think of a brand relaunch. Here are a few tips from my experience on how to think about a rebrand.
Do not change the name:
I advise against changing the business’s name unless it is essential. If you have been running the company for a while, you have likely built a respected reputation in the market.
Changing the name now will make it challenging for old leads or clients to quickly find you when they need your product or service in the future.
Have a solid reason to change your logo:
Designers love playing around with logos; someone will likely find a better way to showcase your logo. A minor tweak to the logo (as long as it is still recognizable for your clients) is not a significant issue.
But if you have to redo the design, consider the benefits of redesigning it. Also, it would be a great idea to explain the reasoning in a blog and some previews on social posts to prepare your customers to recognize your new logo.
Tweaking offerings:
When your business tweaks its offerings to customers, changing your website and social channels becomes essential.
The content becomes very important here; you must explain this change in business offerings on the website’s home page and in your social bios.
To make it easy, Run a small social campaign explaining these changes to your followers.
Think about the links:
One of the things to remember when rebranding is to understand how your website is structured. You might be changing the existing offerings, bundling offerings, unbundling offerings, or removing a few underperforming ones.
We usually forget during this time the links within the content (from various pages in the website) and links from outside the website (maybe social channels or link trees or even email sequences in your CRM).
If these are not changed immediately, they will result in many 404 errors, impacting the general trustworthiness of your web presence.
Get the comms right:
A lot of rebranding is focused on realigning your business to changing market needs. A brand might enter new markets or attract a whole new set of audiences.
It’s essential to consider the messaging and communication the brand uses as part of this exercise (not just on its website but also everywhere in its marketing collateral) to ensure it connects with customers.
As part of this exercise, it is also essential to go back to your sales emails, email signatures, social channels, and even old (but still relevant) research papers to change their messaging.
This ensures consistency from now on in all your brand messaging.