3 Best Practices for Rebranding Your Business

Before jumping into a total or partial rebrand, it’s important to be proactive about your approach and conscious of the needs of your business. Doing so can ensure the process is rolled out according to schedule, on budget and aligns with your business objectives. Take note of these three best practices before shaping your rebranding strategy:

1. Determine the Level of Rebranding Your Business Needs

When it comes to rebranding, there are many elements that come into play. It can encompass every aspect of your business’s brand, including its:

• Name
• Key differentiators
• Logo and tagline development
• Key messaging
• Brand identity standards
• Ongoing brand management

A rebranding can even impact how you approach other aspects of your business, from your mission and work culture, to your customer service and product packaging.

Before you dive headfirst into a rebranding initiative, it’s important to assess whether rebranding is needed at all by looking out for these four signs it’s time for a rebrand. Then, evaluate the effectiveness of each aspect of your brand to determine which areas may or may not need more work. While certain updates might be required, a complete overhaul of your entire brand is not always necessary in order to achieve your business objectives.

2. Set Measurable Rebranding Goals

Establishing measurable goals for your rebranding initiative can help to keep your efforts focused on achieving tangible results. It can be easy to get caught up in conceptualizing ideas for a new branding scheme, but if those exciting ideas don’t align with your business goals, the point is moot.

Rebranding should be a strategic step toward achieving your business goals. Without clearly defining your desired outcome of a rebrand, you may actually end up digging your brand further into the ditch instead of elevating it. When establishing your rebranding goals, consider these main points:

• What is the desired impact of your rebranding?
• What steps will you take to achieve your goals?
• What KPIs will you use to measure your results?

3. Fully Integrate Your Rebranding Across All Marketing Vehicles

To ensure a successful rebrand, your business’s new brand identity must be completely integrated across all its existing marketing vehicles—both internal and external. This can include the following:

• Stationery
• Website
• Social media
• Advertising
• Marketing collateral
• Email campaigns
• Videos
• Signage
• Presentations
• Product packaging
• Employee uniforms

Unifying all marketing materials with the new approach will help to establish a clear, cohesive brand image. On the other hand, neglecting to fully integrate your rebranding or doing it on a gradual basis over time leads to inconsistency in your messaging, which can confuse your audience and be counterproductive to your rebranding goals.

These three best practices provide a foundation for how to successfully approach a rebranding initiative. For additional insight and support, consider bringing on an agency partner, as the rebranding process can be multi-faceted and difficult to navigate internally.