By Brett Farmiloe
From seeing a decrease in customer engagement to overall brand confusion, here are nine small business leaders share their best advice to the question, “What is the clearest sign that it’s time to rebrand your business.”
Reasons why you should rebrand your business
1. Your brand is not aligned with your values
“One sign that it’s time to rebrand your business is if your current brand doesn’t align with your core values. This can be the case if you’ve grown and developed as a business but haven’t updated your branding to reflect the changes.
“If your current branding doesn’t reflect who you are as a company, it’s difficult to attract new customers and clients. We recently rebranded our company after realizing that our old branding didn’t reflect our core values. We wanted to be sure that our branding reflected the type of company we are, so we could attract the type of clients we wanted to work with. By rebranding, we could communicate our values and attract the clients we wanted to work with.”
—Matthew Ramirez, Rephrasely
2. Seeing a decrease in both engagement and sales
“If you are seeing a decrease in customer engagement and sales, it is likely time to rebrand your business. If customers are not buying, it means that your current branding is not resonating with them. Rebranding can help you better target your desired customer audience, better communicate your message and values, and ultimately increase customer engagement and sales.”
—Lilian Chen, Bar None Games
3. You are launching a new product or service
“Rebranding can be a good idea when you are launching a new product or service that doesn’t fit with your current branding. This can help to ensure that your new offering is positioned correctly in the market and that it resonates with your target audience.
“For example, if customers primarily know your business for selling a specific product, but you are now launching a new service that is unrelated to your existing product line, it might make sense to rebrand to better align with your new offering. This could involve updating your logo, changing your brand messaging, and revising your marketing materials to better reflect the nature of your new service. Rebranding in this situation can help to clarify to customers and stakeholders that your business is expanding and growing, and can also help to prevent confusion about your offerings.”
—Mike Stuzzi, MikeStuzzi.com
4. Customer confusion
“If your business’s brand is inconsistent, it’s time for a makeover. In order to succeed as a business, it’s important for companies to have a strong through line connecting all elements of their branding.
“Customers should be able to tell what you sell, your price point, and the quality they can expect just from your branding. If you’re finding that your business is stagnating or inconsistent, take a hard look at how you’re marketing the company. If customers don’t have a coherent understanding of your brand, it’s time to make some changes.”
—Brian Munce, Gestalt Brand Lab
5. Expansion into unfamiliar markets
“When your business expands into new product lines, consumers, or geographical markets, it can cause a major shift in your core. When values or operations no longer align with your brand, it’s time to rethink and relaunch. Since you may be reaching new consumers unfamiliar with your brand, you can start fresh and rebrand with a blank slate. It’s much easier to build a brand image than erase a customer’s impressions of your brand and build it up again.”
—Maximilian Wühr, Finn
6. Visual elements not portraying your message
“When I first started my online business, I noticed something was missing. My logo didn’t reflect the values that I was trying to represent in my brand. It felt dull and uninspired, making it difficult to connect with potential customers emotionally. I knew it was time to rebrand my business. Seeing how my logo wasn’t portraying authentic messages, I realized it was crucial to reevaluate how I wanted customers to feel when interacting with my brand.
“That experience taught me that any disconnect between your message and brand story and your existing visuals and design elements means it’s time for a change. With a complete rebranding, I could ensure that everything from the colors in my logo to the words we used in social media aligned with my goals.”
—Mina Elias, Trivium
7. Allowing your ego and surname to get in the way
“I’m a small business owner, and I let my surname be the front-runner of my company. My name is Irwin, so naturally I named my business ‘IrwinOrganic.’ While this was great for a while, after some time, it became increasingly difficult for customers to understand what services we provided. After all, our specialty wasn’t actually anything organic!
“As an SEO specialist, I understood rebranding was necessary in order for us to better communicate our services. Customers have had an easier time understanding our offerings, and this has resulted in increased revenue because of greater customer satisfaction with their experience working with us.”
—
Jamie Irwin, Straight Up Search
8. Having trouble raising prices
“One of the many certainties in business is that your costs to operate it will eventually go up. But if you are struggling to raise the prices for your products, it is a good sign that it is time to rebrand.
“Much of the price points that are placed on a business’s offerings are based on the public’s perceived value of those products and what they believe is fair value. You can justify price increases by creating a greater sense of value in your business’s products through a rebranding that emphasizes quality, showcases efficiency in solving pain points, and fills the gaps missed by competitors. Therefore, if you are having difficulty raising prices without losing customers, you should view this as a red flag and a telltale sign it is time to rebrand.”
—Alexandre Bocquet, Betterly
9. Current branding is not unique
“If you’re finding it hard to differentiate your business from your competition, it’s time to rebrand. Your company name and branding shouldn’t follow the status quo because customers will struggle to remember who you are and why they should choose you over similar brands. Instead, your branding should showcase what makes you different and better; i.e., your competitive advantage.”
—Tory Gray, The Gray Dot Company
About the Author
Post by: Brett Farmiloe
Brett Farmiloe is the founder and CEO of Terkel, a Q&A site that converts insights from small business owners into high-quality articles for brands.
Company: Terkel.io
Website:
www.terkel.io
Connect with me on
LinkedIn.
