The process of rebranding a business is quite tricky. A drastic makeover could boost sales and accelerate growth or cause your venture to lose momentum and, eventually, fold.
Just ask brands that have rebranded in the past. Even big corporations have suffered the disastrous consequences of a major redesign.
For small businesses, it might become more difficult to crawl back up after an unsuccessful rebranding. So, before you start gathering some digital printing supply to launch a new logo or tag line, here are some questions you need to ask yourself.
Who is Your Audience?
Before you rebrand, you must identify and get to know your target consumers. You cannot predict how the market will react to a product, service, or anything you release to the public. However, being aware of what types of people you want to reach can guide you to make the right decisions in developing and marketing.
The first step, therefore, is to find your business’ buyer persona. The buyer persona is drawn from data such as age, gender, location, employment, and income. This information allows you to understand how your consumers make a purchasing decision and tailor content accordingly.
You can identify buyer personas through conducting research, surveys and polls, and consumer interviews.
What is Your Purpose?
Your business does not exist solely to make money. You make contributions to the community where you belong.
Before you rebrand, you must ask yourself what your business is designed to do. To answer this question, you must recall the vision you have for your business when you started. Is your business still headed toward that direction?
Asking these questions will allow you to realign your focus and create a meaningful new brand that will connect with its consumers.
Why are You Rebranding?
There are numerous reasons why an entrepreneur might decide to rebrand. Most of the time, waning interests and decreasing profits push businesses to create hype. Some businesses rebrand in order to escape bad press after a scandal.
However, rebranding is not always the answer to a business’ woes. If you the growth of your business has stalled, coming up with an effective marketing strategy can help you gain back momentum. Having bad press can be remedied by apologizing to the public (and to the individuals or groups involved) and making concrete steps toward improving your products and services.
If you want your customers to have a new experience, whether you are launching a new product or service, rebranding might pay off. Again, it is a risky decision to rebrand your business, especially if it has been around for quite some time. There is a chance of failure which might flush precious resources — that you are better off investing somewhere more productive — down the drain.
How Will Existing and Potential Customers Respond?
You would not get more customers by marketing to a wider audience. In fact, you only will be wasting money by pushing products and services to customers who have no interest to make a purchase.
If you are rebranding to gain more customers, make sure you are not alienating those that have been loyal to your business from the start. Maybe you want to tap into younger generations and have completely overhauled your marketing to appeal only to individuals aged 16 to 35. Unless you want to lose older consumers, you must pay attention to both existing and potential consumers before making decisions.
Rebranding is a major decision that should be made with careful thought and consideration. By asking these questions, hopefully, you can make choices that will create better outcomes for your business.
