by Michele Leon

Business owners often talk of rebranding their business to suit modern trends and behaviors better, but the idea itself leaves them daunted. The fact is, rebranding your business can have numerous benefits in the long-run. While it is an investment, changing your business’s public image to better appeal to your target audience will yield a more significant return on investment (ROI).

The goal of any rebranding strategy is to change the business image or persona. This entails new or updated logos, presenting new products or services, or updating the business model altogether to meet customer demands.

Rebranding your business will take time, energy, commitment, and investment, but sometimes its necessity comes into play to ensure business survival. If you are on the fence about jumping into rebranding, consider these 7 signs that it may be time to rebrand.

Your Brand No Longer Stands Out

No matter the industry or niche, there will always be a standard way of appealing to potential customers. You will find numerous cookie-cutter sites and social media pages churning out the same information and promotions to reel in sales. If your business is one of these, it can be difficult for you to have a unique selling point that your target audience has not already seen from a hundred different businesses. In turn, nothing is stopping them from choosing someone else over you.

Rebranding will give you the opportunity to do some market research and discover industry gaps that not many other businesses are considering. You can use these gaps to build new offerings or strategies that address your target audience’s needs more than the competition does.

Moreover, market research into your competitors will show you what tactics they use on their website and social media to gain attention. Seeing the same image format, layouts, and information leaves nothing but price comparisons for potential customers to consider. But suppose you revamp your business with unique self-shot images, aesthetically pleasing web design, and well-designed social media content. In that case, that alone will pull people to consider your offerings simply because of the professionalism and credibility it exudes.

Your Online Presence Is Outdated

Rebranding your business entails updating your website, emails, newsletters, and social media strategy. The update must reflect the values and goals of your business in the current times. Meaning, if your website and online strategy have been the same since you started out years ago, chances are it is no longer viable.

Keep in mind that the aspects of technology are constantly evolving. Software to build websites has become more advanced, allowing for greater freedom in design and layout. Furthermore, design elements have shifted to a more minimalistic form. While your animated graphics and blinking text may have appealing to your customer base years ago, now it shows your business as outdated and therefore less credible.

When updating your online presence, specifically a business website, always take into consideration user experience. Your site should be easy to navigate and load as quickly as possible. These functionalities increase conversion into sales and play a significant role in whether or not your business is even listed on search engines.

Your Audience Has Moved On

Just like websites, your ideal client is also constantly evolving. Their needs and the solutions to them change as the industry landscape changes. This means that your business offerings may no longer solve the problem they seek to address, making it irrelevant for consideration. Also, the audience you once had may have likely moved on, giving way to a new batch.

This new batch maybe a younger generation looking for digital solutions, and your business needs to be able to provide that. In your rebranding strategy, consider the digital shift and that clients will expect the businesses they work with to keep up with the latest trends and solutions. Otherwise, your business will end up losing clients to competitors with a stronger and more efficient solution.

You Want To Establish Market Leadership

Clients in any market will want to work with businesses that know what they are doing. With that in mind, establishing your know-how and leadership in your industry is crucial to gaining credibility and trust. In turn, this will bring in clients eager to work with you because you can efficiently address their needs with the assurance that it is being done right.

In order to establish market leadership in the digital age, businesses need to engage their audience through informative blog posts, relevant content, and insightful videos. It would also be a big plus to showcase client experience in working with you or your offerings and how it helps them accomplish their goal.

When rebranding your business, including strategies on how your business will establish market leadership is crucial to include. Showing that your business has the capabilities, experience, and reviews to back it up will go a long way in helping increase conversion rates.

Your Business No Longer Reflects Its Vision

A business’s vision is like anything else. It needs to adjust and change to meet the current times. Like a personality, a vision adapts based on what works for the business and what doesn’t. Once you start to realize that your brand (including its name, logo, and products) no longer falls in line with the original vision, it’s time to rebrand.

In business, everything needs to be aligned. From the logo you choose right down to the font people see on all your content. Such alignment also needs to be seen in the vision of your business. If your business’s name and the offerings it has do not make sense, this misalignment can confuse the direction.

Additionally, more critical clients may be turned away from a business that does not know its direction. Even if your offerings are top-notch, the lack of business ideal can set some people to work with someone else.

Your Business Has Too Much Going On

While the goal of many business owners is to constantly offer up new products and services, at one point, it can be too much. Too much going on can mean a dispersed target audience, offerings that don’t make sense for the market you’re in, or lowered prices. All these can bring in less an ideal client.

At this point, your business is “taking what it can get,” and that is not a good thing. Instead of having clients come to you, you are going to clients, asking what they need, and providing that even if it’s not in your selling proposition. One word defines this, desperation.

This desperation will lead to your business having too much going on. You’ll find yourself stretching business thin to meet demands that you didn’t intend to. While this can be a viable short-term strategy, it is likely to backfire sooner rather than later. Go back to basics and rebrand your business if you find yourself in this position.

Your Business Growth Has Stagnated

Business stagnation is the worst nightmare of any business owner. Once you’ve hit the ceiling and can no longer breakthrough, it’s time to re-evaluate and start the rebranding process. With business being so competitive, expanding is the only way to keep from drowning.

Expanding can mean widening your audience reach, offering more or improved products and services, or opting for a partnership. All of these strategies open new doors to growth that will keep your business remain competitive.

Business stagnation is caused by neglecting to address everything discussed in this article. Without a distinctive personality, an updated online presence, a fresh audience, and market leadership, it is likely that business will take a nosedive. At this point, it is less costly to invest in business rebranding than it is to continue in perpetual stagnation and eventual closing.

Beginning The Rebranding Process

Now that you have insight into the signs that it is time for a business rebranding, you can start to process with the right approach. Keep in mind that the rebranding process needs to be done strategically and methodically. If not, it will likely make things worse rather than better.

Here is a brief checklist of beginning business rebranding:

• Understand why a rebrand for business is necessary and communicate this with personnel.
• Assemble a rebranding team for idea exchange and strategy formulation.
• Identify critical areas for rebranding (website, logo, name, audience, offerings, etc.).
• Outline the vision, mission, purpose, and values to be incorporated in rebranding.
• Ensure your brand message is clear.
• Design your brand persona.
• Stipulate brand guidelines.
• Ready for rollout!

The checklist listed are the basic things that a business needs to accomplish when rebranding. While there is more to it than it seems, knowing where to start can move the process along in the right direction. Above all, rebranding is about finding ways to put your best foot forward and get your brand out there and known so that it can continue to impact the lives of clients positively.