Rebranding in the New Year: The Dos and Don’ts

The New Year often feels like an opportunity for a fresh start and a time for new goals. If you’re wondering how to market your business online in 2022, the New Year may be the right time for a brand refresh.

In our digital world, audiences have more options than ever before, so having a strong brand is essential. Whether it’s a small change or a total overhaul, rebranding can ensure that your business is in the best place possible to reap the benefits of any digital marketing strategy.

Rebranding your business is something you’re likely to need to do more than once to make sure that your brand continues to reflect your business’ values and those of your intended audiences.

To help inspire you, we’ve put together our top tips for rebranding your business.

Rebranding is a marketing strategy where a business changes its image in some way, usually to differentiate itself from its competitors and connect with audiences.

Depending on your business, rebranding could mean a number of different things, it may be one of the below, or a combination. Some examples of rebranding include:

• Changing or adapting your business’ name.
• Changing or refreshing your logo, colour palette or social media.
• Reassessing your brand’s voice and messaging.

All of these methods can help create a new, or refreshed identity for your brand.

Rebrands aren’t only necessary when a business is struggling; if you want to reposition yourself to new audiences or have adapted your product offerings, you may want to consider a rebrand in order to reflect these changes. Rebranding your business also may be necessary if you have grown rapidly, it may be that you didn’t invest in branding at the start, and you may now feel like your brand doesn’t match your current business.

A rebrand is a great opportunity to reconsider your business’ goals, values and mission. It is likely that these may have changed since you first started, and it may be that some of your current branding doesn’t reflect your current vision and what your business now does.

Rebranding your business could mean that your business changes beyond all recognition. But it can also be less dramatic, small tweaks to your existing brand’s logo or content marketing strategy can provide big results.

These two strategies are known as a total and partial rebrand, and both have their benefits and drawbacks. Think of a total rebrand as a complete makeover in the look and feel of your brand, and a partial rebrand as polishing and refining what is already there.

One of those most notable examples of a business rebranding is Facebook’s recent rebrand to ‘Meta’. Despite the fact that it is one of the most influential companies in the world, it is safe to say that Facebook’s rebrand wasn’t particularly well received by audiences.

Not all rebrands require a name change, especially when a brand has strong name recognition. Fitness brand GymShark has grown into a billion pound company and rehauled pretty much everything about their brand in the process, including their logo and the whole ‘look and feel’ of the brand, as they shifted their position in the market and wanted to attract a wider range of fitness enthusiasts. However, the brand has still kept the name that they started out with.

Rebranding also doesn’t need to be too dramatic to be effective; Google paid homage to their old logo when they rebranded in 2013  but refined the typeface to make their logo more modern and appealing. Despite the rebrand being noticeable, it wasn’t too much of a departure that it looked unrecognisable.

1. Do ask for feedback

It’s important that you do your research before launching into a rebrand. By asking for feedback from customers, you will learn more about how they perceive your brand, and what elements they like and don’t like, which will help inform any choices that you make when rebranding your business.

2. Do look to your competitors

When you’re rebranding your business, it’s a good idea to look to your competitors and the wider market to see what other brands are doing. Look at the branding of other businesses that offer services similar to yours, or seek to attract a similar type of customer and consider what you like and dislike about their branding. Also look at companies that have recently undergone a rebrand, this will help you to identify possible rebranding pitfalls, and what has and hasn’t been well received.

Although you can draw inspiration from others, it’s important that your branding design and messaging isn’t a carbon copy of another brand, and instead is distinctive enough to help you stand out.

3. Do define your brand’s mission and values

The whole aim of a rebrand is to differentiate your business from competitors and help it stand out, and one of the best ways to stand out is by having a clear voice and mission which you communicate to customers.

The first step is to define your brand values; consider what makes your business special and what values you align with and what you would like your audience to think about your brand.

Then look at how your current brand reflects this, for example, does the content that you produce and the way that your brand looks reflect the values you want to put across? And if not, why not?

4. Don’t only rebrand your logo

Your logo is an important visual representation of your brand, and it is likely to be one of the first things you consider changing or refining when rebranding your business. Although it is undoubtedly important,  it isn’t the only way that audiences will perceive your business.

Rebranding your business is unlikely to be successful if the rebrand is just a change in your logo or name, and isn’t reflected across all of the content your business puts out into the world.

5. Do consider the power of colour

When rebranding, you should consider how your new brand will be communicated through all forms of your content marketing, such as social media posts, blogs and on your website.

Create new brand guidelines for your brand’s voice, chosen fonts and a colour scheme. This will help to ensure that your audience experiences your rebrand whether they are looking at a website, blog or social media content.

A signature colour can increase your brand’s recognition by 80%, so think carefully about what colours you would like to use and make sure they are used consistently throughout all your content.

6. Do get help from the experts

Rebranding can be a complex process and it’s important to get it right, or you risk wasting time and money and not reaping the results.  That’s where we can help.

At Social Chameleon, our digital marketing experts have guided hundreds of businesses through their rebranding journeys, helping them to refine their digital marketing strategy and achieve their goals.

If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you, then get in touch with the team at contact@socialchameleon.com or by filling out the enquiry form on our contact page.