Does Your Brand Need a Rebrand? | Magnetic Brand Strategy

Your business is dynamic, constantly evolving and growing. Every year presents new challenges, new clients, new growth opportunities and a constant evolution of your business. But how about your brand? Has it kept pace?

It’s easy to dismiss brand as a logo design or a cosmetic refresh. But if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that brand goes far beyond visual identity. Brand is about articulating your business strategy to your customer base. It’s about sharply conveying the value you bring and why you are the obvious, better choice.

More pointedly, your brand is a revenue driver for your business. Your brand should have a powerful message that resonates so strongly with your ideal customer that they’re compelled to take action and engage with you. If this isn’t the case, and if you’ve been in business for a while, perhaps it’s time to evaluate how well your brand is working for you.

Criteria for evaluating your brand

First, it’s helpful to get honest about your current brand and how it conveys what your business is all about. For this, you need to step out of your leader role and look at your brand objectively, as a stranger would. It’s pretty difficult to get rid of implicit bias, so it might be helpful to ask a new employee or a trusted industry colleague (better yet: a few of these) for their thoughts on your brand. Overall, you want to assess:

Does your brand have a big brand message, an idea that sums up what your brand is all about?
Do your communications materials convey your brand message effectively?
Is your message differentiating from your competitors?
Are you targeting a particular customer segment?
Do you define a specific problem and explain how you address that problem?
Do your communications materials take your customer on a “journey,” moving them from “awareness to consideration to purchase?” (read more about the customer journey)

Answering these questions can help assess if your business needs a rebrand.

When Should You Rebrand?

A rebrand can expand your brand in so many ways. It can reposition your business for growth, differentiation and clear focus. Here’s when you should consider a rebrand:

You want to change how your business is perceived. For years, Walmart conveyed they stood for “Always Low Prices,” leading customers to believe they were cheap but… not much else. In 2007 they pivoted to “Save Money, Live Better” to focus on how they improve customers’ lives.
You’re expanding to reach a new market segment while holding onto your existing one. This can be tricky, and a rebrand is in order. We recently helped a client expand their offering to include a greater market segment, while still appealing to their existing audience.
Outdated image. Your brand look and feel just feels flat. Your website is outdated. The way you communicate about your brand doesn’t reflect all your offerings and services, and there is no cohesive brand “story” where everything comes together and makes sense.
Your business isn’t differentiated clearly. The rebrand exercise looks at how you convey your offering and what makes you stand out from the competition. Then we sharpen that message so it’s more acute and your brand clarifies your competitive advantage.
You want to align your employees. As companies expand, sometimes employees discover their own way of selling your value proposition. That can lead to fragmented messaging. A rebrand helps to align your messaging around a core brand truth so it’s instantly ownable and your team is unified around one compelling message.
You want to increase pricing. A rebrand can focus your messaging on the value you provide and target the segment that disproportionately values that offering, allowing you to extract a higher price for services because that segment deeply values your offering.

Benefits of a Rebrand

A rebrand brings amazing clarity to your business. A rebrand:

Sharply differentiates you from the competition;
Makes you the obvious and right choice for customers;
Enables new segments to view you as relevant and compelling for their needs;
Attracts the kind of customers who deeply value your offering and are willing to pay more for it;
Allows you to drive up pricing;
Accurately reflects your mission and your vision for your business, conveying where you aim to go.

Is it time for your business to undergo a rebrand? Let’s get clarity for you. Reach out to us and / or schedule a complimentary consultation and let’s make your brand magnetic to success.