There may come a time when your company’s logo, fonts, colors, messaging, and potentially your name will need a refresh. You may be asking yourself, “When is the right time to give my company’s brand a facelift?” We have all seen major brands like Apple, Starbucks, and McDonald’s change their branding many times. With all of these rebranding examples, one thing stands true. While often their visual identity does change, there is always a much greater cause that influences the rebrand.
Your company’s core customers and services should always be the focus and priority in your rebrand. Over time it is likely that your core services, company values, core customer segments, or brand identity have changed. A rebrand goes far beyond just changing your logo. Every facet of your business is reflected in your brand and should be considered when making a change. Read on to learn a few of the best marketing practices to keep in mind when you are launching a rebrand for your company.
3 Reminders Before Your Rebrand
There are many steps that must be taken to successfully launch a new brand, but all of the necessary steps can be categorized into three groups: planning, reminding, and double-checking.
1. Plan Your Launch Date
Arguably the most important step in launching a rebrand, is setting a launch date. There are many moving pieces in this process and planning is key. The further in advance you are able to set the date, the more time everyone in your organization will have to prepare. Assigning tasks to everyone involved in the rebranding process will significantly help with a smooth transition come launch time.
Before the rebrand launch, it is vitally important that you have all of the correct information for the required fields on all affected platforms. You must also get approvals from the appropriate people in your company for the changes, as some fields can not be changed twice in a short period of time. Spend time sifting through each platform that will be updated and make sure you have thought through items like your Instagram bio description, profile and cover photos, usernames (check for availability), and updated pictures for Google My Business.
Schedule as many items as possible in advance. There will be many changes that have to be updated manually but it is helpful to plan any manual updates that you can. Pre-plan your social media posts and the language that you will use to announce the branding change.
2. Remind Your Audience
There are two different ways to approach a rebrand on social media for your company. If you have a decently large and engaged following on your social media platforms, it is wise to simply update the existing platform with your new branding. However, if your current social media platforms lack a strong following and have weak brand recognition or reviews, it is in your company’s best interest to delete your current accounts and start with a clean page.
If your company chooses to leave its current platform, post on the existing platform about the brand change and invite the audience to follow your company on the new platform. This is particularly important for businesses that are changing ownership. Spend time researching the different processes to update each platform. Most platforms are fairly easy to update; however, Linkedin (for example) does not allow you to make major rebranding changes to an existing page. In this case, your company will have to make an entirely new page.
If you choose to rename and update an existing account, make the change clear to the current audience with multiple social media announcements. Simply posting on the various platforms one time will not be sufficient to make your entire audience aware of the change. This consistent reminder will help provide clarity and trust around your new brand.
3. Double Check!
It is very likely that mistakes are made throughout the process and you need to cross your t’s and dot your i’s. Go back through all of your changes and look through every platform that was updated to make sure all of the necessary changes have been executed.
A commonly forgotten step is updating your company’s business email addresses. If you are renaming your business, you should also change your email addresses to reflect the new brand and ensure brand consistency. When you do this, it is very important to update any accounts connected to the previous email address. This is most important for any platforms that have two-factor authentication set up with that email address. There are many resources to help your company with an email address change. Being proactive with all of these items helps to eliminate operational headaches throughout your entire organization.
Our Team Can Help
Does your company desperately need a rebrand but you are feeling overwhelmed to conquer it on your own? Our team can help your company reach new levels of success by rebranding your business.
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