“We’re embarrassed to give out our business cards to prospects and peers.” This admission is often cited as one of the top motivations for businesses to rebrand, but we’ve heard many other frustrations that small business owners don’t realize can be remedied through rebranding. A well-executed rebrand goes beyond just an updated appearance to reposition your company and better serve team members, audiences and stakeholders. It can also help you clearly define a mission and vision for the future, which may have changed as your company grew in size, evolved with an audience or took on new leadership.
By now, your business should be able to keep up with the times, blending a great brand with the technology available to you to accelerate your company’s success. But if you haven’t upgraded your brand strategy in a while, you’ll find that there are several benefits rebranding can bring for you this year. Consider these four rebranding reasons and make it a point to prioritize a new brand strategy if you want to share in any of the immediate effects of a successful brand facelift.
What’s a brand strategy? A brand strategy is an enterprise-wide internal and external roadmap that establishes the way your company is spoken about by your team and portrayed in the marketplace. It consists of corporate visioning, positioning statements, messaging platforms and visual identity systems and may include buyer personas, core values, sub-brand development and conceptual diagrams.
It Can Make You Look Modern, Professional & “Together”
We’ve already labeled business cards and other appearance needs as surface-level, but a brand’s outward look and feel do have a big impact on its immediate relevancy and long-term success. Consumers unfamiliar with your brand only have the surface to judge when they come across your website, view your digital ads, consult your business cards and read your emails. Having an outdated or inconsistent image across your marketing materials and website won’t do you any good and will likely drive away potential customers and business partners who feel they deserve a better, more modern brand in which to invest their time and money. Today, a website that looks contemporary and competitive is truly a requirement if a company wants to appear professional and “together.”
Updating your look can make mergers and acquisitions easier for both employees and customers, and a new brand strategy can reposition you in the market, prepare your company for future and give your team more to work with in terms of color palettes, imagery and iconography. Small businesses will always reach a point at which they can go no further without giving their brand the attention it deserves. Make time to review yours so you can keep working toward your ultimate vision.
It Can Optimize and Improve the Customer Experience
A rebrand is for more than just looks. It’s also an opportunity to review the experience you offer to customers and really consider what unique solves your people, processes, products and services present to address their challenges. A brand strategy includes corporate messaging and can contain buyer persona messaging, encouraging you to reconsider the way you approach others and the way they approach you. Evaluate your current brand messaging to see if you’re making any of the most common messaging mistakes, and consult with the sales team to get a grasp on the biggest differentiators that attract leads and seal the deal with customers.
Rebranding is a chance to go after a new target market or refine the way you meet the needs of an existing one. Refining the company vision to fit more with who your company aspires to be can remind you to stop wasting resources on serving markets that won’t help you reach your long-term vision; all resources should be allocated across the business with this vision and the ideal customer in mind. Focus on optimizing the customer experience from start to finish through a new brand strategy.
It Can Help You Compete (Or Take the Lead) in Your Market
Have you embraced digital transformation, designed with mobile in mind and invested in popularized strategies like content marketing? These business and marketing tactics may seem new, but they’re actually part of a standard toolbox that SMBs must use to be on the same level as their direct competitors. Pushing past them requires innovative thinking, but a rebrand can kickstart and support these efforts.
When you find competitors’ brand messaging, products or image too similar to yours, consider what differences can help your business stand out and let a new brand strategy reflect them. Executing a rebrand might also motivate your team to make the most of the technology available to you and your customers; consider how you can leverage new branding to create a better desktop and mobile website experience, build an app that makes shopping or using products and services easier and more convenient or revamp an outdated or confusing customer portal. Rebranding can bring structure and focus to accomplishing your competitive goals.
It Can Offer the Chance to Unite and Motivate Your Team
There have been many B2B companies that come to us for marketing help because they feel a disconnect between team members and leadership or they want their employees to shine through in the brand messaging they use. One big effect of rebranding, and especially of documenting a brand strategy to share with your team, is the unity and alignment it brings to all the people involved in a company’s success.
Whether your team appears lost and unmotivated or your HR department experiences difficulty hiring top talent, a new brand strategy gives a boost to all aspects of company culture to help people understand their value and stick around to help the company grow. Teams often rally around new branding because they believe in the company’s mission, recognize and appreciate its shared core values and want to work toward an inspiring vision. Make your employees feel more engaged with branding that speaks to them and attracts the right people.
To promote long-term growth and success in any industry, your business needs to have all the components of a great brand. Learn the ground rules for top-notch branding and review helpful tips and examples in my new eBook Does Your Branding Suck? Download it free today to measure your branding against the new standard, get ahead of the competition and reap the benefits discussed above.
Are you interested in B2B marketing services? Contact Sagefrog Marketing Group today.
