The Ad Agnecy Guide to Small Business Rebranding
If you run a small company, you are well aware that your brand is everything. Especially in crowded markets, fresh and innovative branding can mean the difference between name recognition and repeat customers or eventually disappearing in a sea of names. If you believe that your brand is not doing you any favors than most top ad agencies would suggest that it is time to consider a company rebranding. Rebranding can have several positive effects. It can help to refine the focus of your desired market which in turn will serve to stir up new business.
While rebranding can be an effective way to stimulate buzz and public image, it however is not an overall solution for all business problems. For example, rebranding will not help to resolve internal and staff issues. Another thing to take into consideration is that a rebranding can also take a considerable amount of time before it shows returns. Especially if your old brand was fairly well established, you may cause some confusion in your older client base.
Ad Agency Tips
Most ad agencies agree that reebranding is a good way to change your target market, so if you feel as if your business isn?t appealing to the customers you want, change things up! Don?t look to rebranding to be a solution to new management changes or internal problems. Rebranding takes time and effort, so changes will occur in the long term, not right away. With that said most business going through different types of rebranding phases especially during times of growth or change. While each rebranding process is different for each business there are some general tips from ad agencies that can get you started on your new business identity.
Where Did You Come from and Where Do You Want to Go
When considering a rebrand it does not help to throw out the baby with the bathwater. It is important to have some type of perspective of what has been fundamentally success with your current branding, what needs more tooling and what most definitely did not work. Once you have isolated want works make sure to save it for your next incarnation. According to the top advertising agencies the purpose of a rebrand should be to refine the strengths of a particular business and hone and refine them.
To stay competitive, you will also have to consider adding new services to stay competitive, this is the point of expansion. This process is more involved with the things in your current paradigm that could work better, but don?t have enough resources devoted to them. Make sure to have clear goals of what the next steps of your business will be after the rebranding it will help you keep on task. In order to have a successful expansion it is important to pay attention to what your current consumer want from your business as well as what your current competitors are offering. A basic example of this is seen in the food industry all the time. Many a burger store has lost business because the burger shop across the street decided to spring for a deep fryer, which enables them to open a whole new area of fried foods, which in effect drive customers away from the store that does not have that capability. In order for a business to survive it most evolve at the same rate or faster than its competition.
Promote Your New Brand
Even if you use the largest advertising firms, making changes to your brand will be completely useless unless you are able to tell your new and old customers alike. Many a store has changed location only to end up closing completely in six months? time because they did a poor job of spreading the news of their new location. After you have gone through your rebranding make sure to get the word out. In the old days it might have been enough to hang a few signs or to get newspaper times, but in this age of social media there is no excuse for a business not to have some type of interactive page for customers. In several big ad agencies there are employees that spend their entire day interacting over social media.
