Practical tips on how to rebrand your small business successfully

As per the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s Business Population Estimates, small businesses constitute over 99% of the UK business population. So it is more critical than ever for your company to stand out from its competitors.

Rebranding is one of the most practical ways to achieve this goal since it can reinvent your company to make it more memorable, improve sales, and promote customer loyalty.

If you want to learn more about rebranding your company successfully, read through these nine tips.

1) Redesign all your marketing assets

Your new brand elements need to be reflected across your marketing assets and communication channels for successful rebranding. Consequently, redesign all your stationery like business cards and letterheads with these new brand elements.

Similarly, update your social media profiles with fresh profile photos and header images. In addition, redesign your business website or brick-and-mortar store to showcase the new branding. You can also update your website’s content and meta-tags, ensuring that you rank high for new keywords, if any.

2) Consider a name change

According to Crowdspring, 77% of people refer to particular items by their brand names. Indeed, it isn’t uncommon for many people to refer to tablets like iPads or ask for a “Kleenex” when they want a tissue. Therefore, your company’s name is undoubtedly essential to its identity, and a name change may be just what you need to reinvent your brand.

A generic business name embroiled in trademark conflicts, confusing or hard to spell, and no longer reflects your brand is always worth changing. Also, you can change your business name if your company is experiencing a PR nightmare. For instance, Facebook is considering a name change to save its reputation and focus on the metaverse.

You can select a new name for your company by generating a clever acronym, modifying the spelling of a word, and adding a suffix. In addition, you can pair your location with your service or precisely say what you do, like “Amy’s Photography.” On the other hand, you can reach out to a company branding and naming agency to help you select the perfect name for your brand that reflects its new identity.

3) Research and re-establish your target audience and market

There is no denying that continuous market research is critical to ensure your marketing efforts reach the right audience. For starters, examine your current clients and find out who else they are purchasing from. This way, you can understand your competition better to ensure that your rebranding efforts are practical.

You can engage your patrons through face-to-face chats, email surveys, review requests, and website surveys. Besides bringing helpful information that may surprise you, this market research also provides data to back up your decisions, ensuring that you can rebrand with confidence.

4) Reevaluate your company’s vision, mission, and voice

Your enterprise’s mission, vision, and voice will likely be due for a change during rebranding, so it is best to redefine these elements for the best results. Your vision is the reason for doing what you do. Therefore, this is typically the first thing to change since it influences all other aspects of your branding.

Furthermore, your mission reflects how you intend to achieve your vision, so it must change to reflect your new goal. In a typical rebranding context, you can find your new mission by thinking about what has changed in how you deliver your services and products. Also, your values articulate what matters most to your business and reflect your dedication to its vision and mission. 

Consequently, it is best to ensure that your brand values align with your new business model. Finally, your brand voice can also change as your company evolves. This voice conveys your thoughts in the right tone to your target audience, so it will need to change if you say it is different.

5) Rethink your slogan

A reported 50% of all consumers say slogans are the brand elements that help them understand companies’ purposes the most. Slogans make your company easy to remember and identify when it matters most, and they can convince customers of your business offerings’ superiority. Therefore, a tagline that no longer reflects your brand is ineffective and due for change when rebranding your company.

Consequently, pick a new slogan that is impactful, reliable, and reflective of your brand’s personality. For instance, Airbnb changed its tagline from “travel like a human” to “belong anywhere,” reflecting the company’s goal of making patrons feel at home irrespective of where they are. 

6) Rebuild your brand’s identity

It is tempting to retain old brand elements like your logo and colour palette when rebranding your company. However, this is sometimes inappropriate since some of these brand elements need to be tweaked or replaced by stronger ones. For starters, a new logo might be necessary to reflect what your company represents presently. It should be timeless, instantly recognisable, unique, and appropriate to your customer base and niche.

Additionally, a new colour palette is worth considering since it impacts how people perceive your brand. Reboot estimates that using a signature colour can boost brand recognition by 80%, so it would be best to pick the right colours to reflect your company best.

Your brand’s typography is also critical so prioritise selecting fonts that reflect your target audience. Furthermore, ensure that all imagery and shape are consistent in design and align with your fresh look and messaging.

7) Accommodate trends

A rebranded company should always be up-to-date, so it would be best to accommodate trends when reinventing your company. For instance, if design trends lean towards animation, minimalism, or 2D, ensure that your brand’s new elements capture these themes.

This way, you can simply tweak what you have instead of inventing something new. For instance, Pepsi and Coca-Cola have changed their logos several times throughout history to capture the trends of different times without sacrificing the essence of their companies.

8) Create new brand guidelines

Many teams are overwhelmed by or resistant to change, so you can’t just introduce your new brand elements and expect them to adapt quickly. As such, it is critical to empower your team to use branding appropriately by presenting everything in comprehensive and easy-to-understand guidelines.

These guidelines should be accessible to all content creators who need them, and you should also appoint someone to answer any questions concerning their correct application.

9) Announce your rebranding

Many experts advise having a solid internal and external rollout strategy to announce your rebrand, so keep this in mind. This way, you can communicate the changes to keep your clients, staff, and partners informed. That said, notify your employees of the rebrand and tell them what led to the change and the way forward.

Your business operations must reflect your changes moving forward, and this can only happen if you involve your workers and maintain transparency. Additionally, inform your customers and your partners about your rebranding so they don’t wake up to an entirely different brand that they can’t relate to. For this, you can prepare numerous teasers in the form of ads, emails, and short videos to make your audience curious.

Also, create promo assets like infographics and blogs to convey the story of your rebranding for various social media platforms and ensure that the press and the public can readily share them.

Ensure that all your offline and online marketing materials reflect your new brand identity on the launch day. Also, make sure that all your promo assets have been shared across all your channels. Finally, consider launching in one quick and decisive action to lessen the impact and reduce your audience’s confusion.