Rebranding Strategy: Step-By-Step Guide for Brands

You can't launch a successful rebrand if you don't know where you're going. This free guide walks you through the essential steps of a complete branding process and helps you think about every step you take as you move forward.

As the founder and owner of a branding agency, I'm often asked: “What is the best way to rebrand my business?” Most people expect me to tell them that it's simply to spend thousands on a logo redesign. 

Unfortunately, that's a pretty flawed approach. When rebranding using that approach, you're rebranding many bad ideas. It's easy to get caught up in the idea of making everything perfect—and then you get frustrated and quit before you even really start. 

The truth is, there is no single “best” rebranding strategy—but there is one that works better than anything else I've seen. So, when rebranding, you should consider what your brand does well. You should be proud of your company and be excited about its future. So, how do you know whether you should rebrand?

This is the complete guide to rebranding your brand or company from scratch. Learn what to do and what not to do when rebranding and the tools, templates, and resources you'll need along the way.

Understand the Current Identity

A rebranding strategy involves an enormous amount of planning. For example, if a company wants to rebrand its products or services, it needs to develop a new brand name, design and logo for the new branding.

To rebrand your products or services, you must think carefully about what you want to achieve. Your brand can represent who you are and what you do. To better understand the brand, you need to think about the following.

What does your brand mean to your customers?

When you rebrand, you need to keep this question in mind. Your customers are the main reason why you need to rebrand. What does the new brand stand for? If the new brand isn't clearly defined, your customers might find it confusing.

Who is your target audience?

This is another crucial question. Who is your target audience? It can be your current customers, potential customers or a group of people using your new brand.

The primary purpose of a rebrand is to make it easier for your current customers to find your products or services. This is why you need to understand who your current customers are. You also need to find the most common keywords for your target audience.

Is your brand strong enough to survive a rebrand?

Before you rebrand, it's a good idea to check whether your brand is strong enough to survive. Brand strength is a combination of many factors. If your brand is weak, it might not survive a rebrand. This is why you need to get some feedback from your current customers. This will help you figure out whether your brand is strong enough.

Do you need to change your products or services?

Your new brand might require you to change your products or services. You should decide whether these changes are needed based on the results of the previous questions. For example, if your target audience includes current and potential customers, you don't need to change anything.

Another thing to consider is whether the changes will lead to losing your current customers. You must reconsider your decision if they're likely to find the new brand confusing.

Do you need to update your current website or products?

Another critical aspect of a rebranding strategy is the way it will affect your website and products. You need to ensure that you don't change anything without changing the overall look and feel of your website or products. If you do, you'll lose many customers.

Identify Brand Purpose

Identifying your brand's purpose is one of the crucial things when rebranding your company or business. If you know your brand's purpose, you can easily understand what changes you need to make in your current brand.

Here we will explain how to identify your brand purpose. To know what your brand purpose is?

Brand purpose is a clear and concise definition that helps you understand what your brand stands for and its goals. If you don't have a clear idea about your brand, it can confuse people and make them lose interest in your products and services.

The most common purpose of a brand is to create a connection between consumers and businesses. It helps your customers to feel the emotions related to your product or service. When people connect with your brand, they trust you.

When you connect with your audience, you can easily attract their attention and keep them loyal to you. It helps you to build an emotional connection with your customers.

Before starting a new branding strategy, it's always good to understand your brand's purpose. It can confuse people if you don't know what your brand stands for.

Here is a simple guide on how to define your brand purpose:

1: Ask yourself why your brand exists?

The first step to defining your brand's purpose is to ask yourself why your brand exists. What do you offer to your target audience? Is it something different from your competitors?

If you're a restaurant, your brand's purpose is to serve food. If you're a financial company, your brand's purpose is to provide financial services.

The answer to this question will help you understand your brand's purpose. Your brand purpose should be something different from your competitors.

2: Define your brand promise

A brand promise is a statement or a promise that explains what your brand stands for. It's a simple statement that explains what your brand is all about. It can help you to differentiate your brand from your competitors.

Your brand promise must be clear and easy to understand. It's a promise that people can relate to. A simple example of a brand promise would be, “We guarantee our customers will receive their orders on time.”

If you want to know more about the brand promise, you can visit our website. Here we have provided a free template for you to use. You can fill it in and use it for your brand.

3: List your values

Values are the morals, principles, and ideas that you stand for. They are the values of your company. You can define your brand values as the core beliefs of your brand.

Your brand values should be simple and easy to understand. If you are a global brand, your values should reflect the values of the entire world. Your brand values should be consistent across all channels.

Create a Brand Roadmap

A brand road map is a guide that helps the company understand their business and future goals. Brand Roadmaps help the client understand how the branding strategy fits into the bigger picture.

Rebranding is one of the essential things for any business to do. There are many benefits associated with a successful rebranding strategy. A rebranding process is a long-term journey where you have to invest a lot of time, money and resources to bring about significant change in your brand.

As you might already know, branding involves much more than just changing your logo. It includes:

• Understanding your customer base
• Creating a new image for your company
• Developing new products and services
• Using new technologies
• Launching a new marketing campaign

Let's discuss why you need a brand roadmap and what it should include.

Why is a Brand Roadmap Necessary?

There are lots of reasons to create a brand roadmap. Here are some of the key reasons:

• It helps you understand the big picture
• It gives you a clearer idea of the goals and objectives
• It creates an overall plan for your brand's success
• It helps you stay on track
• It provides a framework for your brand's growth

Businesses need to have a clear vision of their brand identity and mission. A brand roadmap is a great way to do that. It helps you understand your brand's direction. It also gives you a clear idea of your brand's objectives, strategies and activities.

A brand roadmap also helps you keep track of everything that's been done so far. This means you can easily plan for the future and ensure you don't miss out on anything. A brand roadmap provides a clear and concise overview of everything that needs to be done to achieve your goals.

What should be included in a Brand Roadmap?

Any stakeholder can create a brand roadmap, depending upon their role. A marketing team can create it, an advertising agency, a design team or even a business owner.

The first step toward creating a brand roadmap is understanding your organisation's current brand. This is done by researching and gathering information about your customers, business model, competitors and brand reputation. Once you have this information, you can create a list of things you need to accomplish to fulfil your brand promise.

The next step is to determine who will be responsible for each task. If you plan a significant rebranding, you will probably need to involve different departments such as marketing, sales, operations, technology, creative, etc. You will also need to identify someone who can coordinate and manage the rebranding project.

Market to the Right Audience

As you know, a brand is everything. A brand is what differentiates your business from your competitors. If you plan to rebrand your business, you must first consider your target audience. By doing so, you can come up with the right audience, which is necessary for your rebranding campaign. Let's find out what the right audience means to you.

To create a successful rebranding strategy, you must first understand what your target audience wants. Your rebranding campaign should follow your target audience's requirements. The target audience may include existing customers, new potential clients, or people who are not yet your customers.

You must identify your target audience and determine the type of content they are looking for. Once you do this, you can develop a content marketing strategy that caters to their needs. For instance, if your audience is small businesses looking for more services, you can ensure that your content marketing strategies include video content. Video marketing helps to build trust between a brand and its audience. You must also focus on the social media platforms to reach your target audience.

Another critical point is that the content marketing strategy must match your rebranding strategy. If you don't, it will be hard for you to deliver the desired results. You should avoid creating generic content as this might annoy your existing audience, and you might lose them as a customer.

What can you do to market to the right audience?

First, you must conduct extensive research on the target audience. This involves reading many articles, talking to experts, asking your existing and potential customers what they think about your brand, and identifying the problems they are facing.

After this, you must identify your audience's pain points. Doing so lets you know what information they want from you and what kind of content you should provide. If you do not address their needs, you might lose them as customers.

The next step is to develop a content marketing strategy that addresses the audience's problems. If you do not do this, your audience may become frustrated and leave your page. 

To ensure your audience does not get frustrated, you must focus on the keywords of your rebranding campaign. These are the words that your audience uses to describe your brand. Therefore, it's essential to use these keywords in your rebranding strategy.

Finally, it would help if you focused on the most effective channels for reaching your audience. For instance, if your target audience is small businesses, you can focus on social media. However, if your audience is teenagers, you need to focus on influencer marketing.

Create a Brand Identity System

A brand identity system is a set of guidelines that help to develop a brand's visual identity. These guidelines help you to create a brand identity. To create a brand identity system, you must identify your target audience, brand image, and logo design. Once you've developed a good brand identity, you can make a good impression on your customers.

The brand identity system is not only for new projects but also for older ones. We know that branding is a massive part of your business strategy. So it would help if you always were working on your branding. 

You can rebrand your company by developing a new logo, a new website, and a new advertising campaign. But what if you don't have any ideas about your brand's design and colour palette? That is where a brand identity system comes in.

1: Start with the purpose of the rebranding

The first step in creating a brand identity system is to define the purpose of the rebranding.

Let's imagine that you want to create a new logo for your company. What does this mean? Why do you want to change the logo?

It might be possible that your logo isn't well designed. Or maybe it's outdated. Or, maybe you want to add a new colour palette for your brand.

Whatever the reason, you must clearly understand why you want to change the logo. It would be best if you also thought about using the new logo to communicate a specific message to your customers.

2: Define the audience

After defining the purpose of the rebranding, you must define the audience who will see the new brand.

Who is your target customer? How many people will be exposed to your new logo and colours? Is it a small business or a large company?

3: Define your brand values

A brand identity system should include brand values representing your brand's whole concept. Your brand values will guide the development of the brand identity, but they also represent your company's culture.

What are the values of your company? What do you believe is the core philosophy of your brand? This is what is going to be communicated through the logo, colours, font and everything else.

4: Start designing the logo

After defining the brand, it's time to start creating the logo. But before starting to design, you should consider the logo's purpose. The logo should tell a story, show the brand values, and convey a specific message.

So, what do you want to convey with the new logo? Is it a new direction for the company? Is it an improvement over the old one? Whatever the case, you need to clearly understand what you want to convey with the new logo.

Grow the new Brand

A rebrand is a significant investment for any business. A successful rebrand ensures that your business remains relevant in the market.

So, how do you ensure you make the best of a rebrand? Here are a few essential tips to help you grow the new brand:

Create a strategy and plan

The first step is to create a strategy and plan. Doing so, you will get to know what you are trying to achieve. The strategy should address your target audience, goals, and unique selling proposition.

It is imperative to understand what the current customer base looks like, where they come from and who they are. From there, you can determine what new brand you want to create.

Consider your existing brand and look for areas where you can improve on them. This means that you must identify what is working well and what isn't.

Doing so will give you a clearer idea of what you need to change.

Be clear about your message

Your message is the foundation of your brand identity. So, it needs to be clear and consistent.

What you say about your brand's strengths, weaknesses and objectives should be consistent. This helps to develop trust and authority in the market.

Focus on customer experience

The customer experience is a vital component of any business. Your brand should be responsive to customer needs and expectations.

You can use social media to listen and learn from customers. They will tell you what they like and dislike about your brand. This will help you to create a brand that resonates with the right people.

Think about where you are now and where you want to go. The next step is to think about where you are now and where you want to go. What do you want to achieve?

It would help if you thought about the future. Where do you see your brand in a year?

Remember to be consistent

Consistency is one of the essential qualities of a brand. A brand that keeps changing can lead to confusion and frustration in customers.

Make sure that your brand stays relevant, attractive and exciting. It should always be fresh and relevant.

Keep a strong and engaging presence online

It would help if you created a robust online presence. This is the best way to reach your target audience.

There are various platforms such as blogs, podcasts, videos and social media sites.

You should invest in a good domain name and create a website representing your brand.

A website also allows you to engage with your audience and encourage them to become brand ambassadors.

Conclusion

There are plenty of reasons why a brand needs to be rebranded, but the most common reason is that the brand has outgrown itself, as evidenced by the following examples:

• “The brand is stale.”
• “The brand isn't connecting with consumers anymore.”
• “The brand is not relevant anymore.”
• “The brand doesn't speak to its customers anymore.”

A Rebranding strategy is a blueprint for your brand's future. A rebranding project can be very costly and challenging, so it needs to be carefully planned, researched and executed. 

The process of developing a Rebranding Strategy will help to take you through all the different stages of the rebranding process. The steps will be laid out step-by-step for you, with each stage having a specific set of tasks you need to complete. This will make it easy for you to follow along and keep everything organised. Once you've completed the tasks, your brand will be ready to use for presenting and showcasing to potential partners, clients and stakeholders.

How can you start your rebranding strategy? This article takes you through the steps necessary to begin the process.

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