Ever notice how some of the most recognizable brands today look completely different from what they were 50 or even 20 years ago?

For as recognizable as Starbucks is, it’s not the Starbucks of the ‘90s. Apple, Coca-Cola, Nike, Old Spice for example. So many of these famous brands wouldn’t be recognizable to you if you saw them in a different era.

That’s because these brands are continually rebranding, and it’s something that every business should do. That includes creative entrepreneurs like you.

Why (Re)branding Matters

Rebranding your business refers to an overhaul of your business persona.

Even the smallest of businesses should have a brand. This is an element of recognizability that sets you apart from the competition and makes you feel personable to consumers. Your color palette, logos, slogan, font colors, social media voice, and similar elements are all factors that make a brand.

A brand is all about consistency. If your website and business cards are all done up in the same shades of red and orange, people will come to recognize that. Same with a fun-loving voice to all your website copy and social media posts. This is how people feel like they know your brand as if it were a friend they want to stay connected with.

Just as people change, though, your brand may need to change as well. That’s why many big brands change their logos, colors, slogans, and much more to keep up with evolving tastes.

When to Rebrand Your Business

It’s not always easy to know when to rebrand. Maybe you just feel tempted to do it because it’s been a while since you’ve shaken things up, and your brand has looked exactly the same for the past 10 years.

While this sounds like a tempting reason to rebrand your business, it’s important to look at the bigger picture. There should be a legit reason for rebranding your business besides “I haven’t done it in a while.” (In fairness to yourself, if you haven’t done it in a while, you really might be overdue!)

A rebrand is often a way of showing everybody that something has changed about your business. Let’s talk about four signs that it’s time to rebrand your business.

 1. You’ve Changed Your Offerings

This one is probably the most obvious. If you’re now offering a different product or service than what you originally offered (whether that’s something instead of what you originally offered or in addition to what you originally offered), you likely need to change your brand to reflect that.

Different offerings mean that you are meeting different needs, potentially for a whole new set of customers. And that means different messaging.

If you’ve built your photography business doing primarily wedding shoots, but you’re now putting greater emphasis on family portraits, you may need different branding. A different selection of colors and fonts on all your media could convey something laidback and fun instead of elegant and formal.

The important point to keep in mind is that you want to make sure your new business direction is clear before you approach a rebrand. If you think you’re going to pivot from wedding photography to family portrait photography, that’s great. But if you’re going to expand to include other types of shoots within the next few months, it’s worth holding off. You don’t want to rebrand too often!

2. You Aren’t Connecting with Your Ideal Clients

When you launched your business, you had a solid idea of what your ideal client looked like. So you built your brand around the idea of connecting with that person. 

The problem? Your current branding isn’t really connecting with that audience the way you hoped it would. Or maybe your products or services have ended up being more popular with a completely different target audience than what you expected, and now you want to shift your brand to focus on that audience instead.

Take, for example, a small independent coffee shop. Maybe the owners originally thought they were going to cater to the daytime crowd — retirees, stay-at-home moms, and freelance workers. They build their brand to appeal to this kind of crowd. Now, though, they just aren’t resonating with this customer base. Maybe they’ve even found that their most loyal customers are the high schoolers and college students who stop by to hang out every day after class.

In this situation, it’s time for a rebrand because they have a new target audience, or they want to attract a new one. Changing elements of their brand could signal to a different audience that what they offer is a good fit for them.

If you find that your branding isn’t exactly resonating with your audience, take a step back and ask yourself whether:

1. Your branding actually appeals to your audience,
2. There’s a different audience you should be appealing to, or 
3. You have a different audience than you expected.

If you nodded your head to either 2 or 3, you should tweak your brand accordingly.

You can also check out this article on why you’re not attracting ideal clients.

3. You’re Struggling to Stand Out

Having a brand is all about standing out. When you see certain logos, colors, or fonts, you know what you’re getting. But what happens when a brand is utterly unmemorable? Or even worse, when it’s too easily confused with a competitor?

In some cases, maybe this happened passively. You never actually took the time to brand yourself in the first place, so you were always kind of picking colors or fonts on a whim.

In other cases, you created your brand 10 years ago, and enough of your competition is now imitating what you do, either consciously or unconsciously.

Making the decision to rebrand can ensure consistency in every way the public sees your business. You now have a set brand that people can recognize — and it’s different from what others around you are doing.

Rebranding is also something you may have to do if you’re having trouble with trademarks. For example, you’ve always had a specific logo or slogan, but now that you’re trying to trademark it, you’re finding that it’s too similar to another brand out there. Rather than trying to fight the legal battle (which could drag on for years), you decide it’s better to go back to the drawing board and come up with something else.

4. You Have the Resources for Rebranding Your Business

Finally, one way to know it’s time to rebrand your business is because you can. This is especially applicable to brands that have been stagnant for too long; even though they wanted to change, they haven’t had the resources to make it happen. Rebranding your business can be a big endeavor, and it’s not something you want to attempt unless you can do it right.

Rebranding takes time, money, and energy. You want to create a comprehensive rebranding strategy that touches on what elements of your brand you want to change, how you’ll trademark elements of your brand, and what the timeline of implementation looks like. That timeline will likely include:

• A planning period,
• A testing period,
• A time to communicate the new brand to stakeholders, and ultimately 
• A time to launch and implement the new branding.

You don’t want to jump into rebranding if you’re not able to commit to doing it right. Save up some money to invest in professional branding assistance, and wait until your busiest season is over. If you don’t have all the resources to rebrand properly, it’s not the time to do it.

Ultimately, When to Rebrand Is Up to You

Even with these four indicators, you still might have a strong instinct that this is the right time to rebrand. In that case, listen to what your instinct is telling you. Rebranding your business is a personal choice, and it’s a decision that only you as the business owner can make.

If you do decide that now is a good time for a rebrand, remember that designing your website with Showit gives you all the tools you need to create something unique, recognizable, and memorable for your audience. There’s a two-week free trial available, so take a look at all the branding resources you can take advantage of by signing up today!