We’ve all seen different incarnations of rebranding. Sometimes it involves a name change. Other times it entails an update of a company’s logo and marketing materials. It may even involve changing the look of a firm’s actual products or the way it interacts with customers.
Rebranding is essentially a change the way a brand is perceived, and it’s an adaptation strategy that can spell the difference between survival and failure.
Why rebrand your company?
Sometimes, changes to your brand are necessary to keep your company top-of-mind with consumers. Here are some reasons why it might be a good idea for you to rebrand:
- Your company found more success in capitalizing on an idea that was NOT the original idea you had for your business.
- Your products and services have become far more popular in one market than in your original target market.
- Your flagship product or service is no longer as powerfully associated with your brand as your newer offerings.
In these cases, you should consider re-launching your brand to better control the direction in which your business is going. If you can’t update your image to reflect the changes in your company, then you may confuse the people who are buying your products.
How to rebrand
Rebranding can be a powerful strategy – but it can be harmful if not handled correctly. This is why RingCentral is offering you a few tips to make your rebranding efforts effective:
- Keep it together – Use ONE theme for your rebranding efforts. To do this well, you need to make sure that everyone – including any consultants you might hire to guide the rebranding process – understands and supports the purpose of reinventing your brand.
- Get help – Speaking of consultants, you really need expert assistance when embarking on something as momentous as rebranding. Specifically, you need someone to look at your business from an objective point of view to figure out what changes (and how much change) your business needs to be successful.
- Keep customers in the loop – Rebranding doesn’t mean completely alienating your existing customers. Let your supporters know that your company is moving in a new direction and taking on a new persona. Ask for comments and suggestions. In fact, include customers in the process. Letting your current customers play a role in your company’s transformation can go a long way toward easing them into your new image.
- Make consistent changes across the board – This may sound easy, but it can prove challenging in practice. Something as simple as making your logo more modern requires the rest of your company to reflect modernity. The language you use when you answer your phones needs to be modern (and you might also need a modern phone system to reflect your new image). Your websites and social media accounts also need to resonate with the brand change in terms of design and content. This serves to solidify your new identity.
- Stay in Contact – It is essential that you acquire a new vanity 800 phone number and new vanity URLs or handles for your website and social media or email accounts when you change your company name. However, this does not mean that you need to immediately stop using all your old numbers, sites and accounts; they can help guide existing customers to your new company.
Are you thinking of rebranding your company this year? RingCentral would like to know more about your company’s rebranding plans!
Originally published Jan 19, 2012, updated Aug 07, 2020
