Are you thinking of rebranding your business?
Doing a full rebrand can be a powerful way for you to grow as a company by creating a new image.
A rebrand is an intensive effort that should be as perfect and complete as possible.
Let’s look at some critical mistakes that you should avoid during your rebranding process. Keep these tips in mind to launch your new brand image with minimal friction.
Not defining your values and purpose
One mistake that some companies make is to rebrand just for the sake of it. They don’t have a clear vision or reason for why they want to do a full rebrand. In some cases, business owners just want to hop on the next trend without looking at whether it makes sense for them.
Making changes to your brand image without a clear purpose can be a costly mistake. It’s easy to find yourself losing time and money because your design elements aren’t cohesive. You can end up making changes over and over again because you don’t know why you’re doing a rebrand.
Before you start any practical aspect of your rebranding, start with asking why you want to do this.
Perhaps, you want to differentiate yourself from your competition. Or maybe, you want your brand image to reflect the values of your audience to drive a deeper connection with them. Or you believe your business is an industry leader and you want your brand image to show that.
It’s important to sit down and flesh out a clear statement that expresses why you’re doing a rebrand. State what is your goal with this effort and understand the set of values that form the core of your rebranding.
Starting with such overarching guidelines will make it easy to make the right design decisions. You’ll also empower your employees to work in a way that’s effective and meaningful.
Not taking feedback
Your rebranding effort is not something that you should do in isolation. Unless you’re a solopreneur, it’s critical to involve your employees, partners, and even your customers in your rebranding effort.
Without feedback from other parties, you run the risk of removing the very elements that appeal to your audience and drive your employees. Or your new brand tone and image could divert from what really makes your brand important to people.
Start by involving your partners and employees while discussing the goals and values of your business and why you should rebrand.
Also, use survey forms and feedback forms and send them to your employees and a small sample of your customers.
Ask questions revolving around what they think your company does best, what feelings your brand image evokes, and what changes they like to see.
Sometimes, you’ll learn that your current brand image is exactly the way it should be. For example, Tropicana redesigned its packaging to look trendier. But despite its heavy advertising and marketing efforts, the new package design led to heavy backlash from people who loved the product.
Tropicana’s package redesign led to a severe backlash. Source
Don’t change your brand just to stay with the current trends. And make sure that you get feedback to know if your rebranding works.
Not creating a Coming Soon page
If you’re redesigning your website as part of your rebranding strategy, then you need to create an attractive ‘Coming Soon’ page to share the news that you’re doing a rebrand and a redesign of your site.
It’s a mistake to leave a static page that just says ‘Website under construction’.
You can create an attractive coming soon page by using a landing page plugin like SeedProd.
Here are some of the elements that you can add to your coming soon page:
- An optin form for users to subscribe to your newsletter
- A countdown timer that counts down to when your new website is launched
- Links to your social media page that people can follow
- Links to important blog posts, articles, and other web pages you want your users to check out
- An attractive hero image that’s the first thing people see
- Short and creative headlines that catch people’s eyes
- Contact details like your email or a contact form for users to reach you
By creating a coming soon page for your website under development, you’ll remind your audience to come back later.
Not doing 301 redirects
For some businesses, a rebrand includes buying a brand new domain and moving content from the previous web address to a new one. In this case, you need to use a 301 redirect to send visitors to the new location or page.
Other reasons to create 301 redirects include when you merge several posts into a single new one. Or when you delete old posts that are no longer relevant and you need to send users to updated and newer posts instead.
In all these cases and more, 301 redirects tell your users’ browser and search engines that your content has moved to a new location. And this is critical because not creating such redirects will impact your SEO.
The easiest way to redirect users from your old or broken URLs to new ones is to use the right plugin. An SEO plugin like AIOSEO can help you do this and manage your SEO efforts. You can also find good redirect plugins in the WordPress marketplace.
Not sharing on social media
A simple rebranding mistake is to not plan how you’ll tell your audience that you’re rebranding the company. It’s not the best idea to spring an entirely new brand image onto your audience as a surprise.
You need to introduce the fact that you’re doing a rebrand early on through your social media pages.
This gives you the chance to get feedback from your audience. And you’ll also build a buzz around your upcoming rebrand.
As part of your rebranding strategy, plan to create blog posts, social media images, video content, and other digital assets to share along the way.
Create a content calendar and use a social media management tool to plan and schedule posts to appear and your rebranding moves forward.
Rolling out your new brand slowly
When you launch your new brand image and kit, it needs to be the final version that you are sharing with the world.
Watch out for these mistakes that can create a poor user experience for your customers:
- Failing to update your website and social media at the same time
- Rolling out your changes bit by bit. For example, changing your logo one day without updating your brand profile name and description in your profile ‘About’ sections
- Making changes to your brand identity elements after launching them
You want to make your new brand identity as complete and perfect as possible before it’s launched. Making changes later or not updating all your content at once will create confusion and disrupt your user’s experience with your brand.
Not documenting your new brand changes
Documentation is critical for every business activity including your branding. As soon as you define the key elements of your brand image, it’s important to document the details for internal purposes.
Use a cloud-based storage service where you can save files that your entire team can access. Create a brand asset folder and a document that details everything from the overarching vision for your brand to the font used in your website and stationery.
Finally, when you launch your new brand image to the world, make sure that you update your Media Kit on your website with the new details. Include logos, the hex value for the colors used, the font type kit, and more.
Creating documentation ensures that everyone is on the same page. And both internal and external stakeholders can find the details they need whenever necessary for media purposes.
Back to you
We’ve covered the critical mistakes that you can make while rebranding your business. however, by following the tips mentioned here, you will be covered.
Focus on creating a new brand image that resonates with your customers. You’ll see better growth and a stronger relationship with your audience.
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Syed Balkhi is an award-winning entrepreneur and online marketing expert. He is the co-founder of OptinMonster, WPBeginner, MonsterInsights, and WPForms.