Written by: Lia Categories - Improve Your Business and Grow with These Rebranding Tips
Rebranding is an effective way to reach new audiences, intrigue existing ones, and stand out from your competition in the ever-evolving marketplace. It’s also a good way to give your brand a new start, especially if your current brand is stale or tarnished. But rebranding isn’t as easy as changing your name and logo. A lot of work goes into effective rebranding, such as market research, website design, and smart digital marketing. You’ve got to make sure it’s done properly if you want to improve your business’ success and growth. If your current brand image no longer works for you, it’s time for a brand refresh. Here’s what rebranding actually means and how to do it with the help of a web marketing company that offers affordable SEO.
What Are the Signs You Need to Rebrand?
Businesses often choose to rebrand to address and remedy issues their brand is facing. They must first find out what is working with their current brand and what is not working. So why do you want to rebrand your business? Here are some possible reasons why:
- Your brand image could be tarnished because it is associated with poor customer service or poor-quality products.
- Your target audience has changed, and you need to update to keep their interest and business.
- The competition is taking more than its fair share of business from you. You must evolve and innovate to stay ahead of the competition, and rebranding is an effective part of this evolution.
Remember, you don’t have to change everything about your brand if some aspects are still working. If you’ve received positive customer feedback about some of your products, services, or messaging, don’t fix what isn’t broken. Rebranding must address the core issue or issues affecting your current brand image. Use your time and resources to address what needs fixing. If it’s poor customer service, then focus your efforts there. When you find out what’s going wrong, you can develop a solution and branding efforts to match. But if you’re not keeping pace with the competition, then you need to evolve all areas that have fallen behind in your business.
More Than A Name Change
A name change can be a big part of rebranding, but it shouldn’t be the only thing you do. Remember, any changes you make must reflect a greater change in your business principles. You need to: look at your overall strategy and offerings; redefine your target audience; and, create new products and services that appeal to your target audience. Your new brand identity and core messaging need to be aligned with:
- Design messaging
- Enhanced logos
- Taglines
- Website design
- Brand philosophy
- Enhanced product offerings and services
Doing Your Research
Using data and customer insights, you can find out what makes your product resonate with your target audience and use these insights to create your brand messaging. You should also do competitive research to see how your competitors are branding themselves. You can take their best ideas and make them your own.
The 5 R’s of Rebranding
Your Rebranding Checklist
To help you overcome the challenges of rebranding, here’s a checklist to ensure your new brand identity reaches everyone.
✓ Inform Stakeholders
Let your partners, staff, clients, and other business relationships know well in advance about your plans to rebrand. Build up the rebranding for your audience. And welcome feedback from stakeholders to let them in on the rebranding process.
✓ Identify Your New Brand
When choosing your new business name and brand identity, you need to develop a brand architecture. This will help when you’re working with designers and an outside web marketing company. Factors to consider when identifying your brand include:
- The story you want your brand to tell.
- Your target audience.
- Your brand’s long-term goal and whether your new identity will grow into it.
- Whether your new brand look will fit in across digital platforms and internal content.
- Whether the URL, trademarks, and social media handles are available for your new brand name.
✓ Update Your Digital Presence
Update your website, social media, and third-party sites with your new brand name, logo, imagery, font, colours, content, and contact information. Remember to:
- Review links to new pages;
- Update your business listings in search directories;
- Refresh SEO terms and keywords;
- Update metadata on webpages—titles, descriptions, image tags; and,
- Send updated brand logos and titles to affiliated partners who link to your site.
✓ Announce Your New Brand
Introduce your new brand to the world with a blog post or news announcement explaining the change. Also post about your new brand on social media every so often for the first three to six months following your brand rollout to remind customers about it. And make sure to tell your brand story to appeal to your audience—i.e. how your new brand will change their experience with your company in a positive way. But also make sure you don’t leave behind any brand equity/value with your old brand. If you offer something people love, make sure to keep it while also providing new offerings.
✓ Update Your Brand Internally
Don’t risk looking unprofessional by keeping your old brand letterheads and business cards. If you’re going to rebrand, you must go all the way, both externally and internally. This includes updating:
- Internal documents—i.e. forms, contracts, and applications
- Signage
- E-mail signatures
- Name badges, business cards, and stationery—i.e. letterheads, cover sheets, and folders
- Word and PowerPoint templates
- Presentation decks
To make sure your rebranding has a seamless execution and is ultimately a success, you’ll need the help of rebranding pros. A web marketing company can cover web design, content marketing, social media marketing, competitive research, and effective SEO marketing strategies. With the help of the pros, the daunting task of rebranding will be a smooth transition for you and your business.
Source: Search Engine Land It’s safe to say that this did not go over well within the SEO community, and within just one day, Google removed its suggestion to use keywords in GMB descriptions in the Google help document.
There’s no better time than now. Some of the most successful websites have been doing SEO since the beginning. So, if you haven’t yet started SEO, now is the best time to take the leap. Although SEO is a long-term commitment, it is one of the most inexpensive investments that will help you generate leads and reach your conversion goals. And what company doesn’t want more business?
Black hat SEO practices are ethically questionable practices that violate search engine guidelines and provide a poor user experience. So instead of earning high rankings on search engine results, black hat SEO uses shady tactics to reach the same outcome. 
Some examples include adding so many keywords onto a page that it doesn’t make sense to the reader, sneaky redirects, paid links, and link farms. It’s best to avoid these types of tactics, as it is likely to cause more damage to your web presence in the long run, rather than improve it. Following white hat SEO practices, on the other hand, is encouraged, as it means following search engine guidelines and implementing best practices to optimize your website and improve the user experience.
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