5 Questions to Ask Before Rebranding

Rebrand­ing is an excit­ing and often nec­es­sary step in your progress… but do you real­ly need it? Here are 5 ques­tions to ask before rebrand­ing to help you answer that for yourself.

Five Questions to Ask Before Rebranding

There’s sev­er­al fac­tors to con­sid­er before you decide to make the invest­ment in rebrand­ing. The most impor­tant one is to under­stand why you want to rebrand. Ask­ing your­self spe­cif­ic ques­tions can reveal if you are ready or if you just need to redi­rect your mar­ket­ing focus.

5 Questions to ask before rebranding

1. Has there been a change in your mission, products or services?

If your brand has shift­ed its core mis­sion, prod­ucts or ser­vices, then a rebrand is def­i­nite­ly some­thing to con­sid­er. We’ve also found that a rebrand can be nec­es­sary when there is a new board or lead­er­ship, or a merg­er is in the works.

2. Do you need a brand overhaul or a mid-sized shift ?

Before you start look­ing for who to hire for a rebrand, see if you can make mod­i­fi­ca­tions to what you have. Some­times just shift­ing your brand mes­sag­ing can have a pow­er­ful impact and re-engage your audi­ence. Per­haps you’ll invest in get­ting a new set of brand­ed pho­tos. Even some­thing like choos­ing a dif­fer­ent font can help your brand. Dig deep and explore what you can do in the meantime.

3. Are you feeling your brand isn’t trendy enough?

It’s so easy for us to fall into com­par­ing, look­ing at oth­er brands, think­ing ours isn’t good enough– or that anoth­er brand looks bet­ter than ours because it’s trendy. Being aware of trends is help­ful to gain insight on what strate­gies to imple­ment with your mar­ket­ing, but you should nev­er base any ele­ment of your brand on a trend. The day that trend becomes overused, you’ll no longer stand out in the mar­ket. A brand is about how you want oth­ers to con­nect and feel, not about being trendy!

4. Are you bored with your brand identity?

Yikes! If you’re not excit­ed about your brand and visu­als, or catch your­self con­stant­ly mak­ing changes, that means you haven’t defined a true iden­ti­ty to align with it.  Here it would make sense to hire a pro­fes­sion­al to help cre­ate a brand you are proud to share and main­tain. Make sure they take the time to under­stand your mis­sion and how you want your audi­ence to con­nect with your prod­ucts or ser­vices. Remem­ber, your brand should not be cre­at­ed to be a pret­ty design. Oth­er­wise, you will find your­self los­ing mon­ey and rebrand­ing again in the near future.

5. Was this your first design DIY?

Most of us had lim­it­ed resources when we start­ed a busi­ness. We made things work, bud­get­ing for the impor­tant things and uti­liz­ing DIY where pos­si­ble. Fast for­ward: your hard work paid off, your brand has grown, and you real­ize that what you have doesn’t excite you or align with the pro­fes­sion­al lev­el your brand deserves.

Now that you’ve answered these ques­tions, you like­ly have a much bet­ter idea of what you need to do. Bot­tom line: If the essence of your brand no longer aligns with your vision, you should explore tak­ing the next steps toward rebranding.

Now there’s one more exer­cise to do that will prove invalu­able: make a list of how your brand has shift­ed from its old per­spec­tive to the new one. Also, define why rebrand­ing makes sense and work out how you will explain the tran­si­tion to your audi­ence. This is the key to redefin­ing your brand so it not only res­onates with your mis­sion, but con­nects with your audi­ence as well!

If you find your­self inter­est­ed in rebrand­ing, we’re here to help!  Con­tact us, and togeth­er let’s take your brand to the next lev­el… and beyond!

About the Author

Nicte Cuevas, Principal of Nicte Creative Design, empowers mission-driven businesses through strategic design & branding. Nicte has applied this when working with Adobe Spark and Twitter Business, LinkedIn Learning, Dogs on Deployment and Purina, Girl Scouts, The Houston Zoo and The Contemporary Arts Museum. Her excellence in communication design & marketing has been recognized by multiple national / international awards, including a coveted feature in Graphic Design USA's People to Watch.

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