Have you ever wondered is your brand a little outdated? Should I re-brand? There’s a misconception floating around that brands stay the exact same. When in actual fact they natural evolve and grow. Even if you or your people are unaware of it.
But, what happens when you pivot numerous of times in business. And each time you tweaked your brand to suit. So much so your brand kinda of resembles a glass vase dropped one to many times and glued back together. It may still be holding its lovely shape, but it no longer can do the job it was designed to do hold water…sound like your current branding?
You may be wondering why I decided to talk about rebranding today, well I personally ran into this dilemma a couple months back. To give you some context I started out original as a freelancer in graphics and illustration this then niched into specially brand strategy and design. Therefore my brand has taken many different shapes and evolved from this very unsure starting place to a one-woman driven design studio. I took a moment scrolling on my own website and asked myself the dreaded question, is this branding actually working for me? And the answer was a worrying and slightly disheartening no. I felt conflicted, similar when you know what the answer is, but you don’t really want to admit it because you know the outcome of it.
Are you ready to re-brand?
In today’s episode I’ll be exploring the top five reasons why it’s time for you to consider re-branding. I’ll use my personal and professional experience, to bring you information that can help you let go of what you have and realise developing a new brand for the long-term will be a stronger move. I’ll also encourage in this episode to evaluate the pro’s and con’s of doing this process now.
Audio Time Stamp | 01:51
Have More Clarity Around Your Offer
So you started your brand a couple years ago, it did its thing, it got you off the ground. However, since then you’ve changed your offer altogether or gained much more clarity around what you want to offer your people. Your hand-made product line might of grown from simple candles to small ceramics. Or you sticking to just candle but want to create solely CBD infused candles. If your a 1 to 1 service based business you might of decided to completely re-systemised each of your service, add a tiered system or open a digital shop along side of it. Either way if your offer has changed and or pivoted drastically enough that your current brand doesn’t really highlight the best of what you are now selling or offering your people, it might be time to consider a healthy re-brand.
Audio Time Stamp | 03:28
Constantly Tweaking your brand
It’s a hard decisions to change your brand, specially when you so use familiar with the look and feel. But when we tweak the outside of something so much it can start to loose its integral ability to stand strong. Do you find yourself constantly at you laptop editing your brand look? Tweaking elements is ok, if your brand core staying the same. When the tweaks become more constant, as if you were moulding something in your hands and the more you mould it the hotter it gets and the hard it is to mould it into the form you want it to be. So if your brand tweaks are becoming more intensive and time consuming like editing what your mission and purpose statements says this is when a complete re-brand is in order. To have a strong brand it needs to be built from the inside out, what I mean by this is your brand strategy needs to be created in order to decided the looks. When you start to mess around with your brands foundation it can be trick to use other elements you once had in place. So if brand tweaks are become a daily action, a re-brand from the ground up might be in order.
Audio Time Stamp | 05:25
Does you brand support your personal needs?
One of my issues that I ran into was with my brand name. As I mentioned I started off as a freelancer and using my own name seemed liked a safe and good bet. When I transitioned into small creative studio world I kept it because I saw a lot of small businesses doing the same and thought it felt more personal which it.
However, I wouldn’t say I’m particular shy person but nor am I the loud and very extraverted type, unless i’ve had a few drinks. And I came to this realised I don’t actually like my name being stamped everywhere online and would welcome actually welcome some detachment from my creative studio to my own personal identity.
Using my own name has oddly felt a bit egotistical and showy, my aim was never to become instagram famous, but rather get the eyes and attention from other passionate one-women business who need branding. I’m not saying you should re-brand if your using your own name. However, what I do want you to question is your current name whatever it may, be is really sitting right with you? is it really working for you? Because If i’m being 100% honest I think using my own name did actually hold me back a little.
Audio Time Stamp | 07:32
Has your brand launched into new areas?
About a year ago I launched the brand made podcast, again when I built my brand I had no idea that I would launch a podcast. Instead of calling it my name as this wasn’t very strategic and wanted my listens to know what the show as about straight away. I choose a new name the brand made podcast. I realised that it was actually difficult for someone to know that this podcast was a part of the Olivia brand. Thus the cracks to my 5 year old branding really started to crumble. Launch a podcast is fine when you have strong foundation. But I realised after using this platform to teach others, that I actually have let my branding fall through the cracks a little. At the end of the day I realised I have a better understand around how I want my people to perceive and what i wanted to say and how to day it. And my current branding wouldn’t be able to do that.
Audio Time Stamp | 09:06
Evaluation Time, Pro’s and Con’s to re-brand
I would always advice anyone who’s thinking of doing a complete re-branding to evaluate the pro’s and con’s. If your current brand can’t withstand your big goals and new visions then it’s time. But if you have already built a great deal of credibility online and a community it’s definitely something you need to think longer about. I know that my online presence is slowly growing but still considerable small therefore, I knew a re-brand is something this will take time and set me back a few steps but in the long-term be considerably worth it for my creative studio and for me mentally and personal. So make a con and pro list use the above reasons to help guide you and work out if a complete-rebrand is the right option for you.
Audio Time Stamp | 10:26
Time to decide if re-branding is right for you
I hope you’ve learn from my personal first hand experience to consider re-branding helpful. We covered 5 reason why you should consider it, including, change in offer, one too many tweaks, is it really right for you, has your business evolved in areas you didn’t know it would? then lastly making sure you evaluate the pros and con’s to re-branding. It can be difficult decisions to make but sometime the pro’s out-weight the con’s and the you’ll be happier with your brand in the long-term. If you’re unsure how to build you brand strategy first go check out episode 3.