Is it time for you to rebrand your small business? Or do you really just need a refresh? What’s the difference other than the amount of time and resources you dedicate to each?
In this month’s Cafe Joy, our monthly marketing ideas program, Jay Ehret of The Marketing Spot shares with our Cafe Joy members the difference between these two branding activities and helps our members determine if they need either one.
Here’s just a small snippet of the hour-long program and worksheets Jay shares with our Cafe Joy members this month to help them perk up their brand.
- A change of logo and a different tag line are not a rebrand – You may want a new logo. You definitely need a new tagline if you’re going to rebrand, but true rebranding rarely happens at once. It’s an evolutionary process that sometimes takes several years. A company slowly changes and eventually realizes they’re not the same company anymore. They make the changes official by changing the logo and shifting their marketing.
- A brand refresh is the same brand you’ve had all along, but with a different coat of paint. Don’t get me wrong, a branding refresh is actually a little more then just a new look. Businesses usually devote a lot of emphasis and money to a visual rebrand. A visual makeover for your business is important in altering people’s perception, but it’s difficult to imagine a new brand without a new visual identity. Once you get past the visual part, is there anything else that’s different? There should be.
Here’s the important point. One way to judge whether you need a rebrand or a brand refresh is to look at your current customer base vs. your anticipated new customer
base. A primary objective of rebranding is to get new customers, but if the business does not fundamentally change, there will be no new customers.
The starting point of a rebrand is to ask yourself two questions.
- Who are we?
- Why do we exist?
What you believe is the foundation of a new brand, but that belief has to manifest itself in a way that’s going to go beyond just this initial visual perception. So you may get a new logo and new message, but you also need a new approach, new personality and you need new services.
Here’s what we’re getting to and that is most importantly, that you must shift your brand’s promise. Your brand promise is what you deliver to the customers beyond the product you sell. When you shift your brand promise, that’s a true rebrand. The bottom line is that it’s not about altering people’s perception it’s about changing what you promise to customers.
So how do you go about rebranding your business? Check out this month’s Cafe Joy to learn how to:
- Create your brand promise
- Develop and articulate your brand personality
- Write a tagline that adds to your brand
- Understand the important elements of a logo
- Incorporate a branded experience into your employee training or even into your own frame of thinking