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Branding

4 Rebranding Mistakes You Should Avoid

By November 10, 2022No Comments

Branding is vital for a business’s marketing strategy. A company’s brand is crucial to its success as it helps build customer trust and loyalty and improve advertising strategies. According to a Forbes feature on branding, in today’s age of social media, consumers are exposed to new brands every day. For any organization, this means big competition daily, therefore a need for their brand to stand out in the market.

Eventually, businesses reach a point when they need to rebrand. After all, marketing is a dynamic process, and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Organizations looking to build more organic relationships with their customers or attract new ones often rebrand to re-strategize.

1

Losing your brand authenticity

A business’s brand is key to establishing a connection with customers. According to a brand authenticity study from Stockholm University, brands can become a symbolic resource for customers’ self-expression.

Brand authenticity is defined as a consumer’s perception of a brand’s ability to be faithful and true to itself and its consumers while helping consumers stay true to themselves.

Teams can get lost in the visual and aesthetic aspects of rebranding a business by abandoning the importance of a brand’s original message to the customers. Companies must rebrand around their core organizational message and purpose to build on their authenticity and approach customers more organically.

2

Failing to change from the inside out

Like other business transformation strategies, rebranding takes a huge internal effort. For a rebranding to succeed, employees and teams within an organization need to be involved and informed. A feature by LHH on organizational culture found that 54% of senior HR leaders surveyed cited culture as the single biggest barrier to a successful transformation. A professional culture that thrives in conflict and toxic working environments means a lack of trust in leadership and, thus, a lack of trust in a business’s brand.

Focusing on establishing a culture of accountability can help make rebranding more successful. Full accountability from leadership positions down to employees can help boost rebranding efforts as businesses consider everyone’s ideas, feelings, and contributions to the changes.

3

Abandoning your customers

When making changes to business and marketing strategy, it may be easy to forget the role of customers in the equation. In a post, Building Trust, we highlighted the importance of a customer-centric approach to a company’s growth strategy.

In making changes to a business’s branding, it’s crucial to consider how these changes will affect the company, its employees, and its customers. Businesses must consider customer feedback and reviews when rebranding to uphold quality customer service.

Essentially, the rebranding process shouldn’t leave customers behind. This builds trust and ensures the business retains customers while attracting new potential customers in the process.

4

Thinking rebranding is a final solution

Finally, as we mentioned, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to rebranding. Most importantly, it shouldn’t be an organization’s last-ditch effort to appeal to customers or win a larger market share. Because marketing is highly dynamic, it’s important not to treat rebranding as the sole solution to a business’s problems.

Companies will benefit from following up on their rebranding efforts, including reaching out to customers for feedback or measuring ROI during and after rebranding. Comparing ROI should be a significant step in rebranding, as monitoring factors like engagement rate, sales, and revenue can provide valuable insights as to whether or not the rebrand is working. Rebranding is only one piece of the marketing puzzle to keep an organization relevant and current.

Article written by Rebecca James

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