Tips for Branding or Rebranding?

 

By Beckie Sanderson

 

In this guest blog, Beckie Sanderson, Branding Designer, Trainer & Publishing Specialist at Miss Digital Media, shares her tips for Branding or Rebranding a business or personal brand.

 

More than a logo

Throughout the process of creating and developing a business or a personal brand, we have to think about so many different factors. A brand isn’t just about the design of a company logo, and the colours used in marketing, it’s so much more than that!

 

The Core of Branding

Branding is about the design and promotion of a company, its products and services, and the methods used in marketing. Whether you have a business brand or a personal brand, at the core of your brand are the values, ideals, characteristics and personality traits of you and your company. These aspects as a whole are what make up your brand identity.

 

It’s the foundation of what you do

Your brand identity forms the basis for all your communications, marketing, advertising and promotions. Your brand should be created to reach, attract and engage your ideal customers and clients and it should explain the who, why, what, where and how of your business. See my ideal client sheet for more information.

Sign up for access to my Ideal Client Worksheet.

 

Consistency is key

Consistency in your design, messaging, style and tone of voice are the key aspects of boosting your brand and building brand visibility, awareness and customer loyalty. Your customers perception and experience of your brand will influence its reputation, good or bad.

 

Rebranding

The process of recreating an existing brand to update its image, change its message and refresh the design elements such as the logo’s, fonts, colours and imagery.  As a business owner you may decide to rebrand for a number of reasons such as creating a new concept or modernising an old one, targeting a new audience, to position your brand against a competitor or to help shake off a PR disaster or a poor reputation.

 

We evolve

Maybe your mission, purpose and values have changed? You have introduced new products and services, or perhaps you have decided to niche your brand?  Or is it that your existing brand is not fit for purpose – because it doesn’t speak to your ideal customers and clients? Or is it simply just a terrible logo design or an amateurish attempt to get creative in Canva?

 

Not for the faint hearted

Changing your business identity is a huge undertaking, the redesign alone is a potentially costly exercise in creating new logo’s, branding materials, print marketing and packaging for example. Rolling out those changes for sole traders and SME’s can be a massive headache in updating websites, social media profiles, email signatures and much more.  It may seem like the best option, but it is important to consider how it may adversely affect your business or how not doing it could negatively impact your business. Rebranding at the wrong point in time might negatively impact your brand image, likewise, changing too dramatically or rapidly, could affect your customers’ loyalty to your brand.

 

Branding should evolve

As our businesses evolve our brand should too, in a gradual and organic way. However, it’s worth pointing out that building a great brand doesn’t happen overnight it takes time, a lot of time!  For many small business owners branding is tricky, rebranding is even trickier!  Which is why it is so important when starting up a new business to do the research on your ideal client and the ground work for your branding identity. However, you would be surprised how many business owners don’t do this.

 

Keep reviewing

It’s equally as important that as the company develops, that you continue to research, develop and review the success of your business and the brand, as you work to define your niche, grow your business and level up. Your brand should be viewed as a person, that needs to be nurtured, cared for and loved, just as much as the people behind the brand.

 

For more on Beckie

For more tips and resources on how to Boost Your Brand check out my Classroom blog or you might like to have a sneak preview of my video workshop for the upcoming Digital Women Summit.

 

If you would like some help to develop your Ideal Client sheet or would like to book a FREE 1-2-1 branding consultation, please get in touch with me on:

 

Email: beckie@missdigitalmedia.co.uk

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/missdigitalmedia/

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/missdigitalmedia/

Website: https://www.missdigitalmedia.co.uk