In short, the answer is never, but often it’s essential whether you want to strive or even survive.
As we are talking re-brand this presumes you have something in place already and that you are trading, so to start with we would recommend that you review it. Now a brand review can be nothing more than taking a step back and looking at it objectively or looking at what your business is aiming to achieve. Perhaps you will find that some of these questions apply?
- Have your services changed?
- Are you aiming at the same target audience?
- Are you still relevant?
- Does it say all you want it to say?
Common obstacles with brands
A common obstacle we come up against is a business which may be trading for several years (10+) and haven’t reviewed their brand at all from its conception. Still, somewhere along the line, the business started offering additional services, and now they are more a multi-discipline business. ‘Not the end of the world’ I hear you shout if your business is called ‘Peterson and Sons’ as they are still Mr Peterson and his Sons, which you would be right to say so but what do ‘Peterson and Sons’ do? Their existing clients know them as a variety of services as one may have come to them as Gardening Services so pigeon-holed them there and another for Cleaning Services, so for them, they are the cleaning company.
How to indirectly tell people what you do?
How do Peterson & Sons cross-sell/upsell? Outside of calling the client and directly telling them about what they do? What if they could communicate it before they even meet a new client?
What if their existing clients knew of the possibility of using Peterson & Sons for more than just Cleaning?
Re-brand doesn’t mean new name and radical overhaul, just a fine-tuning of the message and visual cues to help inform, educate and speak to your audience.
Here are some other reasons why you should re-brand:
- Service change
- Newmarket/audience
- New clients (Social Proof)
- Keeping with the times
- Innovate
- Technology
- Moving with the market or even better ahead of the marke
If you would need any help with updating the look and feel of your business, let us know getintouch@formatdesign.com