Is it time to rebrand your holistic business?

There are myriad ways to go about things when you rebrand your business, and which elements change, how that happens, and in what order will ultimately come down to the reasons WHY you’re rebranding in the first place (and if you haven’t read THIS article first, then I suggest you go do that now before you read this one).

So when you’ve decided that a rebrand is absolutely, definitely the way forward, then you can move onto these questions.

1. Is this going to be a BIG rebrand, or just a tweak?

The extent of your rebrand depends on various things.  For instance, a substantial change in target market will probably require a substantial change in branding. A substantial change in the types of services or goods you offer, will probably require a substantial change in branding. But a brand refresh, just to give everything a gee up and bring it in line with where your head’s at will probably only require a few (key) changes with a lot of things staying the same.

You also have to weigh up your budget, AND your time availabilty –

even if you’re the total whizz at graphics and can whip up a visual storm without spending money – a substantial rebrand will take you a LOT of time (ask me how I know). Is your business prepared to take a dip in your marketing efforts, or can you hold off on client work, or what else in your business can and will take a backseat while you concentrate on implementing in allllll the places?

There are a few things that will cost you money, even without the change in graphics. Do you need a new domain name and/or hosting for your website? Do you need to register your business name, or trademark your services? What about a new accounting package (a lot of commercial accounting packages will charge you a licence fee for every different business you use their system for)?

Exactly what is going to change?

A big rebrand might involve a complete new set of visual assets (different colours, different font, different image style – and a whole new name. It’s almost like setting up a business from scratch, except of course, you’re much more experienced at your zone of genius, as well as being better at the marketing and the admin.

A refresh might simply mean that you retain all your existing assets, but simply change the way you use them. A whole new banner and set of templates for your social media posts, as well as a new banner for your website might be all you need. Or, you can change the emphasis in your colour palette. eg. Instead of using blue as your main colour, you could use the orange instead. Guaranteed it will make things feel different!

If you’re planning to go the whole hog though, consider your time frame, and the money you wish to spend. Do some research and ask some experts how much they charge (even a ballpark figure is good to help you plan). Most designers are happy for you to book in a chat and go into some details about what you need, so they can advise what’s best for you, and to give you a better idea on price. (You’re welcome to book in with me if you need a chat about this!)

So, how much time do YOU have to research and implement this? How much money do you have to put into this? Expect to spend $3-5K (or even more) to do a big rebrand, and do it properly.

2. What’s my digital footprint?

Your digital footprint is any trace that you’ve left of yourself, everywhere you’ve been online and used something.

So, if you’ve been in business for more than 10 minutes, you’ll most likely have used your name and set up accounts in about a hundred places (I wish I was kidding). And it will take some serious searching through all your old emails, and possible googling, to re-find everything that you’ve signed up to with your old business name.

If you’re going to go the full rebrand with a change of business name, that’s probably just given you a heart attack.

Don’t panic.

The good news is, you don’t need to change everything. I reckon if you haven’t touched something in a year, it’s probably not worth bothering about.

I think the best plan of attack is to open a fresh Word document and make a list of all the accounts you know you have. If you use a password manager like LastPass (and you totally SHOULD be using one of these! #becausesecurity), this should make things a whole lot easier.

Then prioritise them as to what needs to be changed over first.

3. How do I keep my current audience happy?

Let’s step back a bit and think about things from your audience’s point of view. You need to let them know what’s going on.

Because imagine you hadn’t heard from your favourite business in a month or two. And then all of a sudden you get an email from some other brand name you’d never ever heard of – odds are you’d be deleting that email before you’d even opened it. Or you might just open it so you can unsubscribe (and possibly report them to say “I never signed up for this list”).

So DO email them and let them know you’re rebranding! DO post on social media about it. And do it often, over many weeks. Give them the opportunity to see what you’re up to, so they can follow along. Even so, I guarantee there’ll be people who’ll still miss it, and wonder who on earth you are. (But perhaps they’re not really your target audience anyway, because they’re not engaged in what you’re doing?)

Of course you don’t want to lose anyone from your audience! But honestly, the reason you’re rebranding is because your business is changing and growing. And some of the people who joined you because of what you used to do, and how you used to approach that – well, they’re not right for you any more. And it’s OK to let them go – and they will.

But the ones who have grown along with you – well, they’ll love you even more.

It’s good to transition. Remember, you don’t have to completely change everything overnight.

Keeping your audience informed helps them to understand/accept/embrace the change. You can send out a series of emails and or social media posts about what you’re doing and why, and you can have graphics that include a mix of both brand styles (check out my Facebook page to see how I’ve done this) to ensure your visitors know that change is happening.

4. What could I lose if I rebrand? And what will I gain?

That’s up to you, WHY you’re making the change, and how you handle it.

Yes, you will probably lose some of your audience (and that’s OK; refer above). But you probably will gain some new people too! Especially if you have a juicy new optin or two that align with your new branding.

MOST OF ALL, you will gain renewed focus and energy for what you do.

And that’s worth having. Because that energy shows when you talk about what you do, and why you do it. And you’re proud to send people to your beautifully revamped website, because it looks and feels exactly like you.

That kind of energy is magnetic!

5. How long will my rebrand take?

For all the reasons above, I would suggest you spread your rebrand out over several weeks. Or even more.

Just to give you an idea, although I’ve been toying with the idea of a rebrand for a year or more, I actually started to get serious about it and planning it late April, and started implementing in mid-June.

Now it’s the end of August – so that means it’s been two months in the planning (in between dealing with my usual client load, marketing and admin etc) and two months in the implementation (with a few loose ends still to tidy).

How long it will take you depends entirely on how you want to handle it –

whether you pay someone else to design it all and implement it for you, and/or how much time you wish to take off from your business to plan and implement it yourself, and also how you want to handle your audience through this transition.

There’s some big questions there of course! I hope my experiences have shed some light on what you need to think about.

However, if it all feels a bit too hard to think about on your own, you have a heap of ideas and you need someone to talk it all through with, book in for a  1:1 strategy session  with me – I’d LOVE it.

Or, if you need something more, or you’re just not sure – click below to book in for quick, free chat and we’ll talk about what’s best for you!