How to change your branding without affecting your audience

Sometimes, it’s always good to have a fresh start to help incorporate a new life to your current status. This is something that a branding change to your business can bring. Whether it’s changing your logo or running under a different name, they can bring something different to what you were normally striving for previously.

It’s important to understand, however, that a brand change is a big process and as a business you still need to work collectively to connect with your audiences and communicate correctly. You don’t want to lose your current or new audience with the changes that you’re making, so what should you consider when going through a brand change? Here are 5 important ones to consider.

Ensure you have a plan in place

Whilst on paper a rebrand may appear fairly straightforward, many businesses fail to realise just how much consideration needs to be taken for a rebrand when they actually begin the process. There’s more to rebranding than simply changing a name. It requires designing new branding, reviewing current services, changing workflows and product guides and much more elements of your business.

To ensure that everything can run smoothly, map out a plan of what needs to be done during the rebrand and what are the focuses that need to be looked at including your marketing and your brand identity design. Accommodate each of these aspects to different departments so they have their own specialised focus that will contribute to the main goal and help communicate easier to the public what’s been changed.

Understand the reasons for your branding change

Without any substance and purpose to your brand change, you’re likely to lose your audience and those behind the change. All forms of departments within your organisation will have a part to play in ensuring it runs smoothly, which is why you’ll need a solid reason for why the change is happening and what benefits it’ll bring.

Do you need to grow your audience base? Are you incorporating new services? Have you merged with new parties? These are all relative and significant reasons why you may consider a brand change which would need to be communicated effectively with your audience to retain loyalty to your business.

Keep in mind your existing customers

Your existing customers may have been with you for many years, and they’ll be the main reason why your business has become so successful. There’s a reason they’re still attracted to your services, so ensure what they love is maintained even if there’s so much happening with the business at the moment.

One of the ideal goals of a rebrand is to help the company to grow by doing better for your customers, so this may mean that their needs will need to be put ahead of the rebrand for the sake of maintaining their loyalty that they’ve kept with you. Even if this means putting them before your business changes.

Make the brand change public

One of the myths that come with going through a rebrand is that making it public can lead to rumours of unrest within your organisation or that something has gone wrong to cause it. By keeping the rebrand private, it can actually hinder your business more than benefit it.

Being vocal about your rebrand and making clear the reasons for it can actually help to maintain the levels of your business and in some ways, actually increase your visibility for the better. This is because your news is likely to reach wider audiences who will be clearer about what you’re offering and how it can benefit them. This is likely to increase interest and have more users viewing your brand and business to understand it further.

Anticipate questions and concerns about the brand change

Some people aren’t a big fan of change and it can actually increase fears that something's wrong when this happens. As a result, it causes customers to ask questions and raise their concerns about what’s going on, which is understandable. This is where you need to be prepared about what’s to come. By communicating effectively and answering their questions during this can help to maintain existing relationships that you have with your customers. If you fail to do this, they can easily lose trust in your business and move to one of your competitors instead.