10 Things You’ll Need to Include in Your Rebranding Strategy

There are a lot of reasons you might decide to rebrand your business. Once that decision is made, the steps to rebranding your business include securing a new domain and email setup, updating URLs on your website, social media, maps, and directories, revising phone systems and signage, replacing printed materials like business cards and letterhead, and coordinating the rollout across every customer touchpoint. In other blogs, we covered the “why,” and the “how,” examining choices of colors and fonts; this one is about execution.

For technology companies, professional service firms, and small to mid-size businesses without in-house senior marketing leadership, implementation is where rebrands often get messy. A brand only works when it is used consistently, and mixed branding across digital platforms, printed materials, customer communications, and internal systems creates confusion that can hurt visibility, demand generation, and sales. As you get started, you’ll find there are even more places than you expected that need to be updated, especially when rollout timing, company size, or industry regulations affect how quickly changes can happen.

Steps to Rebranding Your Business: How Do You Implement a New Brand Once You Have It?

1. Of course, you’ll need a new domain for your website that matches the new brand name, but what you might not think of are all the ways a domain change impacts other aspects of your online presence.
2. You’ll also need to change the domain of the email you send your marketing emails from, usually from inside your email marketing platform and through your website host.
3. Plus, you’ll need to change all the email addresses the entire staff use and update everyone’s email signatures. Don’t forget to add any additional email addresses you use like your version of the generic info@yourdomain.com address. As part of the rebranding process, communicate these updates before the switch to help manage customer expectations and reduce the chance the changes confuse customers.

You’ll need to change the URL everywhere it’s listed on online platforms

4. Social media channels where your business has a presence
5. Online map services like Google Maps, Apple Maps, Snap Maps, etc.
6. Any advertising you’re currently running: digital or print

While you’re making the changes, you’ll also need to be mindful of your customers, making sure to remind people that your business isn’t going away, it will just have a new name and look. After those URL changes go live across platforms, monitor brand sentiment and customer engagement to catch any confusion quickly.

Other places you need to hunt through your own brand assets:

7. You’ll have to change your phone tree for your office telephone lines, referencing “[the old brand] has become [the new one].”
8. If you have a physical office location, any office signage will need to change, plus, you might even want to change the color scheme and interior design to match the new brand!
9. Ideally, items with the new branding applied will be ready to use on the day of the switch over, but replacing brand assets and reordering everything you use or give away can be cost prohibitive to do all at once, so phased updates to internal and external materials like your website and marketing collateral often make more sense, especially since implementation costs can run 15 to 20 times the design phase.
10. These days there’s not as much that’s necessary to print, but new letterhead, envelopes and business cards will be needed that include the new branding and URL.

Timing and regulation matter

Larger publicly traded businesses have more stringent regulations enforced by the government around the process of rebranding and will need to coordinate across every part of the business to change over to the new brand on a single date, and a successful rebrand starts by defining the driver, whether that is business growth or expansion into new markets. Smaller businesses may not have the resources to make everything happen all at once. They can roll out the new brand in a more piecemeal fashion that better fits their time and budget. A brand refresh may be enough to update a stale image, while a complete rebrand is better when the goal is to appeal to new segments. Make a list of everything you can think of that needs to change to the new brand and prioritize the ones that will be most often in contact with your customers.

Buy-in from stakeholders is required

A small business can shift course more nimbly, with a decision from its principal owner, whereas a larger publicly traded company requires shareholder approval. But successful rebranding also depends on internal alignment, not just approval from owners or shareholders, because employees are the ones who carry the change into daily work and embody brand values. To support a successful rebrand, assess employee buy-in early to reduce confusion and involve staff in the process so they feel ownership rather than resistance. Gather employee feedback before and during rollout to understand brand perception and catch gaps between leadership’s intent and what teams are experiencing. Training also helps employees understand why the change is happening and keeps customer communications on brand as the new identity is introduced.

Printing vs. Digital Brand Identity

As you’re picking a logo to use as the new business’ identity, you’ll probably run into the differences in color production across all the mediums where you will use the new look. What the colors you choose look like on a screen are completely different from what is printed on things like letterhead, brochures and other marketing materials. You can read our recent blog post about what the different types of color processes like RGB and Pantone are and what they mean, and when to choose each one. You should also create or update brand guidelines to help create brand consistency. It’s important to document the rules for your visual identity and brand messaging, including your logo usage, color and font choices, so you know what to apply when you address each of the uses of the new brand. A brand kit helps organize new brand assets and gives teams a simple toolkit for keeping materials on brand across platforms. Using cloud based brand guidelines or a centralized digital asset management system also helps maintain brand consistency across teams.

Getting out of Brand Limbo

You are going to find yourself in brand limbo sometime during the process: stuck in an existence where there is a mix between the old and the new brand. During this branding transition, track results after launch to measure the new brand’s impact. Your website may have changed, but your business cards still have the old brand on them, for example. Or you were nominated for an award, but you win it after the brand change, so it has the old business name, and you can’t change how it’s announced after the fact. Many businesses find that both brands co-exist simultaneously for a while after the change, but eventually, once you hunt down all the remaining stragglers, the new brand is everywhere it needs to be. As old and new materials coexist, monitor customer feedback, engagement metrics, and brand awareness to gauge effectiveness. A successful rebrand can strengthen customer loyalty and trust, and simple campaigns or exclusive offers can help reassure loyal customers during the transition.