Your clothes aren’t identifying with your desired self-image, your hair is falling in all the wrong ways, and you’re constantly questioning whether the vibes you are giving off are working in your favor. For a person, these may be signs of an identity crisis. As people go through periods of self-reassessment, so do businesses. Rebranding a business involves altering the way your brand is visually represented to the world in an effort to better support a brand’s mission and values—with the ultimate goal being to attract and retain customers. Not sure when it’s time for a new look? Check out these signs that it’s time to rebrand your business.

Your current branding is outdated.

Keeping up with the times also applies to the outward image you are projecting via your branding. Admitting that the look of your brand is outdated is not saying that your business isn’t successful. In fact, the most successful brands out there regularly rebrand to make sure their “looks” coincide best with modern preferences. Perhaps the font and colors in your logo are giving off a bit of a 90s feel. Or maybe your brand is advertising a service that is outdated and no longer offered. These are signs that it may be time to rebrand your business.

Your business is merging with another brand.

This seems like it should be a given, but often businesses will overlook their rebranding for far too long following a merger. A merger or acquisition represents the formation of a new entity, which requires a brand to represent that new entity. You can take this one of two ways, which will also depend on whether it is a merger or acquisition. For one, you can shed all traces of the two existing businesses entirely in the rebrand. Conversely, you can maintain qualities of each and try to effectively combine them. Which you decide will depend on the individual businesses involved and their plans for growth moving forward.

You need to differentiate your brand from competition.

As the market evolves, so does opportunity for brand competition. Ideally your competitor will not brand itself too closely to your own business, but (to an extent) what the competition does is out of your control. If customers are confusing you with another similar business, it might be a sign that it’s time to rebrand your business.

This can also happen when brands use stock art for their logos. Stock art is available to you just as easily as it is available to your competitors. If multiple brands are using the same stock image or graphic, then you are only going to confuse consumers. You want your brand to stand out—in the best possible way.

You want to disassociate with a negative image.

In the days of social media, it’s not unusual for a slight misstep to erupt into an all-out public trial. Though you hope to never find your business in such a situation, if it does happen, rebranding is a direct and simple way to assuage the negative vibes.

Your business model or mission has changed.

As technology, markets, and consumer preferences evolve, so do business models. This can also coincide with the mission of your company changing as your business matures. Both of these are signs that it’s time to rebrand your business. For example, maybe instead of just selling musical instruments, you’re moving more toward teaching music. Or perhaps you’re a dentist’s office that has recently incorporated spa treatments into its repertoire.

Each of these situations could be cause for you to reevaluate the outward image your company is projecting to customers. You want what you are offering and therefore your value to be clear to potential and existing customers upon first glace of your branding.

Your brand is targeting a new demographic.

Targeting a new demographic coincides closely with changing your business model and can often be the result of changing your business model. Taking the example above, if you’re going to start teaching music, then your new target demographic may more heavily include children and young adults, and your branding should reflect that.

Targeting a new demographic can also happen when you are expanding your products or services into a new market. If you’re expanding into a college town, for example then your branding for that particular market may be designed with the student audience in mind.

Is it ever to soon to do a rebrand?

With these signs that it’s time to rebrand your business considered, you may be wondering whether it is ever too soon to go for a rebrand. The answer? It depends. If you’ve launched a brand and are receiving next-to-no positive response, then you’ve really got nothing to lose by trying another route. However, if you have just launched a business and you are gaining a steady following, we would not recommend rebranding off the bat just for the sake of doing so.

Even if things are growing—but maybe not as quickly as you had hoped, stick with your current branding unless you can identify one of the reasons above as being a direct issue. The last thing you want to do is appear to have an identity crisis in the eyes of your customer base.

Think it’s time for a rebrand? McNutt & Partners can help. Call us at 334-521-1010, or visit our contact page.