How to Rebrand Your Business Without Losing Your Customers

Your company’s brand is your business’ identity.

Rebranding is a big deal and involves plenty of marketing and employee power to make it smooth.

You’ll not only be rebranding the outside of your company, but the inside as well. And you’ll need to be ready to take questions and address concerns from the public.

When you rebrand your company, you need to think about how the rebrand will affect your customers.

Rebranding can include a variety of tasks, and even small changes have the potential to impact your customers.

Here are several examples of rebranding changes that can have a big impact on your customers along with ways to mitigate the negative effects:

Changing your logo

Your customers get used to seeing your logo and they’ll notice if you change your design. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Many big companies have changed their logos and it hasn’t negatively impacted their business. In fact, logo redesign often has a positive impact on companies, when done right.

When you connect with a professional marketing agency to redesign your logo, you don’t need to worry about your changes having a negative impact on your business.

Marketing agencies know how to design logos that embody your brand image and send the right message to your target market.

However, if you’re not working with an agency, you’ll want to be careful with your changes.

Logo changes can have a negative impact

It’s important to have an aesthetically-pleasing logo, but there’s more involved than visual design.

Your company’s logo is more than just an eye-catching design – it’s an image that will become associated with your brand as long as your company exists.

It’s important to get it right, but it needs to send a message, not just look good.

If your logo design doesn’t appeal to your target market, you’ll lose out on sales from people who don’t feel connected to your image.

You’d be surprised at how often people “judge a book by its cover” and skip doing business with brands because of their image.

How to change your logo without losing customers

It’s not hard to change your logo without losing customers. Small changes don’t necessarily require an announcement.

However, if you’re going to rebrand completely to the point where your new logo will be unrecognizable, let people know about the changes through your email list.

Give them a heads up and make it sound exciting, like it’s a big step forward for your business.

When you complete your logo change, listen to your customers’ feedback to see how they like the change. It’s true that people naturally resist change, so you’ll get mixed feedback.

However, the impact on your sales will ultimately tell you if you made the right choice.

2. Changing your slogan or tagline

Your slogan or tagline will be one of the most difficult things to change without your customers feeling the disruption, especially if it’s associated with a memorable jingle.

This is especially true if you’ve been established for a while and customers are used to seeing or hearing your tagline in commercials or videos online.

However, it’s not impossible to make this change without negatively impacting your business.

How to change your slogan without losing customers

The first thing to consider when changing your slogan is whether the new version better represents the way you sever your customers.

If your new slogan is customer-oriented and truly represents the way your brand supports customers, you’ll be fine.

People will need to get used to it, but it won’t have a negative impact.

3. Changing your company colors

Changing your company colors

Of all the changes you can make to your brand, changing your colors probably won’t be that disruptive as long as you follow color psychology. Color has a deep influence on user behavior and impacts conversions. You can convey the right message with a variety of colors, as long as those colors are used correctly.

There is one situation that might make changing colors difficult.

For instance, if you’ve already gone to great lengths to establish a color scheme as your brand.

For instance, UPS, FedEx, and DHL all use simple color schemes as part of their brand.

They’ve been around for so long, it would be hard for them to change their colors.

However, unless you’re literally known for your color(s), you probably don’t need to worry about making changes.

4. Changing your product packaging

If you sell physical products, keep in mind that customers get used to product packaging design, including the shape and materials.

When you change your packaging, your changes will need to be a major improvement to elicit a positive reaction.

For instance, switching to eco-friendly packaging is almost always a positive move, even if it doesn’t look as smooth. However, if you’re just changing your product labels, make sure your new design looks great and represents a positive change for your business.

How to change your packaging without losing customers

First things first. Regarding your labels, don’t remove information your customers find important. Also, don’t make your label text too hard to read. Keep your text at a decent, readable font size.

Most importantly, know your market. Know what kind of packaging your market is attracted to because if you change your packaging too drastically, you might lose out on new customers.

5. Contributing to controversial causes

If you’re inclined to support controversial causes, you’ll need to be intentional with your plan. It’s easier to support controversial causes when your business is new. This way, everyone knows what you stand for from the start.

Unfortunately, if you start supporting controversial causes after you’ve established your business, some customers will feel betrayed or disappointed and you’ll lose some. However, depending on how strongly you stand for your convictions, you might end up with even more loyal customers on the other side of that loss.

Many well-known companies have taken a bold stand for various social causes and have only gained from their stances. For instance, Nike stood with former NFL player Colin Kaepernick’s protest against racial injustice by kneeling during the National Anthem. Since then, Nike sales have grown and the company’s brand is stronger among fans.

How to contribute to controversial causes without losing customers

This is a tough one. On one hand, you should be able to contribute to any cause you wish, but when you do this in the official capacity of your business, you risk losing customers who hold opposing values. However, don’t let this stop you from supporting controversial causes because it doesn’t mean you can’t be successful. In fact, many businesses have built much of their success on their public, controversial values.

When you contribute to controversial causes, you’ll actually gain customer loyalty from people who hold similar values. You just have to be ready and willing to continue standing up for your values and accept that you will lose some customers, but in the end, you’ll gain the loyalty of many others.

6. Renaming your business

Renaming your business

Sometimes rebranding involves renaming your business.

This can be a very positive change, but it can also be confusing to your customers. Changing the name of your business can also negatively impact all your hard work you’ve done with marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and establishing a presence on social media.

For instance, some URLs cannot be changed, so you’ll need to create new accounts.

If you do plan on changing URLs (even doing so with a 301 redirect) you can expect to see some bleed-out or loss of search engine rankings.

How to rename your business without losing your customers

Just the act of renaming your business won’t necessarily make you lose customers. In fact, many of your customers will go with the flow and won’t mind a total rebrand. However, changing your company name can be confusing, and that can make you lose customers.

The confusion can be prevented by announcing your rebrand long before you switch names to give your customers a heads up about the change. For instance, without a proper announcement, customers will be confused when they start getting emails in your new name.

How to rename your business without losing your SEO

When it comes to SEO, if you’re changing domain names to match your new company name, you’ll need to go through a lengthy process to ensure you don’t lose your hard work.

You can’t just forward one domain to the other because you’ll lose ranking.

Moz.com explains how to properly move domain names and if not done properly, you’ll lose traffic and ranking.

7. Educate your employees

Employee education is critical during a total rebrand. Your customers will have questions, concerns, and maybe even complaints. It’s important that your employees provide the right responses to customer feedback. For instance, when customers complain, you’ll want your employees to respond with a

Are you ready for a rebrand? We can help!

Is your company ready to be rebranded? Do you need a clearer message, a stronger voice, and better aesthetics online? We specialize in brand development and can help you optimize your brand voice.

Whether you need a responsive website redesign, SEO, or content creation, we’ll help you get the results you’re after.

We’ll help you rebrand, switch domain names, and generate traffic, leads, and sales under your new identity. Contact us today for more information.

Timothy Carter
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