Brand Refresh: When should you refresh your brand?

Brand Refresh: How to Know When to Update Branding

Branding is important. Great branding is something that makes your company easily identifiable and stand out against competitors. Branding should also be an accurate representation of who you are and what you do. It makes a huge impact, but what if you notice that effect diminishes? 

The hard truth is that brands need an update every now and then. As things change, your current brand may slowly become outdated, fading into irrelevance online in search results and social media. If you fail to adapt to a modernized visual identity, messaging, and voice, you will lose traction with your consumers and stakeholders and the effects of your brand diminish over time.

A brand refresh can help jumpstart your branding strategy while modernizing and evolving as a brand. So as you read this article, ask yourself, “when was the last time I evaluated my brand”? In this article, we will review signs your brand needs a refresh. 

Do I Need a Brand Refresh?

Rebranding Vs Brand Refresh: Which Do I Need? 

Instead of a full-scale rebrand, a brand refresh is an updated reflection of aesthetics that best appeal to consumers. This process helps modernize a brand’s look, feel and voice. Brand refreshes are not as intensive as a full rebranding effort. Brand refreshes take a brand’s look or message and feel to modernize it, whereas a full rebrand is essentially a tear-down effort that ensues a rebranding effort that starts from scratch.

How do you Successfully Refresh a Brand?

With a brand refresh, you will typically update some or all of the following elements:

• Voice
• Messaging
• Logo 
• Color scheme
• Fonts

These elements affect how your brand is presented online and offline. A brand refresh will likely affect how owned media is presented online, including your website, blog, and social media accounts.

Costs

Of course, every brand refresh or full rebrand may be different, but in terms of rough costs, a brand refresh is significantly less than a full rebrand. Generally speaking, a brand refresh is around 20-40% of the cost of a full rebranding effort.

6 Signs It’s Time for a Brand Refresh

There are many benefits to refreshing your brand. After a while, you may find that your brand performance goes stale both online and offline. How do you know when it’s time for a brand refresh? Here are six signs to look for when considering whether it makes sense for a brand refresh.

#1 Your brand aesthetics feel outdated

You know outdated branding when you see it. With a dated brand, you risk fading into the background and falling behind competitors. The solution of modernizing your brand feel will help you stand out while having a brand that fits what consumers may expect in this day and age.

#2 Your business performance has slowly regressed

If you notice that KPIs (key performance indicators) have fallen across all marketing channels, then it may be time for a brand refresh. Tracking KPIs related to social media activity and search traffic and revenue, and online conversions will help get a deeper understanding of business performance online. If your website has slowly decreased over time, it could be due to stale or outdated brand messaging or perception.

#3 Your branding is inconsistent 

A large component of great branding is consistency. Having a consistent brand means consistent messaging both online and offline across all platforms and channels. On top of that, branding should be a consistent promotion effort. Brands should consistently be using social media marketing and content blogging to reach their consumers and audience. With inconsistent branding, you risk losing out on new business.

#4 Your brand is falling behind your competitors

Competitors that update their brand may be another reason to consider a brand refresh. You should take note of competitor branding efforts. If a competitor decides to go through a brand refresh or complete rebranding effort, you need to consider the ripple effect on your company and the industry as a whole. Competitor rebranding efforts may affect how you’ll want to position your brand moving forward. 

#5 Your audience has changed 

Whether you’re actively updating your target market or you’ve seen a shift in your target market, updates in your audience are a sign of a brand refresh. Your new target audience will likely have different values, user behavior, and buying habits – and because of this, your brand should match your new persona. 

#6 You’ve gone through a reputation crisis

A reputation-driven brand refresh may be in response to a PR crisis. After a brand crisis occurs, it can be tough for your brand to recover fully. After squashing the crisis that occurs, some companies will opt for a brand refresh, and in some cases, a full-blown rebranding effort. It may be tempting to rush into a brand refresh. However, it should be a strategic and thoughtful update.

Is It Time for a Brand Refresh?

Though it’s not as intensive a process as a rebrand, a brand refresh can modernize the look and feel of your brand through online marketing. If you go too long without a brand refresh, you risk your brand falling behind competitors, leaving you in the dust. Is it time for your brand to undergo a refresh? We can help you take the next step.