With a new year, it is time for your brand to have a fresh look and feel too. Refreshing your brand is a great way to bring about a refreshing change to the goals you and your company stand for. It appeals to your consumers and brings about a new sense of loyalty. However, hiring a professional agency to get it done for you can be quite an economic burden. Instead, you can try to refresh your brand for yourself with a few tips, advice, and some great tools from SaaSworthy.
“Products are made in a factory, but brands are created in the mind.”
— WALTER LANDOR
Let your audience know what your company currently stands for and build esteem for yourself. Make use of whatever resources you have and get your creative side to come with a refreshing spin to your brand. Want to know more about it? Find everything you need to know.
Table of Contents
What is a Brand Refresh?
A good portion of the mass to date gets confused between rebranding and a brand refresh. Before you start with your brand refresh, it is better to have a clear idea about what you are trying to achieve. If you are going for a brand refresh, this is what you are trying to do— you are trying to implement a tactical maneuver. A brand refresh is your way of telling your audience how updated your company is with the current market and how aware you are of what you are doing.
Refreshing your brand can be a simple or a complex process, depending on what extent you are hoping to change your brand image. Often, it is about having a clear change in the way your company feels, looks, and sounds to your customers. So, when we say refreshing your brand, we are implying a change in:
- Visual branding
- Products and services offered to the customers
- Brand voice
If your brand stayed the same as it was when it first launched, while your competitors went for fresher looks, new visuals, and logos, and adopted better communication methods, your audience would stop taking an interest in you and would move on to other companies. Refreshing your brand is almost like giving a trendy new look to your company to appeal to the current trends.
Many big corporations and multinational companies opt for a periodic brand refresh to keep their impact on their target audience fresh and trendy. A good example would be Microsoft. If you look back to the start and then to the current times, you would see how they kept refreshing their logos to match the present times.
Rebranding, on the other hand, is more thorough than that. It implies getting rid of the whole idea your brand has built till now and getting a new one in its place. In other words, if refreshing is like a new makeover for your company, rebranding is similar to getting a unique personality.
When would be a fitting time to get a brand refresh?
Now that you understand the fundamental difference between a rebrand and a refresh, your next question should be— when is the right time to get a refresh? For this, you would need to take a look at what your company feels like. If you find your company falling under any of these categories, it’s high time you go for a refresh :
- Your company feels outdated
One of the principal aspects here is the logo. Sure, your logo might have been the most innovative one when you started, but is it still the same? Is it helping you advance, or is it holding you back? Getting a clear understanding of what band image your logo portrays is the key to a brand refresh. Try to refresh your brand by finding your perfect logo with some fantastic online logo makers.
- Your company is growing and expanding.
Another excellent opportunity to get a refresh on your brand is when your company is expanding and growing. You may have merged with a new company or have come up with a new product line; whichever it is that foretell expansion and growth, it will be an excellent opportunity to reassess what your company should feel like.
- Your target audience has changed.
When you have a new target audience, it is time for a brand refresh. Depending on your new target audience, you might want to have a look and feel that appeals better to your new audience. Therefore, a brand refresh is a solution.
- Your company has changed.
A brand refresh can help you better convey what it is that your company stands for. If your company’s feel and look does not match what it provides, consider refreshing your brand.
- Your company has an inconsistent image.
At times, companies try too hard to portray a certain feel but instead confuse their audience about their true purpose. If that is what is happening to your company, getting a brand refresh can help you straighten out your company’s true essence to your customers.
What is the thorough process of refreshing your brand?
You now know about the brand refresh and when is the right time to get one. The next thing that we will be focusing on is what goes into refreshing your brand. As we briefly mentioned before, refreshing your brand can be a simple or a complex process depending on the extent you want the refresh. Let us now understand what we meant by that.
Before we dive into the process, keep in mind once again that a brand refresh is just giving a fresh touch to your company so that it appeals better to your target audience. It is just a surface thing, and your company is more than the logo and colors. So, always be mindful of your company’s stability and structure before you go on with it.
Research and more research
As all good things begin, refreshing your brand starts with research as well— And a load of that. People often overstep these research and strategy measures, but we cannot explain how fatal a flaw. A company needs to understand where it stands, where it has to go, and what it wants to convey through its research to get the desired effect. Thorough research will answer all your questions and give you clear goals that need to be achieved.
Comparative analysis
We are not suggesting you copy some other company’s design— that is not even an option. But what we are suggesting is you do a comparative analysis. These research types are great for understanding what is trending in the market and what the audience wants. Therefore, the next move would be to study the market and every other trend currently the hot deal.
Such analysis will give you a clear idea of the current styles and looks preferred to appeal to your customers and help your brand refresh succeed. With that done, you will now be able to give your competitors fierce competition.
Updating the visual identity
Your visual identity is one of the main components of your brand refresh. An outdated visual identity can smother your business down. But, with a refresh, you can put it straight to the customers that you are on the same pace with the current market and have clear and defined objectives.
Here, you would want to stay within the current trends and yet stand out among your competitors. Therefore, in this step, you would be getting into the color schemes, logo designs, photography, font styles, and so on. SaaSworthy has a great list of photo-editing software that can solve all your creative editing issues.
Updating the voice and tone
The last step would be to look at the tone that you want your company to have. Granted that a brand refresh has more to do with visuals than anything else, but for your company to have an excellent new feel, tapping into the kind of your messaging and tone your company carries will help too.
The market is not just attracted to a brand’s visuals but is also increasingly aware of what kind of message, story, and personality the brand has. Therefore, the last step in your brand refreshing would be to bring a fresh twist to your brand messaging and tone.
Exclusive tips for a spectacular brand refresh!
If you want to get inspiration from the best, take a look at Starbucks. They have refreshed their brand a couple of times, and each time, they were clear about the message they wanted to get across. From the colors used to their designs and their knowledge about the current market, everything is reflected well. The green used in their logo stands for their eco-friendly approach and their Fairtrade position. Also, their current logo is the trendy shift from text to iconography. To know more current trends, here is a suggested list by SaaSworthy.
Now that we have touched on all the essential aspects of how to refresh your brand, it is time for some tips that will help accelerate the process and make it infinitely more effective. Take a look at some extra words on how to make your brand refresh hundred percent useful.
- Rethink about your values and goals.
Nothing will prepare you better than understanding where you stand. Therefore, when you are thinking of refreshing your brand, always be clear about your goals and values. You want these things to be as clear as day to your customers, and your brand image should reflect that.
- Always keep an eye out for your opponents.
Competitors are not just for competing but are also a great source of learning. Therefore, whenever you think of refreshing your brand, take a good long look at your competitors. What have they done that sat well with the market? What did they do that did not go well? Everything can be a lesson for you to put into your brand refreshing, so do not miss out on that opportunity.
- Set a theme for your brand.
Setting a theme for your brand is a great way to refresh it and an even greater way to attract your customers’ attention. It will lead your customers to identify your brand easily and create a better brand image in their minds. A great area to start is with Instagram. Select a color theme and stick to it. Use well-clicked and edited photographs, and everything else will work like magic!
- Always listen to your customers.
A fatal flaw with many companies is that they barely listen to their customers. Especially in a brand refresh, listening to what your customers have to say is crucial. It is because of the image that you want to create in your customer’s mind that you are going for a brand refresh. Thus, make sure you listen to what they have to say. A market survey is a great way to determine what your customers are trying to tell you and have changes made accordingly.
- Be more human.
Lastly, a good bit of advice would be to be more human. Long gone are the days of sales messages, so you should lose them too. Focus on the original voice of your company and keep it. As much as you like to hear from your customers, they would like to hear from you too. Therefore, adopt more human and original ways of communicating and interacting with your clients. Also, maintain the same in all the mediums you use to get in touch with your clients.
So, that was all about our practical guide to help you refresh your brand. With this, we hope to have enlightened you in a manner that will help you get the best brand refresh. So, follow through the steps mentioned here and stick to the advice, and we hope you get inspired to create a fresh look for your brand that will boost your company furthermore. To read more exciting ways to improve your brand, check out the SaaSwotrthy Blog here!
