The clock has struck midnight; the ball has dropped, and now it’s back to business in a new year with new opportunities. For most, this means setting new goals and hoping that the good habits we’re trying to form actually stick. In business, the beginning of a new calendar and fiscal year means an opportunity to refresh and revitalize your brand.

Whether you’re thinking of a brand refresh, partial rebranding, or even an entire overhaul in 2022, this article walks you through the fundamentals of successful rebranding.

Know Why You’re Rebranding

Time is money, and investing in rebranding requires both. Knowing why you’re rebranding will help you minimize how much of both you end up wasting. Before setting the wheels in motion, decide what you’re looking to achieve. Whether you’re staying up-to-date with current trends, maintaining a competitive edge, or attempting to target a new audience, ensuring your brand aligns with your business’s goals is vital to achieving them. 

Find Your Brand’s Strengths and Weaknesses

Data Is Your Friend

While rebranding can be daunting, the good news is that it doesn’t have to mean starting from scratch. To figure out the path forward, look to history for guidance. Use metrics such as sales, social media interactions, website traffic, and other resources from years prior to get an eagle’s eye view of your brand and how consumers respond to it. 

Your Audience Knows Best

Your brand exists to give customers a way to identify and connect with your business. While data can help point you in a general direction, knowing your target audience and using them as a resource will help remove the guesswork in rebranding. Focus groups, surveys, polls, or even asking people you know who fall within your target audience can be invaluable for ensuring your changes are focused on your audience. 

Learn from Your Competition

While every company is different, there’s no arguing the importance of researching your competitors. Competitor research is doubly important for marketing, where your brand is how you distinguish yourself from them. Doing a thorough analysis will allow you to see the branding choices they’ve made and see customer reactions to those changes. Having a real-world view of customer reactions can help you avoid pitfalls that others in your industry have fallen into.

Develop Your New Brand Personality

After analyzing the numbers, speaking with customers, and looking at your competition’s actions, you probably know what needs to stay and change. Now comes the fun part, building your brand personality. 

A brand personality comprises human-like traits that customers use to describe a business, like how Apple is seen as creative or Jeep as outdoorsy. To get an idea of your brand personality, think of the values you want to reflect and how you want your customers to describe you. Having a brand personality as a map will help ensure that your rebranding decisions reflect your end goals. 

Let Ashore Help Make It Easy

Whether you’re doing a complete rebrand or a minor refresh, Ashore’s proofing software helps you get solid feedback on marketing collateral and simplify the rebranding process. Sign up for free to see the automated workflows, version comparison, email templates, and contextual commenting in action — and you can even whitelabel Ashore with your own branding. Get started today!