Melanie
The Monday Morning Marketing podcast is brought to you by Esther of IPA Group, bringing premier online promotion to your business.
Esther
And Melanie of STOMP Social Media Training, who empowers business owners to manage social media and marketing for themselves. Welcome back to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing podcast. Today we're talking about six reasons to freshen up your brand. What a random number.
Melanie
Well, I think we just too often pick 5 or 10, so I just Yeah, it's just random.
Esther
Yeah, just random, but I like it. I like it. So, freshening up your brand is something that we've both done, right?
Melanie
We have.
Esther
We have yet to do it for the podcast, but I'm sure it's coming. But here at IPA Group, we've actually even renamed. We used to be called IPA Solutions, but we have changed our logo, I think, maybe three times at this point. Reasons behind it are numbered and varied, but we're going to get into that in this episode. So maybe the top reason for doing a refresh, not so much a rebrand, because you don't have to totally change like we did change the name and everything. But to tweak the logo or tweak the colourings maybe, would be to stay current with your industry, your audience. Maybe like BP did a few years ago, they decided to make their logo greener because they wanted to be seen as being greener, just after a big, huge oil leak. But anyway, they were trying to hide things maybe, rather than make things different. What about you, Melanie?
Melanie
Well, sometimes I think refreshes are obviously considerably cheaper rather than the full rebrand. I've done a full rebrand as well. I changed names 18 months after my business because the name wasn't doing the job, but I've not changed my name since. But we have refreshed the Monday Morning Marketing podcast graphic-wise.
Esther
We have.
Melanie
We changed the images and made them look a bit more, I don't know, once we realised this was going to be beyond a hobby. But I think people get too familiar with the way something looks after a while.
Esther
Yeah.
Melanie
And other people compete with those colours, with those the way that you're put across? I mean, classically, very recently, so not to date it, but very recently we saw Facebook change their icon and everywhere, actually, and made their colour blue, bluer. Because when people are looking at their phone and seeing all the apps, there's an awful lot of blue, royal blue icons these days. And yeah, I think I'm almost certain that's why X became black as well, because the game was blue and they want to differentiate themselves. I'm looking at an open screen on my laptop right now and I've got little icons of all the screens that are open and I can immediately distinguish the difference between X and Facebook, even amongst all the other blue ones, because it's so different.
Esther
Yeah totally.
Melanie
They're just little refreshes. I think we do get a little complacent if we just keep on seeing the same thing all the time. We don't really associate it with an update or something current.
Esther
Yeah, and your logo can look dated, even if it's only a few years old because of the way that everything is updating and changing and modifying so quickly. I have a Mac computer, so Apple is one of those ones that it's always kept the Apple with the bite out of it, but it's changed from the... There used to be a rainbow on it, and then it changed to be white and then grey. It's just subtle changes, just changes in the curvature of your lettering, or changes in the font that you use, keeping the same colours, but changing, modifying the font. Because if you've been using Times New Roman, that's considered now a very outdated font.
Melanie
hmm.
Esther
Nowadays a lot more use Helvetica or Poppins are just loads, loads. Like, this is the other thing, and there are now thousands more fonts available than there were maybe when you were opening up your business years ago. So don't have to stick to the same font that you have had. Do think of keeping it one that is easily read, easily distinguishable as to what it's saying, because people like to be able to read easily what it says. But another reason for refreshing your brand is to keep that competitive edge and keep your competitiveness alive and well.
Melanie
It keeps you top of mind as well, doesn't it?
Esther
Yeah, but if you're looking at your competitors and they haven't changed in years, then you doing subtle changes can be the difference for customers going, oh, well, they look fresh and modern and up to date with things. So it's a way to get ahead of your competitors as well.
Melanie
But all these refreshes, and especially if you're going to be completely rebranding, it doesn't really matter how you do it. Some of it could be quite costly. I remember when I did my rebrand, I was saying, Oh, Jeez. Because it's not just everything that's online, which is nice and easy to do. You just create it and upload it. But there might be table cloths, roll up banners, handouts. I recently went to an event and literally all my flyers went. So I had to get some more flyers. I did an update on my colours and fonts when I had my website done. That was a couple of years ago now, so I suppose by the end of next year, I'll probably be looking at tweaking something else on my website and updating the colours again. And it doesn't have to be something extensive, but do you know what? You can implement these changes slowly, or you can do a full relaunch if that's what you want to do. It's really down to your timelines and your budget.
Esther
Yes, definitely. And if you are going for a full rebrand, realised that your name might be changing, so therefore your domain would be changing, your email address changing, so many changes. That will take longer for people to catch up with that, so have all your redirects in place as well. That's for your web designer and your email person to do for you. But a refresh can actually improve business. Like I said, it can show people that, look, we're still here. Not only are we still here after 40, 50 years, but we are committed to still being here, hence the refresh and spending money on the business to be able to have brighter colours or have a different font or, you know, modifying whatever you want to modify in it. It doesn't have to be that huge, all encompassing, everything gets done, but small, subtle changes can make all the difference for people to be able to go, Yep, we're still here. We're still alive and well. We're still in business. Because some people look at older logos and go, doesn't look like they're still going to be open.
Melanie
So let's give examples of when you would be doing a rebrand or a refresh. And one of the things that I would recommend you doing is if you're going to be upping your product range or your service range, that might be a good time to do a refresh or even a rebrand. It also could be if you're going to be shifting customer avatars slightly. So just by setting up your business, you may just automatically get a certain amount of interest from a certain type of customer avatar. But if you're planning to extend that audience to different suppliers, different customers, different geographical area, then this might be an opportunity for you to also do a rebrand or a refresh and maybe do a soft launch or a full launch.
Esther
Yeah. And part of that refresh can also be your messaging. It can be the way that you're speaking online. If you've been very, very formal in the way that you speak and you want to show yourselves as a more compassionate or customer centric business going forward. I mean, if you are a one man band doing this refresh, then remove the we. Remove the we do this and we do that, and be proud of the fact that you do it all on your own. So use the I, I do this and I am this and I am wearing all 50 hats or however many hats your business has, and be proud of that. Use that as part of your new messaging going forward to say, I may be small, but I am mighty.
Melanie
Yeah, small and mighty. That's just how we like them.
Esther
Yeah.
Melanie
Businesses, that is.
Esther
Yeah, obviously, it's what we're talking about to our SME listeners. But before you relaunch or before even a soft launch, make sure that everything's changed. So if you have done a font change, make sure that that change has happened across your social media banners your websites.
Melanie
Consistent.
Esther
Yeah, because you don't want people rocking up to one place and going, 'Uhm'. Even if it's a platform that you might not use anymore, like maybe you opened up an X account and you haven't used X in years, formerly known as Twitter, still make the changes there so that if people find you through that, find you through search engines, they're going to be clicking into the different places. And if there is an inconsistency between some of those places, it can be really hard for that person to trust that it's the same company.
Melanie
No, I completely agree. And there's this small gutting feeling that you get when you've discovered you've been out there a little while and you've gone, Oh, my Lord, I forgot to update that too. So there's a fair bit of research you need to do. You need to go back over your old and current footprint and see where you need to update and change.
Esther
Yeah, especially if you have been shared somewhere else. If your blog has appeared somewhere else with your old logo or your old colour scheme, contact them and go, 'Thank you very much. Here's my new and updated'. And most of the time they have no problem in changing your logo out for your new one or your colour scheme or whatever.
Melanie
Yeah, most of them wouldn't have an issue now.
Esther
Yeah, So what else?
Melanie
I can't think of anything else.
Esther
Well, before you dive into a refresh, just stop and think. Do you need it? Can you afford it? What all is going to be involved in it? How much of a refresh do you want to do? Is it just going to be something simple, something small, something that isn't automatically noticeable to the naked eye? Or are you going all out and completely changing from blue to black, black to red, whatever you're changing? Are you going full on name change? What is going to work for you and why? You might need to do an audience survey beforehand. That's what you did, isn't it, Melanie?
Melanie
I did. I did a few things, actually. I did a poll on Facebook. I did a face-to-face focus group, and I did several surveys, actually, from group training events I was running. So it just depends on how much detail you want to go into. I just kept on having to be told that my name just wasn't right. So I finally coped on.
Esther
Yeah, and do listen to your audience because at the end of the day, they're the ones who are searching for you, and they're the ones that are going to hopefully buy from you or at least refer other people on to you. So with that, we will leave you. And if you do need help with any of your rebranding, get in touch with Melanie or I. We'd love to help you out with this. And remember, IPA group do logos and designs as well. So, it's shameless, shameless promotion.
Melanie
And I can help with the soft launch on your social media.
Esther
That is correct. So that's it for today, guys. If you have any questions, we would love to hear from you. And we'll be back next week with more Monday Morning Marketing. Until then, bye-bye.
Melanie
Bye, guys. Have a great week.
