Does rebranding your business scare you? Have you worked too hard to mess things up? You don’t have to feel that way! Rebranding can be an amazing thing and experience and it should EXCITE you, not scare you!

After speaking at two Tuesday’s Together groups this past month there were some common fears about branding that I wanted to address. I do branding for wedding businesses primarily, but many of my clients have had these same exact fears. Let’s address three of them!

1. 1. 1. Connecting with a designer who will be able to execute my vision: Of course it’s scary to hand over your business, aka your baby, to someone else. What if they can’t understand what you’re trying to communicate? What if they just “don’t get it” and I’ve spent all this money on them?! What if what if what if! I definitely get it and you MUST do your research when looking for a designer. Use these four criteria to help you!
         1. Experience – how much experience do they have? Less than a year or 10 years? Obviously someone who has done this a lot will have a better track record.
         2. Turnaround time – How fast are they? Will it take you a year to have a new website? That’s no good. Make sure you know ahead of time how soon your new site and brand will be up and running. My whole process from start to finish is roughly a month.
         3. Workload – How many clients do they work with at a time? That is SO important. When I was just starting off I pretty much took every project and had nearly a dozen clients currently at one time. It was awful because every client got pushed back as I took on another project. Now, years later, I work with 1 to 2 branding clients at a time and schedule others out to avoid that, get everyone to focus, and finish in a timely manner.
         4. Background – What’s their education background? Are they completely self taught? Did they go to a fine arts school? Do they have a business background like me? Having a business background really helps me because I work with my clients to define their ideal clients and niches so we then can build a visual brand.
      2. Being too trendy. Above all else, you need to connect with your ideal client. Know who they are. Write a paragraph with very specific details about where they shop, how old they are, what they drive, what they do for fun, etc. Once you can easily identify your ideal client then build a visual brand about that person and don’t worry about trends. You might be so far off the trend or right in it, but as long as you are focusing your efforts on your client and not the visuals then you will be fine.
      3. Spending all this money and being tired of my new brand in a month. Are you building your brand for you or your ideal clients? It should be both, but if you take the time to identify your ideal client and business niche BEFORE you do ANY visuals then you shouldn’t have to worry about getting tired of your brand. Also, knowing your client and niche does take time to learn so only go through with a large scale rebrand once you know those things like the back of your hand.

Feel like you’re ready to rebrand? View my process!