There will come a time when you’ll feel that your company’s message and image are becoming stagnant or irrelevant to your audience. Any company will undergo an identity crisis at least once in its life, and you will need to rethink your strategy when it happens to you.
In such cases, you can try to rebrand to give your company an update. Rebranding is a marketing strategy that can give your business a new name or identity. It can provide the stimulation your business needs to tap into a new market segment. It could also be a way for you to attract new customers or rekindle an existing relationship with a target audience.
In the digital age, rebranding is a challenge for most brands and digital strategists. Here is a guide you can use to help you determine how to proceed.
1. Changing the Website
Rebranding often involves a new brand name. When you do that, you also need to change your website’s domain name. Changing domain names does not happen overnight. Make sure to work on this ahead of time to make the switch quickly and smoothly.
Here are the steps on how to do this:
- Setting Up the New Domain
Everything begins with setting up your new domain name. Using your hosting provider, make an entry in the DNS (Domain Name System) to cascade the change to the name servers automatically.
- Cloning the Existing Site
Create a copy of your site and activate it as your new domain. Make the appropriate entries in the web server configuration, then acquire and install SSL certificates for your new domain.
- Temporarily Block Search Engines
Now, you need to create a rule in your robots.txt file to block all the bot traffic going into the new brand’s website. If you forget to do this step, it will lead to a decline in your current website’s SEO traffic.
- Update Your Content
You also need to update all the old branding references stated in your blog. Ensure that all areas, including the meta-description, page titles, and content that mentions your old branding, will be replaced with the new one.
Next, you need to update all the internal links you added to your site that still use the old URL. Find them all and change them with the new URL.
After securing the URL, you also need to update all the logos present on your site. Make sure to replace each logo with a logo that’s the same size as the previous one. If not, you might need to change some codes, which will consume more of your time.
- Get Webmaster Access
Finally, do not forget to secure access to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools for your new domain. It is a necessary tool for maintaining and troubleshooting your site’s presence in each search engine, which will help your rebrand launch.
2. Reactivate or Transfer All Your Tools
Now, it’s time to move all the tools you are using to maintain and monitor your site’s performance. To do this, you have to list all of them and check which ones you need to set up again or which ones need a new account. Using your existing account will still be the best option to track all the changes, especially in monitoring the growth brought by your brand change.
3. Update Your Social Media Accounts
Changing your handle and social media name is also a vital step. You need consistency across all your platforms online.
4. Update Your Existing Ad-Campaigns
If you are currently running an ad campaign, you should also update it with the latest creatives that contain the new logo and copy to reflect the new branding.
Conclusion
Change is never easy, but it can bring something good to brands. Rebranding will require a lot of tedious work, but the primary rule to remember is consistency with the new branding in all your assets and online presence. Once you’ve completed the steps, you’re ready to face the world in a new light.
If all these sound overwhelming for you, know that we are here to help you. We are a digital marketing agency in Calgary that can help you with your marketing strategy. We offer full-marketing services from website management, social media management, content creation, and more. Contact us today so we can start with your rebranding needs.