Revitalize Your Brand with These Five Budget-Friendly Ideas

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS

If you’re a small business owner, updating your brand identity might feel like a daunting task. But giving your brand a makeover doesn’t have to be a complicated process, and you don’t have to blow your entire marketing budget to do it.

Keeping your brand fresh

One of the most exciting things about starting a business is creating your brand identity. You hold brainstorming sessions and scribble things on whiteboards. Then you hire a professional to design your logo, website, and business cards. When it’s all done you pat yourself on the back for a job well done and go back to working your business.

Then you get busy. Time goes by, the excitement wears off, and your brand identity gets a bit dated. Before you know it your whole brand starts to look and feel a little stale.

If this sounds familiar to you, then it might be time for a brand refresh.

As an entrepreneur, it’s up to you to keep your brand’s personality fresh and relevant. But you don’t need to go through an extensive (and expensive) rebranding process to do it. Every so often you need to make sure your brand identity still feels fresh and is still in alignment with who you are today.

You must evolve

Think back to five or ten years ago. What was your personality like back then? What clothes were you wearing? What music or movies were you into? How did you look at the world?

I’m guessing you’ve changed a lot over the years. You’ve learned lessons. You see the world differently. You use different words. You’ve matured and evolved.

Just like your personality has evolved and matured over the years, so must your brand’s personality. If you want to stay relevant and competitive, your brand must continually evolve.

So how do you know if you’ve evolved? Here are a few questions you can ask yourself to see if you’re ready for a brand refresh:

• Have your core values changed?
• Do you have a better understanding of your customer?
• Are you still serving the right target market?
• Does your logo seem outdated?
• Does your copy still convey the right message?
• Are your photos a bit worn out by now?

You don’t need a branding agency

When you do a brand refresh, it doesn’t mean you have to start all over and change everything. It means you need to revisit a few pieces of your initial branding work and see if anything’s changed.

And you don’t have to hire a branding agency to do this work for you. You can do this yourself at little to no cost. You may outsource some design work, but even there you can use 99designs or Fiverr and get some great work done for a few hundred bucks.

Why you should revitalize your brand

Right now you might feel like your brand is a bit stale or outdated. You may not be reaching the right people or speaking their language. You may not be emotionally connecting with them. You might feel like your business is in a funk. Growth may be stalled.

When you breathe fresh new life into your brand, it starts to feel new and exciting again. You’ll start reaching the right people and communicating more clearly. You’ll get more repeat business and you’ll build brand loyalty. When you revitalize your brand things start moving and your business grows.

Ready to get started? Here are five budget-friendly ideas to revitalize your brand.

Idea #1: Revisit your core values and beliefs

Start by taking a look at yourself. Revisit your core values and beliefs. Have your values changed? Do you feel strongly about anything these days? You might need to update your brand manifesto. This is one of the most powerful ways to give your brand new life. After all, your core values and beliefs are what attracts people to your brand in the first place.

Look at ways you can share your manifesto. You could do a blog series and start sharing what you stand for. This will give your audience a feel for what you’re all about. They may have never seen or heard these things from you before. Show them what you stand for. This is a simple yet powerful way to freshen up your brand.

Idea #2: Revisit your target market

Are you still serving the right customer? Is your target market working for you? Is it too big or too small? Have you created a product or service specifically for them?

Look for opportunities to tweak your product or service to better serve your target market. It could be as simple as narrowing your services down from three or four options to one.

One example might be a running coach who typically coaches all runners. She switches to only coaching ultrarunners.

Another example might be a house painter. He decides to narrow his focus to only painting homes over 100 years old.

This kind of narrowing makes your brand unique and extremely useful in the eyes of your target market. You create a niche and you own it.

Creating a niche gives your audience a new view of who you are as a brand. It gets you excited about the work again and your business feels energized.

Idea #3: Update your logo

Completely changing your logo should be considered very carefully. You don’t want to make drastic changes to your logo every few years. Your logo is not your brand, but it’s seen everywhere your brand is seen, so it’s an integral part of your brand identity.

There have been a few high-profile logo-change fails from big brands like Kraft Foods and The Gap. They both ended up scrapping their big logo overhauls, opting for slightly updated versions instead. They went for simple modernization instead of a completely new logo.

Britain’s House of Parliament recently went through this process. They paid an agency £50,000 to change their logo, and it looks pretty much the same:

I like Parliament’s fresh new logo, but it’s not worth £50,000. A logo refresh might only cost you a few hundred bucks.

Decide if a logo refresh is needed. Is your logo feeling a bit old or outdated compared to logos of similar businesses? If so, just make sure you cover a few things:

• Try to maintain the integrity of the original logo as much as possible. You don’t need to start over.
• Make sure your new logo is versatile. You should have versions you can use horizontally, vertically, and square.
• Don’t use gradients. They are outdated and don’t print well.

Idea#4: Update your website messaging

One of the best ways to give your brand new life is to update your messaging. And it won’t cost you a cent if you can make the changes to your website yourself.

Start with the initial brand work you did way back when. Revisit your manifesto, your ideal client profile, your competition, your unique selling proposition, etc.*

Take pieces from your manifesto or USP and incorporate them into your website’s homepage or ‘about’ page. Having a better understanding of your customer will make you a more effective communicator. Updating your tagline can help communicate who you are today and how you’ve evolved.

Updating your messages will give your audience a fresh new look into who you are as a brand, and all you have to do is change a few words! 🙂

*If you haven’t done this work yet, I’d encourage you to do it now. This is the foundation on which your brand is built. A great place to start is with my free 21 Days to Build a Better Brand course.

Idea #5: Update your website images

When it comes to your brand identity images play a huge role. Are your current images in alignment with your brand’s personality? Are they consistent across all your marketing materials?Do you even have an image strategy? Updating images on your website can be a powerful way to freshen up the look and feel of your brand.

Are you currently using stock images on your website? This is okay sometimes, but photos of you, your products, or your place of business is a more meaningful approach. Remember, you’re trying to make emotional connections with people, so show them who you are. They want to see you. A photo of your smiling face alongside a statement of what you believe in is a powerful message. It says, “I’m a real person, I’m here for you, and here’s what I believe.”

Schedule a photo shoot with a professional photographer. Get some headshots. Get fresh shots of all your products. It may cost a few hundred bucks, but it’s worth the investment.

What have you done to revitalize your brand?

Have you updated your logo or website images? How did it go?

What else would you recommend to revitalize your brand?

Let us know in the comments below.