Rebranding Your Business: 3 Costs and How to Navigate Them

In today’s business environment, brand is everything. A brand isn’t only the quality of your product –– it’s a lifestyle. Your brand defines how you treat your employees, your relationship with the environment, the quality of your customer service, and who you want to sell your product to. Building a brand and maintaining it is one of the most difficult aspects of owning a small business.

Brands aren’t static though. They need regular updates to stay abreast of changing consumer tastes and cultural shifts. Rebranding your business is critical for growth and for keeping existing customers happy. Rebranding isn’t as simple as changing the company logo though; a successful rebrand can require shifting the company’s mission and overhauling its relationship with the customers. 

That kind of change doesn’t come cheap though. Keep reading to learn how much a rebrand can cost, whether it’s the right course of action for your business, and how LendThrive can help you pay for it if a rebrand is right for you.

We are going to share when and how to expand a small business to ensure you pave a path for success. Keep reading to evaluate if your business is ready for growth.

How Much Does Rebranding Cost?

Before getting into dollar amounts, consider how extensive the rebrand will be. Is it just an update of the marketing materials with new graphics and a flashier website or is it about attracting a whole new segment of customers? If it’s the latter, it won’t be just printing out new business cards and adding photos to the company homepage; there’s extensive market research needed to understand these new customers and their preferences.

If you’re thinking about rebranding your business, start by narrowing down the workload to focus on the changes that’ll improve your bottom line.

A Brand Refresh – Minor Changes

Less of a rebrand and more of an update, brand makeovers should happen every few years to keep the business from getting stale. Fortunately, it won’t require any research; the business knows its customers and isn’t attempting to branch out to secure new ones. 

Most changes are cosmetic and designed to let the customer know the business cares enough about them to invest some time and money into updating the brand. Depending on the size of the company, the rebranding costs could be anywhere between $50,000 and $100,000.

Rebooting Your Brand – Moderate Changes

Nestled between a refresh and an overhaul is rebooting your brand. You already have a successful business, but it’s not generating much buzz. Rebooting involves everything from a refresh coupled with a change in overall strategy.

Management might choose to redesign the marketing architecture, building out the website to focus on younger customers who demand a superb online experience. A moderately-sized rebranding costs between $100,000 and $250,000.

Complete Brand Overhaul – Reorienting Business

This level of rebranding is on par with starting a new business. Research should take a fresh look at customers and hold focus groups with them to learn how stakeholders feel about the company. 

The website might need a redesign to better address any customer concerns. An extensive rebrand like this doesn’t come cheap, anywhere between $250,000 to $500,000 or more.

Rebranding Checklist for Small Businesses

A rebrand should not be taken lightly; if you’re not careful, there’s a very real chance of losing existing customers while not garnering many new ones. At each step in the process, ask yourself how these actions will benefit the business. 

Define Your Goals

Rebranding for the sake of rebranding is pointlessly expensive, so it’s important to define what you hope to accomplish with the rebrand. Are there new competitors entering the market? Is it to stimulate growth? Are you changing the mission of the business and offering a completely different service? Answering these questions will determine the direction and scope of the rebrand.

Create a Vision for the Future

If you want to retain your current customers, they need to understand the reason for the rebrand. As an example, if a soft drink company changed the look of its label, some consumers might wonder if they’re altering the recipe or starting a new marketing campaign. They would be uncomfortable with the former and probably apathetic towards the latter. 

Conversely, in October 2021, Facebook changed its name to Meta, reflecting a complete overhaul of the company and a new focus on an integrated social media experience that included Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. While consumers can be apprehensive about their favorite products changing, presenting a brand new vision of the future generates excitement that leads to growth.

Get To Know Your Customers Before Rebranding a Business

A market analysis should be mandatory before any rebranding. Understanding both your current customers and the market segment you hope to appeal to is critical to a successful rebrand. Knowing your competition and the factors that allowed them to flourish will help you grow your market share with the rebrand.

Go All In With Your Rebrand

Companies often make the mistake of changing only a few aspects of their marketing materials during a rebrand –– a new logo, a different font, etc. Customers hate these half-baked rebrands because they are confusing and look like a desperate marketing ploy. If you’re going to rebrand, you’ll need to redesign all of your marketing materials to introduce a cohesive brand.

Financing the Rebrand With LendThrive

Taking your business in a new direction is never easy and costs can add up quickly. Completely revamping your marketing materials will set you back several thousand dollars, and that’s without the market research needed to ensure that revamp is effective.

To make the most of a rebrand and ensure long-term growth, you’ll likely need to secure some form of financing. LendThrive can provide you with a fixed rate business loan of up to $150,000. LendThrive is dedicated to helping small businesses grow, which often includes rebranding.

To see how LendThrive can help finance the growth of your small business, check out the loan calculator. Apply today and you can be approved in as little as 24 hours!