?What Is A Visual Identity Change??
A visual identity change is changing/tweaking anything visual you use to communicate your brand. So, your logo, fonts, images, colours.
The visuals you use are really important – they convey the values and attributes of your brand. They’re your identity and show how you’re different from (and better than!) your competitors. Because of this, it’s important to get a visual identity change right.
Step #1: Decide What You Want To Achieve
It may seem obvious, but the first thing to do before making big, likely expensive visual changes to your business is to decide what you want to achieve by doing so. After all, you want to avoid making any big branding blunders.
Maybe you’d like to:
❇️reposition yourself in a changing industry
❇️attract new clients/customers
❇️communicate an internal change in your business
⏩Once you’ve decided on your goals, you can start working on Step #2:
Step #2: Work Out What You’re Doing Wrong
Why are you currently not achieving your goals? What is it about your current visual identity that is communicating the wrong message about you as a business?
Maybe…
?you’re an entertainment brand for children but your site is too text-heavy
?you’re a professional services company and using an ‘informal’ font (think: Comic Sans) on your website
?you’re a photographer but your images are slowing down your website so much you’re losing traffic
Of course, finding the answer to the above questions may not be as glaringly obvious as all that, in which case you’re probably looking at conducting market research. You don’t have to have a huge budget to do this – a lot can be gained by looking at similar, successful brands and what they do and positioning yourself similarly in the market.
But, of course, there is a lot to be gained from paying for research. For example, you could conduct online surveys and get answers directly from potential customers. You could even partner with a similar organization to your own (one with a complementary – not competing – product/service) and split the cost of the research that way.
⏩Now you know the ‘what’, you need to figure out the ‘how’ in Step #3:
?Step #3: How To Change Your Visual Identity?
This is perhaps the most important part of this article. You can’t just change your font and ?BOOM? you’ve got a 60% increase in your website conversion rate.
No. You need to communicate this change. After all, you’ve not just investing time and money in this initiative just for it to go unnoticed! You should already know how your audience engages with you after doing your market research. Make sure you’re using the right platforms to communicate this change.
You can do this in many ways, depending on how your audience prefers to engage with you (on social media, on your website etc.). Remember that different types of media perform better on different platforms (text-heavy images on Instagram are nearly always doomed to fail, for example).
STEP ONE OF THE HOW: Make sure you educate your internal staff in the use of your new visuals. Nothing would be worse than inconsistency in the use of your brand-spanking new visuals.
STEP TWO OF THE HOW: Make a fuss and use this opportunity to do exactly what you came here to do, whether it be raising the profile of an internal change in your organization (such as The Huffington Post changed their name to HuffPost) or repositioning yourself in a market that’s evolved (such as Mailchimp’s 2018 daring rebrand).
⭐Whatever you do, do it with purpose and conviction. Trust in your business values and keep updated with what’s going on in your industry, and you’re always going to be on the path to success⭐
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