Sometimes, businesses lose their way and can no longer stay true to their original values. Other times, businesses fail and find it hard to appeal to their target audience and gain new customers.
Brand repositioning is a method of redefining a brand’s identity in order to appeal more to their customers.
Various companies have resorted to brand repositioning when their companies needed a fresh start. An example is Spotify, a company that refocused from providing free music with ads to creating content and original playlists. This change helped to revitalize the brand and sales are now booming.
In this article, we shall discuss what brand repositioning is, and why it is essential for the success of your business.
What Is Brand Repositioning?
Brand repositioning is a strategy brands employ to change the look and feel of their brand as part of an effort to better appeal to their target audience. Companies can choose to do this on their own, or with the help of specialist agencies.
Brand repositioning aims to change the way consumers view a company. It makes changes affecting product, price, place and promotion of the brand. It could involve anything from changing the logo of brand, to changing the tagline or creating an entirely new product.
There are several reasons why brands carry out repositioning, and we shall soon discuss some of them. It is important to note that the common end goal of all these reasons is that they all hope to improve customer’s perception of a brand, thereby increasing sales.
Some brands that have repositioned in their history include:
- Taco Bell – that changed from a cheap taco place to a restaurant with exciting interior designs and new exciting items on the menu.
- Dunkin’ Donuts – started offering a range of original drinks and wraps and sandwiches, apart from donuts.
- Starbucks – Starbucks evolved from providing bad quality overly expensive coffee to offering coffee that was worth its price.
- Slack – added three new features that improved user experience and gave it a competitive edge.
- Gucci – that started appealing to a younger audience while staying true to its Italian heritage.
Reasons For Brand Repositioning
Some of the reasons why brands carry out a repositioning include:
- They are experiencing a reduction in sales performances, and they need to find a solution.
- When brands need to search for a new target audience, maybe because their old target audience have grown up and no longer use their products.
- When changes in the market occur, such as changes in government policy or technology, and they need to adapt.
- Brands are evolving and creating new products and services that they need to market.
- The company is making major changes that require a new feel.
- New competition emerges, or old competition starts to have an edge over the brand.
Is Repositioning The Same As Rebranding?
Repositioning has to deal with the changing of the way a brand is viewed by the general public. It is not just a series of minor adjustments. Rather, it involves improvements and carefully calculated changes that will drive the company to perform better in the market.
The bottom line of repositioning a brand is that the brand still retains its identity at the end of the process.
Rebranding on the other hand is a complete overhaul of a company’s image. Companies usually resort to rebranding after complete failure of the brand or after a scandal occurs.
While rebranding, a company changes everything related to the brand, such as its name, logo, tagline and font style. It is a fresh start for the company that hopes to convey a completely different message to the public. A good example of a rebranding is Facebook that changed its name to Meta.
Repositioning is more of ‘updating’ a brand, while rebranding is a reinvention of the brand.
Why Is Repositioning Essential For The Success Of Your Business?
Now that we know what it means to reposition your business and some of the reasons to reposition, let us discuss some of the benefits of repositioning. They are:
It Makes Your Company Stand Out Among The Competition
When there are a lot of companies that provide the same services as yours, all of them can blend in and become hard to differentiate. Repositioning is a good way to deal with this problem.
With repositioning, you go to the drawing board and think up new ways to revitalize your brand and refresh its image in the minds of consumers.
Doing this will remind them of what exactly is special about your brand, and give you a better competitive edge.
It Helps You To Refocus On Your Target Audience
With repositioning, you re-assess your target audience, and try to meet their needs. When you do this, you get to newly connect with your audience and adapt to their evolving needs.
Repositioning can also be a way to widen your target audience and appeal to a brand new set of people.
It Revitalizes Your Brand
When you make some changes to the image of your brand, it gives it an exciting new perspective.
The public see these changes and it awakens a new interest in them. They want to know what your brand is about and what it does.
These modifications also drive employees and company members to improve the quality of their performances, and this revitalizes the brand as a whole.
It Drives Better Sales
The ultimate goal of every repositioning process is to increase the sales performance of a company.
Better appealing to your target audience, increasing your competitive edge and revitalizing your brand all lead to an increase in the consumption of your goods and services.
How Does Brand Repositioning Work
Three basic principles that brand repositioning operates on are Listening, Delivering and Convincing. These principles work together, and need to be implemented hand-in-hand for the duration of the process.
Basically you listen to your audience and what their needs are, then you try to deliver the solutions to these needs, and you convince your consumers with your products.
The basic steps to follow while repositioning include:
- First, you need to assess the current position of your brand, and try to find the root problems.
- After doing that, the next step is to set new goals and objectives that you hope to achieve with the repositioning.
- Then, you need to decide on which brand repositioning strategy to implement to best achieve your goals.
- After choosing a repositioning strategy, the next step is to implement these changes and launch the new products.
- The next step would be to observe the reaction of consumers to these changes.
- Finally, you analyze your results and measure the performance of the implemented changes. This would help you to decide on whether or not to keep the new image.
Conclusion
Brand repositioning is a method of changing the position of a brand in the marketplace. It can involve changes to the brand logo, tagline or even their positioning statement.
It has helped brands such as Taco Bell and Slack to revitalize their business, and it is a worthy tool for any successful business.
One of the benefits your brand can gain from repositioning is a bigger competitive edge, which will ultimately lead to a better sales performance.
FAQs
— How do I decide which repositioning strategy to implement?
Some of the repositioning strategies are image and intangible repositioning. To decide which one is best for your brand, you need to study all the strategies and decide how best they will solve your brand’s existing problems.
— Do I have to reposition my brand by myself?
If you do not wish to carry out the process yourself, there are specialists that you can hire to do it. You can also take some courses that teach you how best to carry out brand repositioning and revitalize your brand.
— Is brand repositioning expensive?
Yes, repositioning your brand can be expensive. This is due to the cost of making the required changes and promoting them. If carried out successfully though, it will increase sales and make up for the money spent.
