The Pros and Cons of Rebranding

Changing your brand’s name can be a great move or a turn into a disaster. In any case, it’s a risky endeavor. I would like to share the pros and cons of rebranding, after having moved  Ben-Lang.com to EpicLaunch.com, which was a mix of challenge, excitement and frustration.

For me, rebranding meant essentially, a new name, purpose, look and feel for my blog.

New name

Firstly, coming up with a new name was challenging. I was looking for a name that had to with entrepreneurship, was catchy and short. All the obvious good names that I found were taken. With the help of some friends, we finally came up with “EpicLaunch.”

New purpose

In order to be more successful I decided that I had to redefine the purpose of the blog. Rebranding gave me that opportunity. EpicLaunch wouldn’t be a random mix of posts, instead articles on online businesses, entrepreneurship and social media geared towards young entrepreneurs.

Look and feel

Logically, to add to the excitement of the transformation I decided to improve the look and feel. I decided against changing the principal design and instead slightly improved it with new features.

Transferring domain

Moving the blog itself to the new domain name was an absolute nightmare. Day after day, I went through different complex tutorials and none of them seemed to work. After ten’s of hours put into this, with generous help I finally succeeded in moving the blog to the new domain. After that it was only a matter of repromoting the blog, and changing the name in every necessary place.

The bottom line

So was it worth it? After so much time and frustration? Well so far I could tell you that in my case it has been. EpicLaunch has grown, there are now much more readers joining every day, there’s a dedicated, hardworking team of regular contributors, people love the new brand, and it’s now in good position to expand.

Even though I have to start all over with my Pagerank, Alexa, Compete rank, incoming links, I know that it will pay off in the future.

Remember rebranding your business is not a process that you want to go through unless you have a really good reason. I recommend that you invest a lot of thinking initially about your brand and name in order to avoid having to fix it later on.

Here are the main pros and cons of rebranding:

Pros of Rebranding

Fitting Brand

A business evolves and sometimes ends up being very different than the initial idea or brand. If that’s the case and the initial name has become irrelevant, rebranding is the right move. In my case, I felt that I had to change my blog from a personal name to a general brand in order to include all of the guest writers that were joining.

Relaunch

Changing your brand is exciting and energizing. In some way it’s a bit like entirely relaunching your business. If you convey that message to your customers or readers, they will also be excited. Excitement is fuel for a business.

Cons of Rebranding

Loss and Confusion

Rebranding could result in a loss of customers or visitors due to confusion and other factors. If the transfer is no’t done correctly no one will understand what happened and drop your old and new brand at the same time. It happens all the time, even to huge corporations such as Tropicana, Capital One, Pepsi, and AOL. It’s important to keep in mind what your customers will think of the new brand. If you don’t, you could make the same mistake as these 10 companies.

Complicated Process

Changing the brand could be very complicated, legally, technically and logistically. It must be done in a way that everyone understands what’s happening.

If you’re ever interested in rebranding and need advice please feel free to ask.