Your brand is your business identity. Yet, it would be unfair to pretend that your business identity remains the same once you outgrow your local market. Indeed, expansion brings a lot of new challenges and opportunities, which can affect your branding image and strategy. Should a business retain the same branded look and feel as it moves to the next growth chapter? Experts recommend repositioning the business on the broader market for better purposes. Here is why it makes sense to rebrand yourself as you try to level up your business.
By Team Savant
Image: Balázs Kétyi
You Fail At First To Reach A New Market
Business growth is not without challenges and issues. It is not uncommon for small businesses to face obstacles as they reach out to new markets. Perhaps, you approached a foreign market with the hope of attracting a new audience group, only to discover too late that the local audience is not interested in your services or products. As a result, you may face a mountain of international invoices that you are not able to pay. Unfortunately, it can not only affect your finances but also your brand. The negative image sticks. You become the brand that collapsed through international expansion. That's precisely why services such as international debt recovery exist to ensure that those mishaps do not cause a business collapse. Needless to say, you will need to reinvent yourself to approach the same international market in the future. Yet, failure doesn't mean the business should give up. More often than not, entrepreneurs consider failures as an opportunity to learn something new, helping them reshape their branding strategy.
You Become A Small Player In A Big Market
A small business may be a big player in its small market. But as soon as you approach a bigger, broader market, you lose your status. You essentially become a much smaller fish in a much bigger pond, as the proverbial wisdom likes to remind us. There is absolutely nothing wrong with joining the big pond and losing the advantage you had as a big player. Indeed, small achievements in a small regional or national market tend to be stretched out of proportion because there is no comparison. More importantly, there is also no room for growth. Reaching out to a new market gives you room to expand your business. As you do, you will learn two things:
Your communication and branding strategies will need to change for you to get noticed. In the big fish small pond scenario, every activity creates significant ripples that nobody can miss. When you're in a bigger market, you need to make more noise to gain attention.
Things that were once considered beneficial in a small pond may not have the same effect in a big pond. Survival means adapting to your situation, and it can also force you to transform your image and priorities to be relevant to your new audience.
In conclusion, transforming your brand is part of your journey to appeal to a broader audience. Branding experts continue to mention Steve Jobs's remarkable revival of Apple in the last 90s, as he transformed a then dying company into an innovative, sleek, and creative brand. Brand refocus is essential to business growth, as even if you don't change markets, your audience will change their minds and needs.