MBA1429 Why You Should or Shouldn’t Change Your Brand Name

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As you start to get traction, you might realize maybe your name is not the best one for your business, for your brand, for your product, for your audience. Should you change it? That's what we talk about in today's lesson. What are some of the reasons why you should change your business brand name and reasons you shouldn't? Changing your brand name is sort of a big deal in many cases. I'll be providing examples from real businesses that have recently tried to do this. Was it a good idea? Was it a bad idea? And how you can apply these lessons to your own business and decision to change or keep your brand name. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. What's in a name? Well, there's a lot in a name actually, especially in business, especially in online business. So let's begin with why you should change your business brand name. Well, if you're still getting started, if you're still getting traction, and you're not a well known household brand yet, changing your brand name may not be such a bad thing. It actually could be a good thing because it might serve your business with a better name. Sometimes people choose a name that might be confusing, and a new name will make things a lot easier. When you're new and you don't have a big slice of the market share, changing your name is going to ruffle very little feathers. There are still some ramifications. There are some things you're gonna have to deal with. Obviously you have to change your domain name, the actual URL for your business, change all your logos and all your marketing materials, change your website, all that kind of stuff. But if you feel the new name will serve you better and the future of your business, then it's probably a good idea to do it early rather than later. If you. Even if it's a modification to the name of your business or brand, like Facebook, when it first started, it was the Facebook and they dropped the the. Another reason why you may want to change your brand name is your product has changed, you've pivoted, you've learned a few lessons as you're getting started and you realize, hey, you know what? This is how we have to shift the business, shift what we do, and the brand or the name that you've had before doesn't fit what you do now. Another variation of when you should change your brand name is sometimes when you move into international markets, you want to change the name of your business or the brand name for that market. Only sometimes you'll find that maybe a name in a different language or in a different culture is hard to pronounce or means something different in that language and you want to avoid that. Some businesses operate in a different brand name in different markets. Another reason why you may want to change your brand name is that you've bought a new business or you they've changed the business altogether and that old brand name has maybe some baggage and you want to start anew, you want to kind of start all over and have a fresh start. A new name can do that for you and it can help you tremendously digitally online in terms of your reputation as well as word of mouth. Now what about shouldn't. When shouldn't you do this? Many people want to change their brand name, but it's not the best idea for their business. And we just talked about reputation online. But the funny thing about the Internet is your history and the way your business is being mentioned online is getting cataloged and there's so many backlinks, there's so many references, social media, people saying different things about your business, you know, referring it or recommending it or mentioning it, and all that stuff helps you get traffic, helps you get your business off its feet and get well known. If you change your name, you're gonna kind of neglect all that and throw that aside. Of course, if you change domain name as well, the URL of your business, your website, redirecting all those backlinks is going to be very hard. Also, your customers may really resonate with the name that you have right now. And when you change it, you might be upsetting some people. I believe about a year and a half ago, the email marketing system Convertkit was looking to change its name. They actually did change their name, but they reverted back to Convertkit. I'm sure you can read about it on their blog. But they decided to change their name to a one word brand name. They also changed their logo in this instance. But in the change, a lot of their customers are upset and they felt like maybe the name doesn't really match what they do at the end. The founder, Nathan Barry decided to go back to Convertkit after a few weeks and say, hey, we made a mistake here. We're going to stick with the name Convertkit but we'll keep the logo. They change the logo for a reason and they'll keep the logo. Now I actually thought that was a quite courageous move by Nathan Barry to kind of say, hey, we made a mistake and let's move things back to Convertkit. It doesn't hurt to listen to your audience and at the same time, it takes a lot of courage for him to realize maybe it wasn't the best move. Instead of digging my heels and saying, no, I'm right and they're wrong, he went back to the original brand name. Now I was also surprised because Convertkit was a well established business at the time, making maybe $10 million a year with tons of, you know, information out there, backlinks, logos, you, success stories, testimonials, mentions on social with the name Convertkit. So when they wanted to change their name or when they did change their name, they're really gonna change a lot of things, a lot of work. So it's definitely a big endeavor. If you're looking to do this after You've been established for some time. I mentioned before about when changing your website, changing your URL. This could be a really big deal if you have an established business. Let's say, for example, your website gets a million visitors a month. There are people that would, you know, beg and cry and kill for that kind of traffic. Right now, even though you're doing a redirect and all that kind of stuff, you're going to lose some traffic because you're changing the domain. People are not used to going to that domain. Yeah, they'll Google it and they'll find you and it'll be redirected, but there will be a drop and it is a risk. So is it really imperative to change your name? Does it really make that much of a difference? You need to ask these questions before you. You take that gamble. You also have to remember that when you change your business name, you have to change all the assets you have out there on the Internet. Your social media handles, your Twitter account, your Facebook account, your Instagram, every single thing you have out there. Any kind of reviews you have out there, review systems on Capterra or G2, anything in the past that you've had on any website, like you sponsored an event or you're on a podcast, or, you guessed it, on a video show. You'd have to reach out to every single person and say, hey, can you do me a favor and change the link, change the name, change the logo. Now, obviously you want that traffic going to your site, and I know that the redirect would do that. But the backlink is important. The branding is important. Some people don't click on links. They just read. They say, oh, I see, it's, you know, this brand name dot com, and it's just memory and recognition and awareness. Many businesses spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year on marketing. Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, YouTube ads. And it's all just so we can get awareness, so people can understand what our brand is, know what we're talking about. So they haven't seen our logo or our business brand name before.

They.

They're aware of it. All that is really kind of wasted when you change your name because now you have to reestablish that all over again. So I'm not saying that if you have already invested never to change your name. Changing your name is a big endeavor. It's something that you're gonna have to talk it over and think about if you have to do it. If you want to do it, you can definitely do it. But just understand the cost you are paying.

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To wrap up today's lesson, I really encourage you to think long and hard. When I say long and hard, I mean give it a month before you decide to change your business brand name. If you're new and you're fresh and you know you're really unknown in the marketplace, then it's less of a risk and it's less of a big decision. But if you've been around for a while and you have a thriving customer base, then please consider the things that I mentioned today. Also understand your name doesn't always have to be perfect. People remember the product, the experience. The name is just a representative of what you actually do. I don't buy Apple products because I like the name Apple. It's because they make great products. Same thing with your favorite restaurant or your favorite grocery store. Your product really is your brand. What people say about it is really your brand. Your name is just the signal to tell people how to find that product. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. Whatever you use to listen to podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, Apple Podcasts, Overcast. We're on them all. Hit subscribe right now so when the next episode is available, it's ready on your device. Before I go on, I'll leave you with this. If you do change the name of your business, always think of the best name possible. Don't worry about the domain too much. Say, for example, you want to build an app to help you choose out flowers for your friends and family and the best name you can think of. The best name for your app is Flower Gift. Let's say it's called flower gift and flower gift.com is not available. That's okay, you can have some other variation. Flower giftapp.com My flower gift. You'll still be found on Google. It'll be easy to remember to get to the URL, choose the name, then worry about the domain next. And then if your flower app takes off, you can always try to buy that domain, that shorter domain, from somebody else. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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