MBA1509 Things to Consider Before You Change Your Brand Name

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Hey O welcome to the $100 RMBA show a better Business with each episode with our daily 10 minute business lessons for World. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, the Complete Business training and community online and in today's episode you will learn Things to consider before changing your brand name Sometimes in your business you change. You pivot. Many of you are pivoting in your business right now because of COVID 19 and because of this, you're considering changing the name of your brand. Your business. Maybe another name would lend itself better to your new direction. But changing your brand name has consequences. There are things you need consider before you make this decision. I'm going to give you some questions to ask yourself before you actually make this decision. To find out, do you actually really need to do this or is your current brand name going to be okay? Also, we're going to talk about things you're going to need to look out for. You're going to need to consider if you decide to change your brand name, how will affect your traffic, your sales, your awareness, your word of mouth, all that stuff. Lots to cover. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. I want to begin today's lesson by saying if you're just getting started, if you're pre launch phase and your brand really hasn't been established yet, or you haven't trading on that brand name for a while, then this really is not an episode you really need to consider because there are no real sacrifices or things to look out for because really haven't been established yet. Your brand name hasn't been out there yet, it really hasn't been indexed by search engines, A change here really is not going to make a big difference. Um, I will say though, even if you decide to do this after you launch or pre launch, there is Work involved. There's a lot of things you're gonna need to change in your product itself, even just visually, the ui, your website, logos, things like that. So there is work involved, but just letting you know, if you haven't actually opened for business, this is not make or break and this is less of a major decision for you. Now. If you have traded on this name, on this brand name, you've sold product, you've been around for a while, let's say a year or, and you need to pivot and you're thinking about changing your name, changing your business name, your brand name is no little thing, especially the name. Some people change logos or branding and that's okay. Even that's a big change and a bit of work. But the actual name of your business, there's lots to do and lots to consider. So let's get into it. First of all, I'd like you to avoid this change as much as you can, if it's possible. The first question I want to ask you is what's the worst that's going to happen if you do not change your brand name and list the things that will happen, list the things that are possible. Will people be confused? Will people feel like there's no brand product alignment? The reason why I'm asking you to make this list is because some of us are just making this change because we prefer, we prefer one name over the other. We might think one name doesn't sound as nice or look as nice as one other, another brand name or the current brand name. And we decided to make this change. Some people want to change their brand name purely on the fact that a domain name, like a actual URL became available for them to buy and they wanted to switch it over to this really cool URL, like a one word URL. These are not valid reasons, okay? Because there's a lot that got invested when you built your business and started trading on that name. Lots of things will be affected. Let's talk about some of them. Any reviews that are online, any videos are created with, with that name, any backlinks, any mentions, any articles, any mentions in any kind of publication, your own publications, your own blog, your own website, your own materials, your own PDFs, your own mentions on other podcasts, anytime you spoke about your business or mentioned it or written about it, it's there on the web. And you're going to have to reprogram everybody to understand that your business, what you're offering, is totally new. Now this is a rebrand, not starting a new business you're talking about, hey, I'm offering kind of the same stuff in a different way. Here's a new brand name. The other thing you have to consider is that, hey, you have customers that like you, that like your brand, that like your business and are recommending you based on your current name. Um, and this might ruffle some feathers from your current paying customers, people that like you, people that actually are supporting you right now. I know Nathan Barry at ConvertKit, a CRM, you know, email marketing software. He wrote about this. They actually didn't change the name. They actually changed the logo and were about to change the name, and there was a little bit of an uproar. You know, a lot of people were not happy about it, and they actually decided to keep the ConvertKit name and, you know, go with the new logo. So they changed the logo, but they didn't change the name. They were about to, but, you know, and actually, I think they did change the name for a couple weeks, but because of the feedback, because of the uproar, I think they thought maybe they made a mistake here. And that was probably a really good move by Nathan. And it took a lot of courage and a lot of discipline to be able to listen to customers and make sure they stick with ConvertKit. So there's a lot to consider here. Okay? Now, as you can see, I'm trying to paint this picture that, hey, if you don't have to change the name, do not do it. You need to list, what are the benefits? What are you actually going to make in terms of profits, dollar bills and customers if you change the name? Why is this so important? Maybe you can keep the name and just deliver a new product, a new service in a new way. Now, one suggestion I would make is, say, for example, you're going to be releasing something new in your business. There's nothing wrong with creating a new name or a new product under your brand name. So say, for example, you created an app that allows you to post or schedule posts for Facebook, okay? And the name of your app was Social Blaster, okay? Social Blaster. Now, you might not like the name. You might think, hey, maybe I want to change it up, because now I'm going to go into email. And it's not just social. There's nothing wrong with having Social Blaster have a product under it called Email Blaster. And you find Email Blaster via Social Blaster's website. And it's just a product under that brand name. People will find it, they can search for it, all that kind of stuff. So having sub products under a brand name can help avoid this because you're going to generate the traffic from the original brand name. You're going to generate all these visitors and word of mouth and all the stuff we talked about that people have mentioned in the past, and they'll lead you to that new product on that website because it's a sub product. The other thing you need to consider is trademarking. Now if you haven't trademarked your brand, you should. It is not that expensive. You can get a business lawyer and it can cost, you know, a few hundred dollars, but it's good to trademark your brands. Now, if you trademark a brand and then you change it, you're going to trademark it again. So keep in mind, if you're changing brand names, make sure it's trademarked. Now the other thing is that if you're going to change brands, you're going to remove your old brand and start with a new name. This is going to require you acquiring a whole lot of assets, things like a domain name, like a URL, like emailblaster.com, right? You're gonna have to create new email addresses based on that domain. So you're gonna have to register for email addresses. You're gonna have to secure social handles, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, you name it. Using that brand name, you're gonna have to create YouTube channels. You get the point. There's a lot of things you're gonna have to do to secure that name. Now having a sub product under your original brand name doesn't require you to do that because you can trade on the brand name and you can, you know, talk about these new products through those channels, through those Twitter handles, through your YouTube channel, via your website. Now, having said this, I'm not saying changing your brand name is impossible and it's not doable. There's a lot of businesses that have done it before and done it successfully. It does have a cost. So everything has a cost. Just keep that in mind. If you are really die hard and you're determined to change your brand name, understand there's a lot of time, there's a lot of money involved here, there's a lot of effort. If you're willing to do that and you're happy with that trade off and you've, you know exactly what that is, you've listed all the things you're gonna have to do and the money that needs to be invested and the time needs invested and you're happy with that trade off, that's fine. But you need to know what you're getting into. You need to list these things down. You need to understand what you are purchasing by making this trade. You know, you have to understand that this is a business transaction within yourself. You know, I'm going to move to a different brand. I'm changing the name of the brand of our business. What's the costs involved? Time, money, energy. Is that worth the cost of changing? If so, go for it. If it's not worth it and you're just making an emotional decision to change the brand name because you think it's cool or fun or whatever it is, then that's not the best business decision. You know you're not making the best transaction for your business.

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Changing your brand name is a big deal. I'm not somebody to say, hey, you can change it, it's not going to cost you anything. It's not a big deal. Only if you're pre launch, only if it's not out there, only if you haven't traded on that name before. Is this not a big deal? But it is. I believe it is a big deal. I think there's a lot to consider. I think that if you can avoid it, if you can sidestep it, it would be more advantageous for your business. You can focus on innovation and growth in sales and marketing rather than this. This is actually a big endeavor, a big project. Always try to find what is the minimum amount of effort I can do or minimum amount of work I have to do in my business to get the most benefit. Okay. You have to understand that everything has a cost and the most expensive thing is your time. And this is going to take a lot of time. If you decide to do that, if it is worth the time, it is worth the money and the energy, then go for it. You know, you need to make that evaluation, and you need to know what you're getting into. So make sure you evaluate your list and you write down the actual cost in terms of hours, in terms of dollars, in terms of effort. Okay, Is this a 10 effort? Is this a 1 effort? Okay. Have some sort of scale so you can actually understand what you're getting into and then also communicate it to your team. Hey, we're doing this. We're changing our brand name because xyz. And you have to sell it to them to make sure that they're on board, too. I hope that helps and hope you enjoyed today's episode. Make sure you hit subscribe right now so you don't miss a beat every time. We publish a new episode every day. It's available right on your device. Also, by hitting subscribe, you get access to all, all our archive episodes, over 1500 episodes in our archives. Hit subscribe right now. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Business is about choices, and every choice will make a difference, whether it's a big difference or a small difference. And that's the thing I love about business, is that we're constantly making choices. We're constantly getting a chance to improve our business. There are opportunities. There are opportunities. There are opportunities. So make sure when you're given an opportunity, which is a choice, that you weigh out the pros and cons. You weigh out what you're getting into so you know that you're moving towards, you know, improvement rather than shooting yourself in the foot. Okay, thank you so much for listening, and I'll check in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

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