Should You Rebrand Your Skincare Business?
Selling your skincare products online means competing with millions of other businesses vying for your customers’ attention. Therefore, branding means everything to your business. Your skincare line’s visual branding is what sets your company apart from its competitors and makes it memorable in your customers’ minds.
Think about any successful skincare or cosmetics brand – L’Oreal, Charlotte Tilbury, Estée Lauder – and what comes to mind? Their brands! These products are instantly recognizable by their look, their logo, and their reputation.
These brands have spent years developing their distinctive images, but of course, these are the bigger fish in the sea. What about the smaller skincare brands?
Beauty Bakerie, Juvia’s Place, U Beauty, and Function of Beauty all started as indie beauty brands and continue to be recognized as such — even though some of these have garnered a massive following of over a million followers on social media platforms.
All thanks to their amazing products and clever branding strategies, these brands were able to make a place for themselves in an overly saturated market and become household names in just a few years.
Trying to create a skincare business from scratch is difficult. You need to develop a range of products that are functional and deliver results at a price point that your customers will appreciate.
You also need to consider how your product fits into the current market and whether you can naturally grow your customer base by reaching out to new demographics. With all this on your plate, it is okay to falter when you start out. But it isn’t a sustainable strategy to continue making mistakes when scaling!
That’s why so many brands choose to rebrand themselves when they are ready to reach a bigger market. A rebranding can help you find a new audience or refocus your current audience, as well as help you build more brand recognition over time. When you rebrand, think of it as an investment in your business that will pay off in increased product sales!
Having said that, rebranding isn’t always the solution. It isn’t a magic potion that can solve all your company’s issues. Since it can be tricky to get it right, here is everything you need to know about rebranding your skincare company.
And if you already know you need to rebrand your skincare or cosmetics business, you’re in the right place! Check out our portfolio of past client branding projects here, and click here to schedule a call with our creative director about your skincare branding project.
When Rebranding Works
You Want to Reposition Your Skincare Brand
Repositioning is the process of redefining what your brand represents so that it’s consistent with your core values and identity. Essentially, it’s about changing the way potential customers see you.
When you reposition your skincare, beauty, or cosmetics brand, you redefining who you are in the market so the right customers buy from you (and not from the competition).
The goal is to reposition your business in a way that doesn’t sacrifice what makes your business unique and different from everyone else in the market, and a new visual brand can help you stand out right away.
When you reposition your company in the market, it is important that your new branding (colors, logo, website, packaging design, etc.) not only addresses the issues with your current positioning but also takes into consideration how your industry works and what goals you want to achieve.
If you are rebranding to reposition your skincare company, here are a few things to consider:
- What is your current focus?
- Who is your new ideal customer?
- How does this positioning differ from what is currently being offered?
These should be the basis of your successful repositioning strategy. Rebranding for no reason other than that it “sounds better” or “looks nicer” will ultimately do nothing for your business, and it may even hurt it.
You Are Making Structural Changes in the Company
When you start out as a wellness entrepreneur, you are likely making a lot of your company’s decisions on your own. But as you hire employees and bring in outside investors, you will start having to make larger-scale decisions with the input of other people.
If other people are involved in your skincare business, they might want to do things their way.
For example, if you are bringing in a new CEO or leader who has a new vision for the company, they might want to change the way the brand is being seen in the market. This would be an ideal time to rebrand your cosmetic or skincare company to align with the new management’s vision.
You Want Your Company’s Image to Align with Your Product Offerings
Branding can encompass so many things, such as the name and logo of your company, the design of your website, and even the packaging of your skincare products. It all plays a role in deciding whether your customers will trust you with their skin and beauty regimens!
That’s why it is important to make sure that your branding aligns with the products you offer. If you decide to expand into new product lines that aren’t quite related to what you currently offer (for example, you want to start selling a haircare product as well), you will need to make sure that your branding is cohesive enough to sell thus new product line under your same brand name.
Your current customers have certain expectations when they hear about a new product from your brand, and the best way to maintain their trust is to keep a consistent brand across all your company’s offerings.
You are Venturing Into a New Market
Maybe you are moving from one demographic to another, or you are discontinuing your current product line and entering a completely new product category altogether.
Perhaps your original skincare branding was too narrow and targeted a specific niche market, or maybe your company missed out on opportunities to sell additional products to other target markets because you weren’t well-known in these other markets.
A well-thought-out rebranding can help your new customers identify with your company and products. For instance, if you want to move from selling an anti-aging cream for millennials to custom-made skincare products, then a rebranding strategy can be instrumental in your success.
Your Skincare Company No Longer Identifies as a Startup
Every brand starts off small. You spend months and months building up your skincare or beauty brand. You invest in cosmetic packaging that looks great; you believe that your logo looks amazing; everything in your brand communication is designed to work for you.
But once you are out of the startup phase and you want more people to take you more seriously, your current collateral may not align with this new version of your brand. In that case, rebranding can help give your brand a new look and feel, which can deliver a more professional and polished vibe to your skincare and cosmetics company.
Your Company is Too Similar to Others in the Market
Rebranding may be a great idea if your competition has cornered the market or if you feel that your skincare packaging is too similar to others.
Startup skincare brands often feel tempted to take inspiration from other brands and incorporate elements that have worked for others. But this could confuse customers into buying from a brand that’s similar to yours and hurt your sales. In this case, rebranding could come in handy.
Another reason to consider rebranding is if the market trends have changed drastically since you started. If there is suddenly an over-saturation of products in the market that are similar to yours, then it might be time for a rebrand so you can stand out and sell more skincare and beauty products.
You Want to Announce Packaging, Design, Cultural, or Philosophical Changes
The goal of rebranding is to “refresh” the perception of a brand while also enhancing its overall presentation.
The idea behind successful rebranding is that even if you repackage and relaunch your product with a new look and feel, people will be drawn back into your skincare products – even if they have been using the old ones for years.
So if you are changing your core values or adding something extra to your company’s existing ethos, rebranding can work for you.
When You Shouldn’t Rebrand Your Skincare Company
More and more skincare companies are going through a metamorphosis, and they are discovering that sometimes rebranding their company is the best way to go.
If you have been thinking of updating your branding, here’s what you need to know before embarking on this journey:
- Rebranding won’t miraculously fix your reputation. If you are experiencing fundamental problems with your products or services, rebranding your company won’t make your customers forget about the bad experience.
- You can’t clean up a poor reputation via rebranding. You will have to address the issues that caused the poor reputation in the first place for your rebranding activity to be a success.
- Rebranding can’t clear your customer service complaint box. If you carry the same service issues into the rebranded company, your rebranding efforts will fail.
Remember that planning is everything. During the planning stage, you should think about everything from your logo to your slogan and even the kind of products you will be offering after rebranding your skincare company.
The smaller details and finer print need to be finalized before the relaunch because that’s the only time when you can still make changes if needed.
Moreover, it doesn’t matter how creative you are – if you don’t have a solid strategy for your rebranding efforts, then it is better not to do it at all. The whole concept of rebranding is to help your business grow and make it more profitable. Without a clear marketing strategy in place, rebranding may actually hurt your skincare company more than help it out.
At Aventive Studio, we help skincare, beauty, and wellness brands sell more products with memorable and strategic branding. Rebranding is one of our specialties! If you are struggling to move forward and considering a rebrand, get in touch with our branding experts to discuss your project.