No matter the industry you’re in, it’s likely there will come a time when you need to rebrand. Rethinking your brand can alleviate many issues and can differentiate you from a competitor, giving you more business and better profits.

Today’s market can often be saturated with similar businesses. It’s imperative that you differentiate yourself from other companies with a similar product or mission. Whether you’re selling cell phones, recruiting students to your university or trying to raise money for a worthy cause, you can bet that there’s another organization out there that’s similar.

So what can you do to stand out in your market?

You can differentiate your BRAND.

First, you must remember that your brand is a complex combination of things, including your logo and “look,” your mission statement, your employee morale and much more. The key to differentiating is looking at all of those pieces and figuring out how to make one – or more than one – stand out.  

How do the best brands do this? They focus on one thing—only one.  It’s the organizing principle or idea behind the brand.  What’s the one thing that makes your brand unique?  Organizations often struggle to define this clearly.  Few do it well.  Da Vinci knew this centuries before the notion of brand even existed. In his words,  “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

For instance – let’s say you’re a financial institution. There are tons of banks out there, so why would a customer choose you over any of your competitors? Perhaps, after looking at your brand, you’ve decided to change things up and brand yourself as the “green” bank. You make it known that your online products are superior, eliminating the need for paper statements, that you recycle and support environmentally friendly causes. That can set you apart from all your competitors. On that note, perhaps your mission statement changes to incorporate your new green focus, and your logo gets an update with a new green look.  The “how” question is execution that follows a much more important “what” question.

Differentiating yourself from your competitors can be a key reason to look at your brand and make adjustments. Because a unique brand is an important step on your way to long-term relevance, market share and profits.