Sometimes it's just time to refresh your brand or completely change its look with a total rebranding. While there are many scenarios as to when you should and shouldn't, if you're faced with the fact that it's time to rebrand, you'll need to make the process as smooth as possible.

Rebranding is a big project and comes with many challenges. Fortunately, there's a solution that eases the process: Brand Portals.

Read further to find out why you need a Brand Portal if you're rebranding, refreshing your brand, or considering one.

How Do You Know When It’s Time to Rebrand?

Knowing when it's time to rebrand your business is a decision that depends on a combination of factors that signal a misalignment between your current brand and your strategic goals or market position. Here are a few examples of when rebranding might be the right choice:

Your Competitors are Getting Ahead: If your brand continues to struggle with competition, it's time to step it up and carve a new space in your industry.

You Have New Products or Services: When adding new products or services, a rebrand can help increase sales and interest and better reflect the changes to your offerings.

Your Current Brand is Outdated: If your brand doesn't reflect the time and who your company is anymore, it's time to refresh or rebrand.

Your Audience Has Changed: Just like the tone and design of your marketing efforts need to resonate with your audience, so does your brand.

Your Strategy or Vision Has Changed: If your company's core mission, values, or goals have evolved, your brand needs to reflect these changes.

The Challenges of Rebranding

On top of the challenge of creating a new design and brand and the amount of time it takes, rebranding is also challenging in many other ways. For example, you need to ensure that those who knew your brand before are aware and quickly become familiar with your updated brand so that you retain the valuable customers and prospects you already have.

A closer look at common challenges companies face when rebranding include:

Consistency in Branded Elements: If you don’t update every branded asset your company has, your audience will become confused. Companies with many departments or even locations find this a challenging task. Every employee, department, and location must have the same branding, from business cards and letterhead to signage and marketing materials. Otherwise, you will lose customers and decrease your brand recognition.

Time-Consuming: The process of rebranding is time-consuming enough. Add in the task of ensuring every employee, department, or location has the correct branded assets and ensuring that your audience is aware of the changes to your brand; this results in your entire business operations slowing down.

Maintaining Quality: Your brand is more than a logo and select colors. It's who your company is and what it represents. If you don't maintain consistency when rebranding and don't ensure that every employee has the correct materials and resources to protect your brand, you lose quality. Your image becomes lost in translation, and your reputation and success begin to downfall.

Communication: Especially when you have a large organization or locations across the country, rebranding involves a lot of communication to ensure everyone within your organization is on the same page. If communication is poor, then you risk someone using the wrong or incorrect branded assets. This results in confusion, frustration, and overall poor brand compliance.

While rebranding may be a critical task you need to do, you will need to take precautions so that you maintain consistent branding and quality while also saving precious time. If you don't take precautions to ease these challenges, you could face a long road ahead of added business challenges, including losing customers and struggling to find new customers. Luckily, there is a solution to easing these challenges. Read further to discover how a Brand Portal can help eliminate some of the time-consuming challenges you face when rebranding.

How Brand Portals Make Rebranding Easy

Brand Portals—also known as “Web-to-Print Portals”—are online solutions built to make ordering and managing branded assets a seamless process, no matter how many employees or locations you have. They are a private online shop where anyone who needs access to your branded assets can visit and place orders. Assets include digital files, print materials, direct mail assets, signage, and promotional materials. Every asset your company uses can be stored in a Brand Portal, and every asset includes pre-approved branded designs so that every employee, department, or location has the correct materials.

Brand Portals allow you to make updates as needed so that, for example, you rebrand, all you need to do is update your art files in one place (your Brand Portal) and your entire company immediately has access to your updated assets.

Rebranding challenges that Brand Portals solve include:

Consistency and Compliance: Brand Portals lock in your branding. The overall design, messaging, and layout remain consistent even if employees need to personalize certain information, like contact details on a business card, a location address on a postcard, or an image on a banner. With a Brand Portal in place, you can easily ensure your brand's image and voice are consistent across every branded asset.

Time and Cost Efficiency: Updating departments and employees and providing them with the appropriate branded assets takes a lot of time. So does ordering new signage, apparel, business cards, stationery, and more for each location. And when errors occur like a typo, incorrect logo or colors, or ordering too many materials, you waste money and jeopardize your brand's image. Brand Portals create a centralized management process. All changes to your branded assets are managed from one place, and it only takes a few minutes for your portal provider to update designs for your organization. Once updated, your users can independently access and order the newly brand-compliant assets they need within seconds. Depending on their department or location, they can order only the necessary materials, eliminating unneeded resources. With pre-approved designs and material specifications in place, you can guarantee that every branded asset is brand-compliant, eliminating wasted money on reprinting or reordering.

Quality Control: When you rebrand or refresh your brand, it's easy to lose quality and stray from brand compliance. While you will need to modify your brand guidelines and ensure that your entire organization is prepared to follow your new guidelines, it can be a struggle to get everyone on the same page to ensure they represent your brand accurately. With a Brand Portal in place, this isn't an issue. Everyone within your organization who needs access to your rebranded assets can easily and quickly retrieve the materials they need, all while ensuring the quality of your brand is protected. In addition, no matter how many locations you have, your Brand Portal is under one printer, meaning every location's branded assets have the same quality. Plus, you can set up approval processes so that before someone places an order, it must be approved by you or other management. This ensures that your brand is represented exactly how it should be.

Collaboration and Communication: When you have a Brand Portal in place, communication regarding rebranding involves one simple email or meeting to discuss the change. From there, as long as you provide your portal provider with your new designs, your organization is equipped and ready to move forward with your rebranded materials. There's no back and forth on which files, designs, or materials to use, no questioning that someone has the wrong logo or color palette, and no document sharing across every department. Just one simple update and your entire Brand Portal is set up to provide each user with the correct branded assets they need.

How to Implement a Brand Portal for Your Rebranding

Brand Portals are essential if you are rebranding, and luckily, they're easy to implement. Here is a quick overview of how to implement a Brand Portal for your rebranding:

Step 1: Assess Your Needs & Gather Your Assets

Once you have updated your logo and brand colors, decided on your tone, or any other changes needed for your rebranding, it's time to assess your needs and gather your assets.

Look at your current materials, including business cards, stationery, promotional items, brochures, and signage. From there, decide on what materials you will continue to use and what materials you would like to add to better reflect your updated brand. Once you know what branded assets you need, work with your designer and gather the new designs for each.

Step 2: Find the Right Brand Portal Provider

You must find a portal provider who will make the process as smooth as possible. Find one who is experienced and transparent. With the right provider, they will work with you every step of the way to ensure your Brand Portal is set up perfectly to reflect your brand and meet your needs and budget.

Step 3: Customize Your Portal to Fit Your Brand

Once you have found the right portal provider, all you have to do is discuss what materials you need, provide them with your art files, and inform them of any technical or management rules you want in place. They will then build a customized, private portal for your organization to access and place orders.

Remember that your Brand Portal is tailored to your needs. From the layout and design of your portal to the materials and assets each user can order, your portal is specifically built to represent your brand. Even if you decide to rebrand again, all you need to do is provide your portal provider with your new designs, and your organization is ready to roll.

Step 4: Inform Your Organization

The last step is informing your organization and providing them with the URL to your Brand Portal so they can begin ordering the branded materials they need.

Depending on your portal provider, they will even help inform and train your organization on accessing and using your portal. They'll also provide continued support, so you don't need to worry about a thing.

Conclusion: If You’re Looking to Rebrand, You Need a Brand Portal

Rebranding can be an exciting yet challenging adventure for any organization. That's why you need to take advantage of a Brand Portal to eliminate the confusion, streamline the process, and confidently guide your brand into its new era.

Here's how a Brand Portal is your solution to the challenges that come with rebranding:

Ensures Consistency: Maintain a uniform brand image across all departments and locations.

Enhances Efficiency: Save time and money with a centralized management process.

Guarantees Quality: Protect your brand's image with pre-approved designs and material specifications and better control over your branded assets.

Improves Communication: Simplify collaboration and information sharing during the rebranding transition.

Whether giving your brand a fresh touch or embarking on a total makeover, a Brand Portal is the solution for a smooth and successful journey.

At Kingston Printing, we don't just offer Brand Portals; we craft solutions tailored to your unique needs. Our expertise goes beyond technology and print to include the care, understanding, and partnership you deserve in your rebranding venture.

Ready to see how a Brand Portal can transform your rebranding process? Schedule a demo with one of our portal experts today. Together, we'll pave a seamless path to your brand's future success.