Why I Decided to Revamp my Brand
If you’re reading this blog post, you may have noticed that I FINALLY have a new website – plus a whole brand revamp to go along with it!
This is the first blog post of a mini-series I’m doing so that I can take you behind the scenes of a brand revamp process and my business in general.
First and foremost, I want to talk about why I needed to revamp my brand and where my business is headed. Up until the end of 2019, all parts of my business had all been housed under one website and my name for the last five years. This includes my client design work, my blog, my online courses, and my digital workbooks. For years, this worked out great because my blog was a huge traffic driver for both sides of my business and helped me gain some traction on all fronts.
My Graphic Design Business Grew
However, as my business grew, so did my team. This meant that even though my brand made it appear I was the one doing all the graphic design work for my clients, that was no longer the case. Instead, I was project managing most of the work and my rockstar design team handled most of the day to day projects.
It didn’t feel right that my team didn’t get the credit they deserved and that my clients may be under the impression that I was still a one-woman show. In early 2019, I decided to get the business in a place where I could split it into two – one being my graphic design agency and the other being my graphic design online education. I slotted this goal to be well underway by the end of the year and by golly I stuck to it!
I Needed to Niche Down
Not only did my business need to split in half, but they also needed to be niched down. At the start of 2019, my business messaging was talking to too many groups of people – potential graphic design clients, business owners who wanted to learn graphic design and DIY their graphics, aspiring graphic designers, and aspiring freelancers.
That was TOO many groups of people to talk to on one website. Especially if I wanted to increase my conversion rates on all fronts – which I did.
Not only did this impact my decision to split the company in two so that I could create a separate brand for my design agency and target my ideal graphic design clients, but it also forced me to take a hard look at how many groups of people I was targeting with my design education business too. It was becoming too hard to talk to both aspiring designers and business owners so I knew I needed to cut it down to just one group of people.
This was a decision I waffled on for MONTHS. Originally, I ended up choosing the business owners looking to DIY their own graphics because I felt like that was who I was attracting more of at the time. However, I was feeling so much resistance around this choice that I put off for months. I finally did some serious reflection and it was then that I realized I just really wanted to help people who were in the same position I used to be in just a few years prior. I want to help people on a similar journey as mine because I could speak to that the best. Whether that’s learning graphic design from scratch all on your own or trying to navigate the freelancing waters (or both!) – I knew I could seriously help people with both of those paths because I’ve literally been in their exact shoes.
With that being said, I shifted gears again (which is really hard for me to allow myself to do!) and decided I was solely going to work with aspiring graphic designers and freelancers. This meant I also needed to hone in on the messaging of my brand so that I could speak to their specific pain points. Now my website speaks very clearly to one audience with a very specific need and I'm able to give them a much more valuable transformation because of it!
My Website Was OLD
Ya’ll, I hadn’t redone my website since MAYBE 2014. Even my design portfolio hadn’t been updated in years! It had been WAY too long since I went in and updated anything on my website and it was getting to the point that I would cringe every time I had to send someone to it.
Not only were all of the photos of me super old but so was the design work I had featured. Plus, my web design skills had improved SO much since I had initially designed it. I hated that my site was so all over the place in regards to who I was talking to on each page. I had put it off for so long because my focus was always working on my client's work, but now that I had a team to help me, I had no excuse. My website just didn’t feel like it was in the same place as my business anymore and it was 1000% time for a revamp.
My Brand Identity Felt Dated
Like my website, I hadn’t done any improvements or tweaks to my visual brand identity since I created it. Plus, unlike my process now, when I first created my logo and brand identity all those years ago, I had no real process set in place and ended up letting my brand identity evolve with time. This was fine and great to helping my business get up and running as fast as possible, but it also meant that just a couple years later my brand identity didn’t feel nearly as cohesive and thought out as it should be. It was time to be as intentional with my own brand identity as I am with my clients'.
Related Post –>> My Logo Design Process
Because of these four reasons, I got my booty in gear, made some big decisions to continue to move my business forward. The end result of my 'Mariah Althoff' brand revamp is something I’m so excited about and proud of.
In the next post of this series, I’m breaking down the process of revamping my brand. Whether you’re considering a brand revamp for yourself or your client, this series is meant to pull back the current on my whole process so you can see what it takes!
Want an interactive workbook that walks you through my full branding process?
