Certain current conditions are making company name changes and rebranding more common.
For one thing, we’re seeing more mergers and acquisitions than ever, with some of the acquired companies taking on the branding of the purchaser. Other times, companies want to streamline their names with an abbreviation or acronym, or just update it to better reflect the products and services being offered.
Here, pool and spa marketing specialists address three aspects of renaming your company — whether or not to abbreviate, how to transition a name, and how to manage the digital ramifications.
To abbreviate or not to abbreviate?
Acronyms and initials seem to be increasing in popularity, causing businesses in many other industries to abbreviate long-held brands into a series of letters. Think KFC and IBM.
The appeal is clear, experts say.
“The younger crowd seems to like it,” says Brett Lloyd Abbott, owner and president of Pool Builder Marketing of Austin, Texas, a marketing firm serving the pool and spa industry. “And everybody likes things that are simpler. Anytime we can say more with less, I’m in support of that.”
But there’s a practical, digital-age logic behind the trend as well. A streamlined name fits well in a world where people constantly work multiple digital devices and juggle dozens of browser tabs at any given moment.
“People are trying to consume their data as quickly and efficiently as possible,” says Joseph Christoforo, co-owner of Pool Builder Lead Rocket, a web marketing firm based in Austin, Texas. “Moving to an acronym is very easy for the consumer to digest and retype back into the internet. You can create super easy email addresses that customers can absolutely remember.”
They can also make for very easy-to-remember web addresses, which work well on advertising, he adds.
This route may be most appropriate for larger companies that will have a presence in more than one geographic market, Christoforo says. This enhances visibility and helps consumers to seek out your company when they move from one market to another.
“For those companies, I would use acronyms because they’re so big, they’re doing so much marketing, and at that point you want to make it easier for the consumer to find you,” he says.
Smaller companies that plan to stay in one market may be better served by a more descriptive name, something that includes “pools” and/or “spas,” and perhaps even names the city or neighborhood you’re serving, Christoforo says.
Abbott believes acronyms can serve smaller companies as well. The concern with abbreviated names is whether or not consumers will recognize them. But in so many cases, homeowners don’t search their market for pool and spa companies until they need one. They don’t automatically know to look for a Joe’s Pools, for instance. So using an acronym won’t necessarily make it harder for them to find you.
“It doesn’t really have that impact, because it’s not a household name,” Abbott says.
Even if you like the benefits and reasoning behind this trend, it may not be the best fit for your company. If you have an acronym or abbreviation in mind, thoroughly examine whether it will work.
First, start with something that contains three letters or less. “When you get into four letters or more, it starts to get a little clunky,” Abbott says.
As with any company name, start by checking the marketplace to see if any other businesses uses the acronym you have in mind.
“It’s not necessarily direct competition, but I mean other businesses,” Abbott says. “If my company were called ‘It’s Brett’s Masterpiece,’ and I decide I’ll just call myself IBM, that would be a problem.”
Also make sure the abbreviation or acronym will look and sound okay. As with any name, you want a pleasing, almost melodic sound. But it goes deeper than that. See if the acronym or abbreviation is easy to say, read and type. Are there same-sounding letters right next to each other that make it hard to pronounce? If you’re considering an abbreviation with N’s next to M’s or D next to B, it could prove a tongue-twister. Running similar letters next to each other, such as V’s next to W’s, can make it harder to read and decipher.
Solidifying the brand
If you’re changing the name of your company, whether it’s to an acronym or not, take a few steps to see how it will be received.
Abbott recommends showing your potential new name to 10 to 30 people who aren’t friends and don’t work for the company. Ask them their thoughts when they see the new brand and how they think it compares to the old name. If you are using an acronym or abbreviation, see if they understand clearly what it means.
Secondly, you or a web specialist should find out through analytics how often consumers search for the words and phrases that you want to include in your company name.
When you’ve decided on a name, make sure you absolutely nail it down to the letter. Will it be called ABC Pool Companies, ABC Pools, ABC Pools and Backyards, or something else similar? Do not adopt multiple versions and veer back and forth. Not only is this confusing to consumers, but it will mess with your company’s SEO.
Take your time transitioning the new name so that customers have plenty of time to adapt.
If a company is making a drastic name change, Abbot likes his clients to spend 18 months easing into it. For instance, begin by keeping the original name and incorporating the new brand in as a tagline. If you’re renaming your company from Panda Pools to Every Town Pools, for instance, do it in stages, with the new name progressively becoming more dominant. Start as Panda Pools: An Every Town Pools Company. After a while, it can be called Every Town Pools, formerly Panda Pools. Then eventually it can just be called Every Town Pools.
Market this change generously. Tell the whole story behind the renaming so customers understand it better. Post it not only on your website and social media accounts, but send emails to any customer you’ve ever had. Also include store signage making consumers aware of the change.
When his clients change their company names, Christoforo likes to take a break from other promotions and devote all marketing efforts to that rebrand for about 90 days.
The digital equation
The big concern with any name change is the loss of brand equity: Will people make the connection between your new name and the original?
But with the internet playing such a role in marketing, companies also must worry about whether the name change will cause confusion with the various platforms, resulting in a loss of search engine optimization status. This is an area where Christoforo sees the most mistakes made when companies decide to change names.
“I can’t tell you how many websites and companies we run into where they say, ‘We just rebranded to this,’ and they did it the incorrect way and lost all the momentum that they had on Google, social media and reviews,” he says. “They had to almost start over.”
Companies can take several steps to make sure the new brand syncs up with the old, so the various platforms will continue to recognize your company, and you don’t end up at the bottom of a web search.
First, go into your site’s webmaster tools and search engine console to notify Google that your brand and, if applicable, your website have changed.
“If you don’t, it literally looks like you’re a brand new pool company...” Christoforo says. “You’re losing years and years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing ...”
Next, he suggests going to a software company called Yext. This prevents the need to make changes on all your social media and other web-based accounts and pages individually. After you provide your old and new information to the platform, it will help create updates. “Over the next 24 hours, it will go to every directory in the world and update all that information all at once,” Christoforo says.
By having consistent information among all these directories and platforms, he says, it will help maintain your Google status. “It will immediately make you look a lot bigger than a brand new company,” he says.
Finally, with these steps taken, arrange to have several reviews posted on your sites. Christoforo recommends at least 10 reviews in the first 30 to 60 days after a rebranding, so that the new name will register as a dynamic one.
Because this is somewhat specialized work, he recommends hiring a marketing company to help with this portion of your company renaming, even if it’s just to help through the transition.
