If you are going through the effort and expense to rebrand your company, you want to ensure that it is time well-spent. How to know if your re-branding strategies are smart? Take a look at these tips and see how your plans compare.

Your re-branding is multi-faceted. A new logo and marketing plan does not equal a re-branding. Strip your company down to its essence and determine what stays and what goes. Vision, goals and voice are all on the table during re-branding. Re-branding should be an uncomfortable process, if everything goes smoothly and there is no resistance, you aren't making the big changes a successful re-branding requires.

Everyone is involved. Re-branding is not the time to be hands-off. It doesn't make sense for everyone to pitch ideas and thoughts about every decision, but it is important to keep executive level employees in the loop. If they feel shut out of the process it will be a challenge to have their support during the re-branding. It is also valuable to involve outside help in the re-brand. Have an outside company look at your marketing, goals, target customers and mission statement to bring a fresh and objective view to your company.

Your purpose, mission and goals are sharply defined. Putting these statements down on paper should be a way to crystallize your goals for the company. Too often, however, what happens is that more and more extraneous information is included. When this happens, your purpose and goals lose focus behind industry buzzwords.

Your new brand should be different and exciting. In order to sell the re-brand, your employees must buy into it, and that will only happen if the new brand is unique enough to be worth the re-branding effort. If your employees feel that it only a matter of change for the sake of change, they cannot be expected to feel excited about it. They must understand the benefits to them, such as the opportunity to take on additional responsibilities, interesting new projects, or added financial incentives.

Know how you'll measure success. It is important to have a yardstick you'll use to measure the success of your re-branding before you re-launch. A combination of measurements, such as sales data and customer surveys, give you a well rounded look at your success. Judging your re-branding success on only one measurement can give an inaccurate view. Change is difficult, and even the most successful re-branding efforts may take a few months to show results in the profits department.