The term “rebranding” is one that strikes fear into the hearts of business owners. It usually means that your brand is suffering and in need of redevelopment and a new approach.

It’s not a pretty picture but the harsh truth of the matter is that it does happen from time to time. And it doesn’t have to mean a death sentence for your company. Here are a few ways you can look at rebranding as a step towards improvement rather than the end of the world.

Know Your Customer. Take the time to do market research to truly understand your audience. It’s more than just knowing their personalities, likes, and interests. You need to get down into lesser traveled areas such as their buying behaviors and purchasing habits. You should be able to tell when your audience is more apt to participate in a sale or a special offer based on their previous behaviors. Luckily, there are a variety of bile applications that can help small business owners with this exact sort of thing.

Be Different. Make sure your message and intentions are different than those of your competitors. You want to stand out from them so you can be easily noticed in a group of names of your industry. If you remain too similar to your competition and your competition is a bigger name, your audience is going to most likely give them their business. Find a niche or a specialty that you can excel at, something that makes you different from your competition.

Don’t Be a Copy-Cat. Although it sounds the same as the above topic, there is a huge difference. Borrowing inspirations and even a bit of motivation from a similar company is fine—but when you start mimicking them, you are setting yourself up for defeat. Take a look around at others within your industry. Check out their logos, their websites, their employees. Find something you can offer than they don’t. be sure you are authentic in your industry, becoming  a brand that captures the attention of your target audience in ways that your competitors have never even thought of.

Don’t wait for the need to re-brand to analyze yourself with these three items. Apply these to your business right now to see how you can prevent the need from future issue such as the need to rebrand.