Rebranding From IT Training Department To techstructional

We started late in the year last year (2022) but still accomplished a lot as we outlined in a previous post. While we didn’t plan where we’d be today, business is never a linear line.

That’s how we ended up going through a rebrand even though we’ve been around less than a year. The longer you’re in business, the more difficult it is to go through a rebrand. We’re lucky enough to discover that the initial name we chose (IT Training Department) wasn’t the best choice.

Sometimes you discover confusion with branding, messaging, or more.

All employees use technology in every organization and that technology is constantly evolving. Also, processes sometimes change or better ways of working are discovered. We help organizations train employees in the technology they use for their roles and how to do that more effectively.

There is a change management aspect to what we do because technology is launched and changes in work must be made. So, we help train employees more efficiently in technology, making what we do more technical training, not IT training.

So, we launched a rebranding effort less than six months into our official existence. We moved from the IT Training Department to techstructional.

We moved to a simplified brand that’s more modern, easier to remember, search for, and speaks to what we do more closely. And yes, it’s lowercase. We went with that because it’s more modern and simple though sometimes capitalization is acceptable depending on where it’s used.

Why The Rebrand

Confusion is never a good thing to have to work through when discussing your business and how it helps organizations. Many conversations we had required us to explain the nature of what we do. That takes away from the conversation of how we help organizations work better.

There was simply too much confusion with what we did. The name IT Training Department didn’t sufficiently make sense for what we do. It was often assumed that we trained IT department employees. That couldn’t be further from what we do.

While the training solutions we build sometimes get consumed by employees in IT, that’s not the typical audience. Our audience is typically non-technical and works elsewhere in the organization, not the IT department.

Clarify what we do and make it less confusing by training the IT department.

We don’t train the IT department, we train employees on technology that sometimes the IT department deploys. Those employees may or may not be some employees in IT.

So, we were running into issues with the clarity of our brand and preconceived notions of IT in general as well as what the IT training department does. It’s not just the IT department we work with even. Pretty much any department that uses or initiates a technology change is our customer.

IT typically makes the changes and rolls out new technology but they don’t do it for them. There are business sponsors from elsewhere in the organization that initiates updates.

We might work with HR, operations, sales, or any other number of departments. Anyone who is changing technology, process, simplifying technology, automating, going mobile, or any other number of technical changes is who we serve.

So, we build technical training with tools that help simplify training and make it more modern as well as effective. That means we’re not relegated to only the IT department. Our digital training solutions are powerful and effective at training employees and we specialize in technical training.

What Goes Into A Rebrand

It’s surprising how much goes into a rebrand. While they typically get more complex the longer you’ve been around, many other elements can increase the complexity also. We’re lucky enough to be a virtual company which means we have no physical branding that must be changed.

Because we have no storefront, paper products, or anything like that the cost is much lower to rebrand. It still takes time, though, and rebranding continues for a long time as we discover what must be changed. The rebrand will likely continue for several weeks as we continue to discover our old brand embedded in places we aren’t always aware of.

The first thing

Here are some of the things and places we had to update with our brand change.

• A new logo is the first thing that’s needed for a rebrand.
• Make sure our new domain is set up with our email as well as the old domain email is properly forwarded.
• Update our website domain and all links (automated) as well as change the name (not automated).
• Redirect from the old domain to the new as well as updated Google and Bing.
• Update email addresses listed anywhere and for all accounts.
• Update current document branding including logo.
• Update document templates.
• Find any external websites our website is linked from and update those links if possible.
• Updates social media links, images, and naming.
• Update the company SharePoint websites as well as all links pointing to them (many of our downloads).

These are just some of the things we have to update and continue to update. It’s a long process and you discover how embedded a business name gets into the online world. There are a lot of tentacles that continue to spread as time goes on.

We were fortunate to have less than six months of tentacles which have still proven to be laborious. I couldn’t imagine a business being 10 years old and with 10,000 employees. That rebranding would be a huge undertaking.

What Our New Name Means

It’s pretty simple really. We do technical training therefore our brand revolves around this. Techstructional is a simple combination of technical (or technology) and instructional since we are instructional designers at the core.

So, it made sense that we named our business techstructional. What made it easy to decide was that the domain techstructional was available and it’s such a unique name that it’s also easy to rank in search engines for.

IT Training Department wasn’t as easy to rank for searches and it’s such a general name that isn’t unique to us or as easy to attribute to us. Techstructional is both easy to remember as well as easy to search for.

Wrap Up

Rebranding is a big challenge but sometimes the difficulty is worth the payoff. In our case, it was a matter of confusion that we couldn’t overcome with clarity about our current name. Also, it wasn’t memorable and the domain was difficult to type also. Multiple words for a business name (at least beyond two) isn’t simple enough.

We made it through our rebrand even with the difficult process of changing our SharePoint URL but it was all worth it. As we continue to discover the old name in places we missed, we’ll update those as needed.

No matter what our name is, we’re always here to help you achieve greater results and better-trained employees with our digital technology training. We’re ready to serve you and help make your technology change more successful and employees happier, just schedule a free consultation.