Rebranding Your Freelance Business - Share Your Experiences | Marketing | Writing Forum

I'm going through the process of rebranding my business. The current business name (covering my writing services, Web publication, and indie publishing work) is J.H. Mattern Communications. The new business name is 3BeatMedia (with a publishing division called 3BeatBooks). The new name will be official once I finish the re-launch work and new Web presence.

The decision to rebrand the business was based on several things:

1. The business and its scope continually grows. 
2. The original name was chosen when the business was primarily a PR consultancy (needs freshening up).
3. I don't feel the current name covers the business as a whole -- more the service side. 
4. I don't want the underlying brand to be forever tied to my maiden name (even though I'll still do business under that name after getting married). 
5. The projected growth of the business involves branching into more than writing (while "3Beat" has meaning to me right now, the ultimate goal is to split the company into three divisions -- writing/publishing, film, and audio/music).
6. I worry that keeping the business tied too much to my current name could hurt my upcoming work under pseudonyms. I'll be publishing under three different names (Jennifer Mattern, Aria Klein -- for mysteries, and A.J. Klein -- for horror). I'd rather all things published be tied to a single larger brand name.

So I'd like to ask for your input. Have you ever rebranded your freelance business? What were some of the biggest challenges and how did you overcome them? What helped most with your brand transition? I hope you'll share your stories here both for me and other readers who might be considering similar changes. 

lol I'm with you on the squatters. 

One of my favorite tools now for domains is JustDropped.com. These are domains that were either just released to the public again or ones that will be soon (expired, but not yet deleted by the previous registrar). I scored about a half dozen great domains recently thanks to that site's search feature (not the email list). Not sure if they include .co.nz, but it could be worth checking out.