It depends on how much you need rebuilt. At FinArt, a two-week Identity Sprint for a new brand is $4,500. A full rebrand with positioning, a new identity and a new website is quoted as one flat fee, scoped to your firm, before any work starts.

The clearest sign is that referrals still close but strangers don't. Your clients know what makes you good. Your website doesn't say it. When the firm has changed and the brand hasn't, prospects meet the old firm first.

Ask whether they will define your positioning before they design anything, and whether they understand compliance. Most agencies start with logos. The work that changes results starts with the words.

A new brand on its own can take two weeks. A full rebrand with positioning, identity and a new website takes about 14 to 16 weeks. The schedule usually depends more on how fast the firm approves things than on design.

Because most are built from the same templates, the same stock photos and the same industry words, before anyone writes down what makes the firm different. In the Brand Index, five of eight advisor sites scored the minimum on Differentiation.

Yes. Prospects now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers which advisors to consider, and those tools quote websites that answer questions plainly. In the Brand Index, none of the eight advisor sites had FAQ schema, the markup that helps a machine lift an answer.

If the firm itself has changed, who you serve, what you do or who owns it, you need a rebrand. If the firm is the same and the brand just looks dated, a refresh is enough.

Compliance reviews the words, not the logo. Bring your CCO or outside compliance consultant in when the positioning and website copy are drafted, not after the site is built. That one change saves most of the delays.