Many businesses hesitate to invest in branding because they are concerned about the expense. Whether you're just starting out or looking to rebrand, understanding the branding price can help you make informed decisions about allocating your resources and building a brand that truly resonates with your audience. Partnering with one of the best branding agencies can provide you with tailored solutions that maximize your investment and elevate your brand's impact.
This article explores the different factors that influence branding costs and provides insights into how much you can expect to spend.
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How Much Does Branding Cost: Quick Computation
A complete branding campaign typically costs between $11,000 and $70,000, depending on your required marketing collateral.
Here’s a sample quotation:
- Brand Identity - $1,000 - $5,000+
- Market Research $1,000 - $7,000+
- Logo - $2,000 - $8,000+
- Visual Style Guide - $2,500 - $5,000+
- Editorial Style Guide - $1,500 - $4,000+
- Brand Book - $3,000 - $4,000+
- Website Design and Development - $5,000 - $30,000+
Total: $16,000 – $63,000+
What Influences the Price of Branding?
The industry you're in, your competitors, your customer base, your target audience, and how you want to be perceived as a company all factor into how much branding should cost.
If you have a limited budget and are looking for a low-cost branding option, consider starting with a logo design. If you want more comprehensive branding, develop a brand awareness strategy that includes messaging and visuals while staying within your budget.
Below are some of the considerations when planning branding costs:
- Brand Visuals (Average Cost: $2,500 - $8,000)
- Brand Messaging and Brand Visuals (Average Cost: $2,500 - $30,000)
- Brand Strategy, Messaging, and Visuals (Average Cost: $30,000+)
- Website Design and Development (Average Cost: $5,000 - $30,000+)
1. Brand Visuals (Average Cost: $2,500 - $8,000)
Logo design can help up to 75% of consumers remember your brand. Your logo is the face of your company. It's how people identify with you, and it's one of the essential factors in how your company is perceived. Note that logo design is a highly competitive industry with a wide range of pricing options.
Other brand visuals include typography, palette, and photography. These visual elements make up your brand and can be just as important as a logo. If you're looking to build a new brand from scratch, you'll want to hire someone specializing in branding. A graphic designer and creative strategist might be able to help with some aspects of this process.
2. Brand Messaging and Brand Visuals (Average Cost: $2,500 - $30,000)
Let’s talk about brand strategy. This is the backbone of logo design, color palettes, and messaging. The brand strategy is a plan that involves figuring out your target audience, where you want to be as a company, and what your customers need.
You need to understand who your audience is and what they value. You'll want a plan for how you will develop messaging that will resonate with your customers. This is where a branding strategist comes in.
A brand strategist is often the person that is responsible for taking all of your ideas and putting them into a cohesive strategy. Even though brand strategy is the first part of branding that you should consider, it is often the last part of the equation.
If you don't have the design work done, how will you put your brand to work for you? Your brand strategist will be responsible for bringing everything together into one cohesive strategy.
3. Brand Strategy, Messaging, and Visuals (Average Cost: $30,000+)
A complete branding campaign can go beyond the simple logo and color scheme you thought you were getting when you first started diving into branding.
A branding campaign can include everything from website design to social media content creation. It can include the creation of merchandise or other visual marketing pieces that can tie your brand together. It's something that most companies start small with, doing things in-house as they get going.
As businesses grow, they might invest in outside branding help by hiring an agency or a branding firm directly. Be strategic if you have the funds to invest in an entire branding campaign. Consider what type of campaign you want to run and how you want to position your company.
4. Website Design and Development (Average Cost: $5,000 - $30,000+)
A website is crucial to any brand identity, providing a platform for showcasing products/services and helping up to 73% of companies gain a competitive edge. However, there are different types of websites — from simple brochure sites to complex eCommerce platforms — each with its unique costs associated with them.
For example, if you simply want to display information about your organization, product, or service, then prioritize web design and development. It's the first point of contact with anyone interested in learning more about your offer. It's also one of the most expensive processes because so many things go into creating a modern and user-friendly website (e.g., responsive design, search engine optimization, mobile compatibility).
At this point, you may need to hire a professional web designer and developer to help create a website, blog or social media page. What's included in this price range depends on the technical expertise required to build your brand and how much time you want to learn new skills.
Some clients opt for a simple site that's relatively easy to manage, like WordPress, while others choose more complex solutions with custom coding, like Shopify.
The Importance of Investing in Branding
Branding is used to help companies to stand out from their competitors and build trust with their customers.
Good branding can give you a competitive edge by:
- Generating higher profits
- Providing stronger customer loyalty
- Allowing for more strategic product placement
- Establishing your company as trustworthy and experienced in the field
- Communicating your company's values and what makes it different from other businesses
- Positioning your company as an industry leader with modern marketing techniques
- Creating an identity that attracts customers
- Giving you an avenue to stand out and communicate what makes you unique
Branding is essential, no matter what type of product or service you sell, because it creates a recognizable identity. It's a way to make potential customers notice your company's product or service.
Branding can be as simple as using a color scheme or logo that is easily identifiable or as complex as creating an entire fictional universe that ties in your product or service. That's why investing in branding is one of the most important decisions you'll make for your business.
Should You Hire a Freelancer or a Branding Agency?
Hiring a freelancer is a great option if you're starting out and need help building your brand. Freelancers are usually more affordable than agencies, so you can get started with a smaller budget and scale up as your business grows. They also offer more flexibility as you can choose a freelancer based on specific skills and experience rather than the agency's size.
On the other hand, if you already have an established business that needs professional branding services like website design or SEO optimization, it might be worth hiring an agency instead.
Agencies can provide you with a higher level of expertise and experience, and they're often able to offer more comprehensive services than freelancers. They also have the resources to handle more clients at once, so an agency might be the better option if you're looking for someone who can take on your entire marketing strategy.
Before tapping a brand development agency or a freelancer, consider the following:
- What services do you need, and what services do you want?
- Do you need a website?
- What kind of functionality or features do you want it to have?
- How much are logo design and brand strategy going to cost you?
- Do you need to hire a copywriter? What about color palettes and imagery?
- Do you need to hire a designer to create a color scheme for your company?
- Do you have a few images that you'd like to use to represent your company?
- Do you need to hire a photographer or videographer?
- What level of customer service do you plan on providing?
- What type of communication do you plan on having with your customers?
- What other things do you want to invest in your marketing budget?
Most Cost-Effective Branding Agencies to Hire
If you want to develop a branding strategy, consider hiring the following agencies. These branding agencies have a proven track record of successful branding projects for various businesses and industries.
- Leapfrog Advertising Agency
- Pithy Studios
- Grazzine
- PunktFormStrich Branding & Design
- Ideias Frescas
- R&G Strategic
1. Leapfrog Advertising Agency
- Location: 13th Floor, 2 Fewakah St, Mohandessian, Cairo, Cairo, 11234, Egypt
- Average Hourly Rate: $1,000/hr
- Expertise: Branding, Logo Design, Product Design, Graphic Design, Digital Marketing...
Founded in 2005, Leapfrog is full 360 marketing and advertising agency that specializes in launching, repositioning, and elevating brands through their creative expertise.
They can help you build your brand from the ground up, encompassing three important elements: visuals, messaging, and positioning. You can complement this with Leapfrog's internal branding service, which ensures everything you represent on the outside is reflected within.
Your company can further get a boost from Leapfrog's advertising, digital marketing, and event management services.
2. Pithy Studios
- Location: 14 Turnham Green Terrace Mews, London, W4 1QU, United Kingdom
- Average Hourly Rate: $100/hr
- Expertise: Branding, Brand Design, Graphic Design, Logo Design, Boutique Branding...
Your marketing strategy is only as good as your customers' perception of your brand. Pithy Studios gives you the best of both worlds by integrating strong, creative branding tactics into your marketing strategy.
Pithy Studios specializes in branding and creative social media content, and their work is the kind that turns heads and keeps people around. The agency caters to various types of businesses, from startups and SMEs to law firms, real estate, and F&B businesses.
Their clients include Google Cloud, JCB, Asus, Merrell, and Muji.
3. Grazzine
- Location: Baner, Pune, 411045, India
- Average Hourly Rate: $25/hr
- Expertise: Branding, Brand Design, Graphic Design, Package Design, Web Design...
Grazzine is an India-based graphic design agency that offers a broad spectrum of design services at an affordable cost.
Whatever your brand design needs are — be it web design, UI/UX, dashboards, or print layouts — Grazzine has the expertise to help you stand out in different aspects. Their team comprises experts in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe XD, InDesign, Illustrator, Figma, Unbounce, WordPress, and Wix.
Grazzine can assist businesses of all types and sizes. Their clients include Affinitiv Advertising, Ozone, and Revalize Software.
4. PunktFormStrich Branding & Design
- Location: Paris-Lodron-Straße 17/11, Salzburg, 5020, Austria
- Average Hourly Rate: $95/hr
- Expertise: Branding, Brand Design, Graphic Design, Logo Design, Web Design...
If you need a branding that speaks to your audience or a brand design that's unique and consistent on all fronts, look no further than PunktFormStrich.
This Austria-based agency produces extraordinary design concepts spanning the gamut — from branding and graphic design to illustration and photography. Their branding services include target market analysis, communication plan, corporate identity, brand story, and more.
PunktFormStrich has worked with clients in fashion, B2B, F&B, law, education, and non-profit, among others. Pfizer, GoPro, Red Bull, and SAP are their most notable clients.
5. Ideias Frescas
- Location: Rua de São Luis 60 - 2º Esquerdo, Faro, 8000-285, Portugal
- Average Hourly Rate: $20/hr
- Expertise: Branding, Graphic Design, Logo Design, Web Design, Website Development...
Ideias Frescas is a European digital creative agency with over 20 years of industry experience in web design, graphic design, and multimedia.
For branding, the agency has solutions to help you develop a strong image that will linger in customers' minds. These include logo creation, stationery design, and corporate identity. They also offer SEO, digital marketing, web and app development, video, and photography, among others.
To date, Ideias Frescas has completed over 3,500 projects for 1,500 customers — and the number just keeps growing.
6. R&G Strategic
- Location: 5557 Cunard Street, Halifax, B3K 1C5, Canada
- Average Hourly Rate: $125
- Expertise: Branding, Logo Design, Package Design, Market Research...
R&G is an agency whose mix of expert professionals that work at the intersection of branding, technology, sustainability and communications design helps their clients launch, scale, raise awareness, and create digital platforms to advocate and engage for a better world.
They have deep portfolio experience across startup culture, marketing and advertising, community engagement, corporate social responsibility, and interaction design. Their work has made a difference for companies in clean energy, climatech, social enterprise, ESG reporting, and storytelling for environmental and social good.
Branding Costs: Conclusion
Branding can make or break your business. You want to ensure you get the best value from it when you start out, especially if you don't have much money to spend on it upfront.
Branding is essential as it's a way to make potential customers notice your company, product, or service. It can be as simple as using a color scheme or logo that is easily identifiable or as complex as creating an entire fictional universe that ties in your product or service.
That being said, branding is an investment. And like any investment, you must determine how much you're willing to spend on business branding and how much you expect to earn in return.
Branding Costs FAQs
1. How much should your company spend on branding?
Spend up to 20% of your spending on branding if your company is fresh to the market and looking for a strategy to stand out. Branding should account for up to 10% of annual revenue if your company is already established.
2. How much does a brand strategy cost?
Branding cost is determined by the services your company needs (logo design, images, messaging, building brand voice, etc.) and the branding agency you select. Branding experts offer hourly prices ranging from $25 to $1,000.
