What Does A Branding Agency Do?
Ultimately, a branding agency helps define your business’s mission, products, services, core values, and personality. Then, they present those elements to the public in a cohesive manner. This consistent identity is known as your brand.
A brand is presented across many platforms, including:
- Logos
- Websites
- Marketing campaigns
- Advertisements
- Social media
- Content marketing and blogs
- Email newsletters
- And more!
To create an effective brand, branding firms:
- Develop a brand strategy.
- Design a logo.
- Create a brand book that outlines visual and written guidelines for presentation.
- Roll out the brand on all applicable platforms and channels.
Branding agencies often collaborate with digital marketing experts, web designers, public relations professionals, content marketers and more to ensure a unified brand across the board.
This consistent messaging and presentation help consumers identify your business and products more readily, create a human-like connection with your business, build trust, and ultimately develop brand loyalty that increases revenue.
The personal connection that consumers and brands can cultivate is crucial to long-term business success. A consistent presentation can increase revenue by 23% and 94% of consumers are more likely to be loyal to brands that offer transparency.
What’s the Difference Between A Brand & Branding?
This one is simple! Essentially, a brand is your business’s personality that helps consumers identify you and connect with you. Branding is the process you take to create that identity.
The terms brand and brand identity can be used interchangeably. Both of these are all-encompassing phrases that embody a business’s values, mission, services, products and more.
Brands should have consistent aesthetic styles, copywriting tone, imagery, color palettes, and more across all platforms. A brand is typically highlighted by one iconic visual moniker – aka the logo. However, logo designs are only one aspect of many that create a successful brand.
Meanwhile, businesses can undergo branding – which creates a brand for the first time – or rebranding, which revises or improves an existing brand to make it more effective.
How Much Does A Branding Campaign Cost?
The cost of a branding campaign largely depends on how much work needs to be done within the project.
For instance, if you need a company name, a brand-new logo and have many platforms that this design needs to be distributed on, your branding could cost you anywhere from $23,000 to $250,000 or more.
However, if you just need a new logo, your costs could drop to $3500 to $150,000, give or take.
In general, companies can expect to spend the following amounts on these branding campaigns:
- Brand name creation: $10,000 to $75,000
- Logo design: $3500 to $150,000
- Website + marketing collateral distribution: $10,000 to $250,000 or more
- Branded advertisements: $10,000 to millions
Conversely, you could pay for your branding agency hourly.
For example, branding agencies that are based in the United States cost about $125-$200 per hour per person or more. However, Eastern European branding companies charge around $35-$75 per hour per person.
What Is A Brand Consultancy?
A brand consultancy is simply a different approach to branding. Instead of communicating a brand’s benefits, values and “personality” to potential consumers, brand consultancy experts recommend taking an extended amount of time studying the target audience’s mind.
Then, after you have a strong grasp of your demographic’s mindset – such as the “why” behind their consumer decisions – you can strategically craft your brand and messaging to be planted in the minds of your potential consumers.
Basically, brand consultancy adds a layer of psychology in the research phase and creates more branded content solely for the user.
Those who adhere to the brand consultancy ideology believe that it highlights their brand’s positive features while weakening the competition’s. Brand consultancies can also be helpful in crafting large-scale brand strategy, branded marketing campaigns and more.
But remember – don’t confuse brand consultancy with a brand consultant. A brand consultant is simply a branding expert that can advise your business on various branding initiatives.
How To Choose A Branding Company
Determine How A Branding Firm Will Create An Organized Campaign Process
Prior to approaching any branding agencies, take a moment and define your goals internally.
For example, do you want extensive brand awareness or are you aching to improve click-through rates to your website? Are you unhappy with your logo? Does your digital marketing need a refresh?
Understanding which business objectives you need to reach is the key to choosing the best branding firm for your needs because it will help you find the agency that offers the services you need to succeed.
Ask each potential branding company plenty of questions as well. See what their definition of branding is, or ask their honest opinion of your company, brand identity or current designs. Then, inquire about how they plan to fully understand and develop your identity and translate that to a successful brand identity.
Learn About A Branding Company’s Prior Experience
You know the saying: Talk is cheap. While many big branding agencies will be completely forthcoming, not everyone will. Don't just take them at their word.
Look at both the agency's professional portfolio and client list as well as the possible team members who will be working with your company. This will give you stronger insight into the actual designs they can create, campaigns they can execute and results they can deliver.
What’s more, don’t be put off by a campaign that performed underwhelmingly. Instead, ask the experts what they learned from that project and what they would do differently if they could do it again to see if they heeded this setback as a great learning opportunity for future clients.
Understand A Creative Branding Agency’s Potential Return On Investment (ROI)
At the end of the day, when you enlist a great branding agency, you’re paying for a strong return on investment.
Although it may be hard to look past a high upfront cost, take the time to understand the business growth possibilities before you sign a contract.
For example, a more expensive agency may result in a drastically higher ROI than a lesser firm with a lower price structure. While one may be better for your budget in the immediate future, the other could breed more positive long-term results.
Do your homework, ask in-depth questions, understanding the pricing tiers and ensure you have a strong grasp of each employee's expertise and work history. Doing so will empower you to make the most informed decision that will grow your company effectively.
10 Questions To Ask A Branding Firm Before You Hire Them
Before you select a branding agency to revamp your corporate image, you first need to understand the value an agency can provide. The following questions will help you discover a branding company’s expertise, previous experience, and learn whether or not they will provide a good return on investment.
- What do you think of our current brand? What are we doing well and where can we improve?
- What platforms, mediums, marketing campaignsor designs will be affected by the new branding?
- How do you plan on ensuring every area has a cohesive new identity? Do you have a discovery and tracking system in place?
- Do you have a campaign or initiative in place to introduce the new logo design or brand identity?
- Who will be my point of contact?
- How will you create a timeline and keep the project on track?
- How often can we expect meetings, drafts, updates, and deliverables?
- Which team members will be working on our branding project? What is their experience and how much of their time will be dedicated to our project?
- Do you have extra fees for meetings, additional strategy assistance, more drafts, etc.?
- How will you determine, measure and report on our goals?
5 Unexpected Elements That Create A Powerful Brand Identity
An iconic brand identity is proven to attract consumers, improve customer retention, and boost overall sales.
Although there are dozens of elements that create a recognizable brand, these unique elements will strengthen your brand's influence and increase sales in no time.
Why Is Building A Brand Important?
After the products or services your business sells, nothing is more important than how you present your brand to your audience.
That’s why branding is such an important process. Ultimately, it will help define your business and influence the way consumers the world over experience your brand.
So, the stakes are high when it comes to branding, and selecting the right branding agency is imperative. The right creative branding agency will understand your values and goals and use this insight to set you up for success.
5 Ways A Well-Designed Logo Can Boost Your Business
Increases Brand Recognition
Companies that are consistently presented see three to four times more brand visibility -- and the more people see your business, the more likely they will remember you when shopping and actually purchase your product.
Proper branding allows companies to hold a strong presence across all digital platforms, and a dependable visual identity can result in a revenue increase of up to 23 percent, too.
The indoor cycling phenomenon SoulCycle presents themselves authentically across all channels. From short and snappy weekly emails to a simple custom website design to an engaging Instagram feed, each medium is filled with their primary wheel logo, iconic mantra, bold signature yellow color, and minimal sans-serif type, allowing consumers to associate SoulCycle with empowering, friendly fitness. The bold color scheme and brand guidelines allow the company to transform as-needed while staying recognizable to riders.
Gives Social Media Structure
It’s easy to dismiss social media marketing, but nearly 59 percent of consumers interact with brands on social media one to three times each day. What’s more? Visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared on social media.
But producing the right kind of imagery is key. The good news is that your logo design creates the perfect framework for your social media strategy. Use your brand style guide to create a signature color palette for your social network feeds -- which studies say make a marketing message 40 percent more effective -- and incorporate your versatile logo design throughout various images.
Men’s grooming company Harry’s promotes their brand through a cohesive blue color palette, modern product shots, and user-generated content, showing that Harry’s is a high-quality product line that consumers know, trust and love.
Improves Email Marketing
Email marketing is 40 times more effective at securing new customers than Facebook and Twitter and has the highest conversion rate. With proper branding, you can capitalize on those click-throughs to grow your business.
Email marketing reinforces your brand identity while allowing consumers to engage with the company -- something they desire to do when they consent to receive emails. And branding itself is more than just a logo -- it is the way in which consumers view your brand. Your banner images, fonts sizes, styles, and colors, and calls to action should all reflect what you present on your website design, print designs, and social media channels. This will help increase conversions while promoting the overall brand.
Need some inspiration? Clothing retailer Forever21 incorporates engaging animated GIFs, bold text that appeals to their target young demographic, and a sans-serif logo and header that resembles the menu on their website design, re-enforcing consistency and appealing to their consumers well.
Betters User Experience
Successful branding should increase customer loyalty and awareness while minimizing confusion. Studies overwhelming show that a consistent brand experience across all channels increases the likelihood that consumers will interact with it.
What’s more? Sixty percent of consumers have more positive feelings about a brand after consuming branded content from it -- and since user experience is all about cultivating positive feelings associated with your business, it seems like a strong brand is a major win for UX.
Pampers executes strong branding across their website well. Their playful logo design influences the color scheme found on their website, which caters to new and expecting mothers. The website isn’t just an e-commerce site for babies, though -- instead, the brand includes creative content marketing in the form of guides and interactive quizzes, improving the overall user experience.
Facilitates Partnerships & Collaborations
Designing a strong logo and well-defined brand allows you to place parameters around your customers wants and needs. By maintaining this structure, you can better determine professional partnerships that will breed successful campaigns.
When you’re looking for other businesses to collaborate with, industry and location don’t matter as much as your demographic. If your brands both aim for the same people with the same interests, a collaboration will likely prove fruitful.
GoPro and Red Bull have a longstanding partnership, collaborating on events and campaigns that appeal to young, athletic and adventurous consumers. Their partnership culminating in an epic 2014 Super Bowl ad called Stratos, which equipped daredevil Felix Baumgartner with a GoPro camera as we saw him jump from outer space, embodying the exciting experiences of both brands in a single ad.
Check out DesignRush’s list of top-rated branding companies above and compare branding firms by experience, leadership, cost, case studies and more.
