What Does A Branding Agency Do?
The best branding agency helps define your business’s mission, products, services, core values, and personality.
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, top branding agencies:
- 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.
This consistent presentation that the best branding companies create helps consumers identify your business and products more readily and create a human-like connection with your business.
This 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.
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.
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, a top branding firm 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 the best branding firm 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, top 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.
Understanding which objectives you need to reach is the key to choosing the best branding firm for your needs because it will help you find the creative branding agency that offers the services you need to succeed.
Then, inquire about how the top branding companies plan to fully understand and develop your identity and translate that to a successful brand identity.
Learn About A Branding Company’s Prior Experience
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 that a creative branding agency can create, campaigns that the top branding companies can execute and results they can deliver.
Understand A Creative Branding Agency’s Potential Return On Investment (ROI)
At the end of the day, when you enlist the best 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.
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.
10 Questions To Ask A Branding Firm Before You Hire Them
The following questions will help you discover a branding company’s expertise, previous experience, and learn whether or not the best branding companies 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 campaigns or 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?
Check out DesignRush’s list of top-rated branding companies above and compare branding firms by experience, leadership, cost, case studies and more.
