Branding Cost For Small Businesses
Small businesses often overlook branding as a part of their brand marketing journey. It is because they consider themselves as a business and not a brand. Though honestly, it does not matter the size of the brand when it comes to branding. Good branding increases the value of a company, provides employee motivation, building customer trust and helps in acquiring new customers.
Branding for small businesses can be a really helpful tool as it can help them with an increased revenue and a certain perception towards a particular product. One of the major aspects that defines a successful business depends on branding. Small businesses can aim towards being a bigger business with a distinctive branding strategy.
Though many small businesses don’t even consider branding as they believe it requires a huge budget. While this may be a possibility, we think it majorly depends on how a business’ objective and marketing goals. It depends on how smart a brand can be in terms of making a distinctive image for their business. While the branding budget can range anywhere from $1,000 to $30,000, it depends on how well your strategy is.
So, in order to give you more clarity,
How Much Does Branding Cost For Small Businesses? [7 TIPS TO CONSIDER]
Let us take a detailed look:
1. Cost of brand Identity
Your brand identity is defined by your brand’s mission, vision and your business goals. It can be as basic as your brand name to developing a tagline for your business. While this may be an easy task, if we were to talk about professionals, creating an amazing brand identity falls right under the ally of a branding agency.
A branding agency is a group of marketing professionals that help in creating a distinctive image of any business. Most agencies charge by the hour for providing creative and strategic consultation related to your branding strategy.
The charges can be anywhere from $150 – $300 for a range of services that include providing you a company name, tag line, brand positioning, brand story and messaging. This can set you back almost $1,000 to $5,000 because it takes a lot of strategizing and revisions to come up with a strong and permanent solution.
2. Cost of Market Research
One of the things that define your branding costs is your market research. Market research provides an in-depth analytics of your competitors, your target audience and your current brand positioning. It is one of the basic steps to develop a strong strategy keeping your target audience in consideration. The costs can range anywhere from $1,000 to $7,000 which includes competitor analysis, SEO Audits and focus groups which help in creating a better understanding of your audience.
3. Cost of Logo Design
Your logo defines your brand. It provides your company’s glance in the most attractive way using text, images and symbols. A great logo design is helpful in creating a distinct identity, your brand’s recall value and customer trust. It also helps in making your brand more recognizable for your audience. Agencies usually charge anywhere from $2,500 to $8,000 for developing a logo design. It provides 3-5 different versions of the logo, PNG & JPEG files, Illustrator and Photoshop Files, logo in white, black and blank backgrounds and a variety of mock-ups.
Also, if you think spending this much on a logo is too much, you can also use the services provided by online design agencies which charge anywhere from $200 – 1000 depending on your requirements. Our expert designers at Designfier can help you get a professional logo design!
4. Cost of Visual Style Guide
Visual Style Guide, as the name suggests is a guide that incorporates a list of visual assets that help in creating visuals that have a more consistent look across all platforms. A visual style guide can cost anywhere from $2,500 – 5,000 and consists of design elements such as logo design, typography, brand colours and other integrating design elements.
5. Cost of Editorial Style Guide
An editorial style guide consists of guidelines for your brand’s messaging. It helps in defining the voice and the tone of your brand’s messaging. It provides messaging cues to allow you to interact with your audience across all media channels. It is one of the most important parts of branding and costs anywhere from $1,500 – 4,000. A good branding agency or an experienced copywriter can help you in getting an effective Editorial Style Guide.
6. Cost of Brand Guidelines
Also known as a Brand Book, is a list of guidelines that define your business image, visual assets, brand voice and tone. It consists of your visual style guide as well as the editorial style guide. It is an important document as it helps in making a brand look consistent and more effective. It also helps a business to function as an internal marketing material to help new employees and agencies you will work with in the future.
It can cost anywhere from $3,000 – 4,000. If you go for a Brand Book, you might get a better rate than creating your visual style guide and editorial style guide separately.
7. The Total Cost of Branding
So, as we can see, there are a lot of variables when it comes to costs involved with branding. If we were to add all those numbers, we would reach a total range of $5,000 to 30,000 for efficient branding for a small business.
Now, we have to understand that it is a range and it can vary from everything else. If you were to have a team of experienced professionals, you can save a lot in these investments. Like having a designer can help you with the logo design costs and other design requirements. Similarly you can create your own style guides based on your experiments with different colours to analyse your audience’s reaction.
Branding is the foundation of your identity. It strengthens your business and makes it more attractive for your audience. It should definitely be one a part of your marketing strategy. Now that you have an idea about costing, you are all set to provide a unique identity for your business!
