What Does a Brand Agency Do
A branding agency can be many things for your business.
They can be your strategist, your creative, or your design team. The role of a branding agency is to create, plan, measure, and manage branding strategies for businesses, including support in advertising and other forms of promotion.
They offer logo design, brand messaging, brand positioning, voice, style guide, social media branding, etc.
It’s a lot of ground to cover, and branding agencies can only do so by immersing themselves in every facet of their client’s brand identities.
This applies to their basic principles, mission statements, messaging, and voice, among other things.
What Is Branding
The process of articulating a product’s or service’s unique selling proposition, or differentiator, that sets it apart from the competitors is branding.
Logos, taglines, jingles, and mascots are examples of branding tactics.
Yet branding today is so much more than just a look or a logo. It signifies the emotional “gut feeling” reaction a company can elicit from its customers.
Think about it, when consumers need to choose, how will they make their decisions?
Whatever motivates them, branding shapes the perception of your business in their minds and ultimately converts new customers into loyal buyers.
Examples of branding are Nike’s tagline “Just do it!” and Energizer with a bunny toy with a drum mascot.
Why Do You Need a Branding Agency
At some point or another, every business needs the services of a brand agency. As a branding agency ourselves, we like to think branding as a strategy that’s ongoing.
The knowledge and attitude of a brand agency will kickstart your thinking, promote debate, articulate messaging, and help you establish goals.
Brand agencies have experience developing the strategy and helping you get the message out there. For example, there may be branding agencies that specialize solely in design, while other agencies like ours specialize in strategy.
As part of a strategic branding process, agencies will focus on the message before attempting to tackle the look and feel. A brand agency will know how to rein in an existing brand, establish one from the ground up, or collaborate with you to evolve one that aligns with your strategy, vision, and values.
If your brand name is limiting your ambition or confusing your customers, it’s time to call a brand agency.
Branding campaigns begin with audits and competitor/market research. Taking the time to check out the competition is something every business needs to do.
How Does a Brand Agency Help Your Business
Branding agencies can help define your Brand Message, Identity, and Strategy
Brand messaging refers to your company’s words, language, and phrasing on its website and marketing materials.
This includes anything from product messaging to marketing messaging. Though logos, slogans, and taglines are important, your brand messaging is arguably more important.
Brand messaging encompasses what you can offer customers, how your products, services, and brand experience compare to competitors, and what customers get from you that they can’t get anywhere else.
Brand Research
Brand research is especially useful in the development and curation of strong, distinct brands.
Through objective, insight-based ideas and suggestions on product, service, or customer service plans, brand market research helps companies gain a competitive advantage.
Marketers, planners, and strategists may then make confident, educated decisions about target markets, price, positioning, distribution, and alliances, among other things.
How do brand agencies help you with this?
Brand agencies work to review, redefine, refresh and reconnect your brand with your stakeholders.
Using research, strategy, messaging, design, and planning, a brand agency will take you on a journey to build a brand you can be proud of, that helps your business grow and prosper.
For example, at Pastel Valley we love helping brands with keyword research to build content that’s relevant to their audience and likely to rank on Google. We then repurpose this content to build out a social strategy that’ll be useful to gain organic traffic.
Ultimately, gaining this insight will be the most valuable input in shaping the future of your brand.
Strategy
This is the most obvious way marketing agencies assist your company in growing.
Building your business without a solid strategy might result in confusion and unpredictable outcomes.
Unfortunately, this is how over 40% of businesses approach marketing.
A full-service branding agency can assist your company in developing a guiding strategy that will bring all areas of your marketing together.
Brand Identity and Guidelines
Brand identity is a collection of aspects that organizations employ to project the correct image to their customers and prospects.
Though the terms are occasionally used interchangeably, this differs from a brand’s image and overall branding.
Your brand’s identity is what your audience associates with it, and it helps you and your consumers connect. Customer loyalty and brand perception are both influenced by brand identity.
Branding agencies can assist you in creating a logo that catches the eye, establishes a distinct identity for your company, and showcases your values.
You may build a visual representation of your brand’s beliefs by combining different logos, fonts, and colors.
A common mistake many business owners make when first starting out is believing that a graphic designer’s logo is branding. Although graphic designers do have the talent to create beautiful logos, one without a strategy can set your business back.
Why?
Because it doesn’t help create consistency. This is why at Pastel Valley we offer brand guidelines that not only include a beautiful logo but also include color palette and fonts. These will be helpful to design a website or social temples that are consistent with your brand.
Design
Your logo design is your company’s initial impression.
It should promote brand recognition by assisting clients in recognizing your brand and providing information about your company.
For the most well-known firms, their emblems are sufficient to evoke strong emotions in their clients.
This is why rebranding is not something to take lightly.
When businesses change logos, it can be upsetting to some customers, with some even going so far as to condemn the brand merely because of the logo change.
Pepsi is one good example.
When the company redesigned its logo in 2008, it was widely panned.
Given that the new design cost $1 million, it’s no wonder that Pepsi chose to ignore the complaints and preserve the logo.
Rebranding
Deciding to rebrand your business shows a commitment to being relevant: to your consumer and the market.
Ultimately rebranding is a commitment to growth.
Rebranding is a marketing technique in which an established brand is given a new name, word, symbol, design, concept, or mix of these elements to create a unique, distinct identity in the minds of consumers, investors, competitors, and other stakeholders.
The usual goal of rebranding is to influence a customer’s perception of a product or service or the company overall by revitalizing the brand and making it seem more modern and relevant to the customer’s needs.
Rebranding is a financial investment, not a cost.
Working with a rebranding agency is the best approach to protect your investment and ensure that it generates the maximum possible returns.
Suppose you have limited experience with this process or are all too familiar with the potential pitfalls. In that case, hiring a rebranding agency is the most efficient way to go from one point to another.
How Much Does It Cost to Work with a Branding Agency
So you’re thinking about giving your company a “fresh new” facelift.
But how much would it cost, and how will you know if it is worthwhile?
How much does working with a branding agency cost? The answer is that branding prices vary.
We’d love to give you an estimate but the reality is this will vary for almost every project. For example, pricing can vary for a project only requiring branding guidelines vs one that requires this and additional mockup designs.
Feel free to reach out to us to provide you with accurate pricing.
Brand Like A Branding Agency
The reality is it doesn’t make sense for businesses to work with branding agencies, especially during the early stages.
However, branding is a strategy that should be running 24/7. It is arguable the one strategy that can make or break most businesses. Beyond an aesthetically pleasing brand identity, customers opt to do business with brands they know, like, and trust.
If you’re a new business starting out we recommend you use free tools like Canva to create a decent brand identity. Additionally, WordPress enables business owners to build decent-looking websites. Finally, check out our blog where we’ll cover these branding, web design, and brand strategy more in-depth.
We hope that by now you understand the value of proper branding. Now go brand for your conscious brand like never before!