So, you want to start a small business, but you’re hesitant because of the costs involved. Small business branding doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg, but a small business without a brand is unlikely to survive the competitive atmosphere of strong brands.
We’ve been around enough small businesses and have communicated extensively with owners, CEOs, and marketers to give some real tangible numbers before you start.
Branding is essentially giving an identity, and therefore, a reputation to your product/service/company. Your brand is what turns your first-time buyers into lifelong customers/clients. It helps turn someone who is neutral about your business into a die-hard fan. Small business branding is taking your identity and turning it into something that will make an impact and influence people to love your business.
Here are the top benefits you’ll enjoy as a result of proper branding.
- Brand recognition
- Consistent experience for customers
- Connects your business with customers
More specifically, here’s what most companies include to make their brand come to life:
- Mission: When you have a particular mission statement, it helps customers understand exactly what you are about. Some customers will establish an emotional connection with you because they respect your mission.
- Values: This is huge for customers. They want to understand what you really care about. Your values, and ultimately, your customers’ values are what will create the strongest connection.
- Guidelines: Having some guidelines in place is what helps cement your identity. Without guidelines, you’ll just seem like everyone else. Your guidelines can include business goals, decision-making templates, and specific colors, fonts, and brand voice.
- Logo: Your logo becomes the face of your company. It is arguably the most important thing about your business because it’s the fastest way that a customer can recognize you.
- Website: Your website might be beautiful, or it might be ugly, but it doesn’t matter if your website doesn’t communicate your brand. The primary objective of a website is to give people a presentation of what your brand is all about. Click here to learn how to find the best website designer for your needs.
- Positioning: I’ts essential to analyze your brand and its place amongst all the other brands. What makes it stand out? How does it compare to other providers of similar products and services?
- Other stuff: When it comes to small business branding, you don’t have to stop here, and most companies don’t stop here. You can try all kinds of things to improve your branding communication. You can try business cards, event flyers, custom product packaging, and the list goes on forever.
There is no doubt that time and energy are needed for a good brand. Don’t take shortcuts or assume that your brand is not as important as the quality of your product or service. If you’re running a small business, it’s important to understand that this phase will probably be on you. You’ll need to dedicate time aside to specifically work on your branding because it’s very easy to skip this step. Yet, this is also why so many companies fail.
Establishing your mission and values is not something you want to outsource. Perhaps you could use some help in refining your ideas, but you and your immediate team should establish the core message and core values.
It might seem like branding doesn’t really have to cost money. That’s certainly true if you have all the pieces necessary to establish a convincing brand. However, we’ll go over what your costs will look like assuming you’ll need some assistance like 99.99% of entrepreneurs and small business owners do.
As you know, your logo and visual presence represent your brand. To make sure your logo and visual presence resonate with your target audience, you might opt to hire a designer. You may want to try and go it alone, but this might lead to tons of wasted hours and dollars in the long run. If your visuals are not consistent and don’t represent your brand’s specific look and feel, it’ll be a huge loss.
Some may use Fiverr or 99designs for cheap logos, but you do get what you pay for. Consider this, would a seasoned designer who knows what they’re doing charge five dollars for a design?
For a small business, logos can cost anywhere from $0 to $3000. However, we provide packages from $299 to $799.
For more info on how much a logo costs, click here.
It’s important to get a functional website that will take care of your customers’ needs, but there’s more to it than that. Many websites run into glitches and not-so-fun technical difficulties that can run a business into the ground. We recommend working with a professional designer for this one. A professional website designer can anticipate these problems and provide you with an easy-to-use website without all the failures of generic websites.
Domains usually cost around $20 per year.
Revision Agency’s web design services run anywhere from $1,299 to $2,899. The Platinum service includes CMS Setup, Theme Install, Elementor Plugin, Domain (1 Year), and eCommerce functionality.
Don’t beat yourself up for not figuring this out yourself. It’s a tough thing to establish. Your brand positioning and strategy will be responsible for driving most of your decisions as a business.
If you have a small budget, you may want to hire a consultant. They can spend a few days with your core team to learn your core values and help you articulate them.
However, if you have a larger budget, you can hire a freelancer or agency to train your staff to stay on brand. They can help you integrate your brand position and strategy into the core of your company.
The cost for a small budget business would be somewhere between $1,500 and $25,000.
Your brand is your business’ identity. Establishing your small business brand does cost money. If you are diligent, you can certainly find more affordable options that still provide you with great quality. It’s very important that you understand what you’re paying for. We also have a guide that shows you how to hire the best website design company, which you can read here on our blog.
Did we miss anything? Was this article helpful? Please let us know in the comments below.
