So Why Is Branding So Important?
If done properly, your brand identity can be one of the most valuable assets you possess as it can display credibility and quality, especially if you are a service based business that doesn’t have tangible products or an online business without a storefront. It can also differentiate you from your competition and help to build a connection with your target audience.
Consistent branding across all channels increases revenue by 23%
What is Branding?
Branding involves creating an identity for your brand that uses many elements including your logo, colour theme, typography, business cards, style guide, marketing materials, packaging and your brands personality as well as how you want your business to be perceived in the eyes of your customers.
How do you build a successful brand?
Building a brand can be very time consuming as it’s not something that happens overnight. To give your business the best possible start and help to create a strong, successful brand, try and answer the following questions:
How do you want your business to be perceived in the eyes of your clients/customers?
What are your brand values?
How will you organise your business to be able to fulfil this perception?<
Once you have answered these questions you need to communicate the solution to your customers and always be clear and consistent with your messaging.
Here are some more great tips to help you learn to build a strong brand.
Example Of Brand Building?
My business provides the services of a Freelance Graphic Designer. I want clients to see me as professional, approachable and friendly and as a person who offers quality services at affordable prices with great customer service.
To do this I provide knowledgable information about the services I provide as well as examples of my work and experience on my website as well as on my facebook page. I also provide customer testimonials displaying the traits I possess, these help to offer social proof that what I state, is in fact true.
All of these messages are conveyed consistently using my brand colours, in a friendly, approachable way and with my logo displayed. This helps to create brand awareness and brand recognition, which means that when a potential client sees my social media posts they automatically associate me with professional graphic design services just by a quick glimpse of my logo and colours and they will remember my brand should they need my services now or in the future.
The different visual elements of Brand Identity
As a freelance graphic designer it is my job to create the visual elements of a brands identity, these include a logo, a brand style guide, business card, letterhead, flyers, leaflets, brochures and other marketing materials. This can also include a website which provides the physical evidence aspect of the marketing mix when a physical storefront is not possible.
Brand Logo Design
Your logo is one of the most important parts of your brand identity as it is the face of your business and the first point of contact with the outside world. It provides the first impression a person has of your company. If you portray a professional logo image, people will associate your business with quality and professionalism and they will most likely be more open to accept whatever it is that you’re offering them. There are many free logo design apps and websites on the internet professing the ability to create unique designs but how can they be unique when the likelihood is that many other people will be using the same design? Creating a great unique logo requires skill, using creative techniques including composition and typographic theory as well as experimenting with shapes, characters and letters, this is not something that can be created by logo generators.
If you do not take your company seriously, how can you expect your customers to?
A professional logo is simple yet memorable and can be scaled down without losing clarity.
Take a look at the brand logo quiz below, these brands have excelled at brand building and recognition, it’s no wonder that they’ve been around a long time.
Brands Logo Design Quiz
These brands provide great examples of the benefits of professional logo design and brand building. They are even recognisable just by showing a portion of their logo and their brand colours!
Can you recognise them all? Scroll down to the bottom for the answers 
How much does a logo design cost in the UK?
If you’ve already visited a few freelance designer websites or contacted a few local graphic designers, you’ll find that there is a huge variation in prices. In Doncaster alone, a logo design could cost you anywhere between £50 to £4000!
These rates vary a lot based on quality of work, experience and agency overheads. Just like any other profession, graphic designers have an average hourly rate. In the UK this is approximately £25. With this in mind, a £50 logo has taken approximately 2 hours to create (if that), nowhere near enough time to research and follow certain processes to develop a strong brand image that most reputable designers follow. If you pay this amount for a logo you run the risk of having something that is almost certainly not unique, could even be simple clipart or even directly copied from elsewhere. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is!
My startup branding packages are extremely competitive and I also provide info on how to choose a reputable graphic designer here.
Brand Logo Quiz Answers
- Disney
- Pepsi
- Carlsberg
- Unilever
- Burger King
- Red Bull
- Rolex
- Levis
- Shell
- Apple
- Lacoste
- Gucci
- BBC
- Harley Davidson
- Costa
- KFC
