How To Budget for Branding Services [With Template]

Brand identity is how a business portrays itself and often how consumers perceive them. Building a strong brand identity is key to not just showcasing your brand’s personality, but also in differentiating your business from others in the market, growing brand awareness, and fostering customer loyalty. 

Therefore, it’s extremely important for businesses to invest in building out their brand. 

While the cost of branding services varies depending on what you hope to accomplish, here’s what you need to know to create an effective branding budget. 

Develop your brand identity or refresh the look and feel of your business by hiring a branding expert. Search top branding agencies on Clutch. 

What Goes Into a Branding Budget? 

Developing a brand identity that stands out in your industry requires more than developing a few images. In order to communicate company values, the benefits of your product, and effectively foster customer loyalty, you need to conduct extensive research. With this information, you can create a more effective brand strategy and develop high-quality brand materials. 

Your branding budget should include everything your business needs to develop or refresh your brand identity. Here’s what your branding budget could include: 

• Market research is the process of gathering data about target audiences, competitors, and more in order to inform your brand strategy.  
• Logo design helps customers recognize and connect with your brand. It can include text, shapes, colors, and illustrations. 
• Graphic design can help convey your brand image and message. Whether you need images for your website, emails, or signage, a graphic designer can deliver creative consistent with your brand identity. 
• Naming is important because it helps companies position themselves in the market. It must be unique, descriptive, and memorable in order to resonate with consumers. 
• Copywriting helps companies portray their tone and voice. How your business uses language will help you establish your brand identity.  
• Web design is one of the most prominent branding materials your company has to offer. It is often how potential customers find your brand and, therefore, is essential to making a first impression. Additionally, the look and feel of your website impacts how consumers perceive your brand. 
• Packaging design, such as delivery boxes and containers, are a great way to promote your brand. Whether you want to convey company values (like sustainability), increase brand recognition, boost sales, or make storage more efficient, packaging designers can help. 

Of course, what you need to include in your branding budget depends on the goals of your project and the deliverables you hope to receive. For example, a company just refreshing their brand probably does not need to budget for naming services. However, be sure to include everything in your budget and conduct research to determine how much each item will cost. 

How To Budget For Branding Services

1. Outline the scope of your project
2. Set aside a certain amount for branding
3. Consider hiring a branding agency or consultant
4. Allot a certain amount for market research
5. Design branding materials
6. Budget for several iterations

Set Goals & Outline the Scope of Your Project

The scope of your project is probably the biggest factor that will influence how much your branding project will cost. 

Creating a completely new brand from scratch, including naming your business, designing a new website, choosing colors and typography, developing templates, establishing editorial guidelines, and designing a logo can be an extensive process. Because this process can be so time-consuming and resource-intensive, branding can get expensive. 

However, some companies don’t need to start from scratch. Some just plan to refresh their brand by updating some of their images or updating their website. In these instances, branding can be quite affordable. 

By outlining exactly what you hope to accomplish through your branding project and what deliverables you hope to attain, you can create a detailed budget.    

Set Aside a Certain Amount for Branding

The most important part of creating a branding budget is making sure you don’t overspend. Especially for new businesses that don’t have a lot of funding and are building their brand from scratch, it’s important to limit expenses. 

How much you spend on branding depends on what you hope to achieve, how big your business is, and what you can afford. Even if your business can only afford to spend a few hundred dollars to design your website, that’s a great place to start. As your business grows, you can build out your brand identity more thoroughly. 

Once you have a set budget in mind, you can allocate your funds to support the branding efforts you think are most important for your business goals or require the most work. 

Consider Hiring a Branding Agency or Consultant 

Because your brand image is so important, hiring an expert is worth the expense. Branding agencies have the expertise to understand your customers well while providing objective opinions that can help your business differentiate it from others in your industry. 

Additionally, they often have experienced teams full of designers, brand strategists, and market researchers who can help you create a unique brand identity. Unless your organization has a team of graphic designers and marketers who can fill these roles, it can be difficult to complete a branding project without external help. 

Usually, brand agencies charge hourly rates for their services. Companies planning to work with a branding agency need to account for these fees. Because of their hourly rates, the cost of the partnership will likely depend on the deliverables they will be creating and how much time it takes for them to create them. 

To save money, some companies choose to hire a freelancer rather than an agency. While their teams aren’t as robust, they can still provide many of the same services. They can also be brought in to work with your team and provide additional support temporarily.  

Allot a Certain Amount for Market Research

Market research is an important first step in creating a brand identity. By conducting surveys, using public data, conducting a competitive analysis, or forming focus groups, companies will understand more about how to position themselves in the marketplace. 

Market research can help companies understand their audience so they can be targeted more effectively. They will also be able to identify their own value proposition so they can develop a brand identity that appeals to consumers. Finally, a competitive analysis will help them differentiate their business from their competitors. 

With the information you’ve gathered through market research, you can begin to formulate your brand strategy. A brand strategy is the approach in which you build out your brand identity. For example, this includes how your name, logo, colors, and website convey your brand’s voice, values, and mission. 

The cost of market research depends on what methods your business plans to use as well as how much data you collect. Ranging from just a few hundred dollars for qualitative interviews to $50,000 for quantitative research, there are a few ways to collect market research. 

While market research is a valuable tool for companies looking to refresh their brand or take it to market, it is important to remember that it is just a fraction of your branding project. Consider what information you would like to know ahead of time and allocate a fraction of your budget to market research. 

Design Branding Materials 

With the results from your market research and a brand strategy in place, branding teams can begin producing brand materials. Again, your branding budget will depend on what brand materials you need for your project. 

Branding materials include: 

• Brand documentation 
• Logos 
• Editorial style guide 
• Powerpoint, email, and stationery templates 
• Images and videos 
• Web Design 

Consider that certain brand materials, such as web design, can be more time- and resource-consuming, adding that to the scope of your project can increase branding pricing significantly. More basic brand documentation, such as a logo design or choosing brand colors is less labor-intensive and will keep your branding budget more affordable. 

Depending on the scope of your branding project, you will have various team members such as graphic designers, web designers, copywriters, and more working together to bring your life together. It’s also important to note that these services may charge different hourly rates. 

When creating your branding budget and talking to branding service providers, be sure to consider how having each of these team members will impact the overall cost of your project. 

Budget for Several Iterations 

Even the best branding agencies aren’t likely to deliver exactly what you want in the first go around. 

In fact, most branding agencies will have an initial meeting with your leadership team to get a better understanding of your brand, then they will provide several options for names, colors, and logos. From there, you will be able to discuss what you like and dislike about the options they provided. 

With that feedback, they will go through more iterations and repeat the process until you’ve narrowed it down to your final brand name or logo. This process ensures communication between your internal team and the branding agency and that you’re happy with the final product. 

However, the more iterations you go through, the more expensive it will be because agencies charge hourly rates.

Sometimes when you hire a branding agency, they will offer different packages in which they will outline the number of revisions they will go through. Generally, packages with more revisions, branding concepts, and revisions will be more expensive. 

Before hiring a branding agency, be sure to ask about their process and exactly what will be included in their quote. 

Branding Budget Template 

Download the branding budget template. 

Factors For Brand Pricing

While some companies spend several hundred thousand dollars on branding, others only spend a few hundred to get their business off the ground. How much they spend depends entirely on the scope of their branding project. 

However, to accurately estimate the cost of your project consider these factors: 

• Deliverables
• Number of revisions 
• Company niche 
• Company stage
• Industry

Be sure to include all of these factors in your branding budget. 

Invest In Your Brand Identity Without Blowing Your Budget 

Branding is important for differentiating your business, attracting new customers, and fostering brand loyalty. While developing a full brand identity can be expensive, even smaller branding projects can help set your business apart. 

When creating your branding budget, be sure to outline exactly what deliverables you hope to attain. Then allocate portions of your branding budget to each item based on how much it costs to produce them. Even if you can only afford a logo design right now, you can always hire a branding expert to build out your brand identity later on. 
 

About the Author

Hannah Hicklen Content Marketing Manager at Clutch

Hannah Hicklen is a content marketing manager who focuses on creating newsworthy content around tech services, such as software and web development, AI, and cybersecurity. With a background in SEO and editorial content, she now specializes in creating multi-channel marketing strategies that drive engagement, build brand authority, and generate high-quality leads. Hannah leverages data-driven insights and industry trends to craft compelling narratives that resonate with technical and non-technical audiences alike. 

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