Your brand is more than just a name, logo, or color scheme. It is who you are as a company at an elementary level. Branding dictates how clients feel about your company, and when done right, it can evoke an emotional response at every touch point. Branding services can help businesses with any aspects they might be struggling with, whether they need to build a brand identity from the ground up or find the right way to communicate their company values and core messaging through appealing graphic design.
If you will not effectively brand your company online and somewhere else, you will put some huge barriers in the way of your marketing efforts. Businesses with powerful brands retain loyal clients in the long run. Also, they have an easy time attracting new audiences because they already know what those businesses stand for.
What Does a Brand Agency Do?
Dedicated brand agencies can provide extensive services depending on their customer’s specific needs, ranging from brand design and brand strategy to brand development and brand management. However, anything and everything related to uplifting your business is on the table.
Common branding agency offerings include:
- Creating a brand identity from scratch.
- Rebranding developed businesses.
- Establishing brand positioning and messaging.
- Building a brand strategy.
- Creating company logo design.
- Formulating brand guidelines for style, design, and tone.
- Mapping out a social media strategy that aligns with the brand identity.
- Writing website copies and other digital assets that correctly reflect the brand voice.
It is a lot of ground to cover, and the only way branding agencies do this job is to fully involve themselves in every aspect of their customer’s brand identities. That includes their mission statements, core values, messaging, voice, and more.
Not all companies have a strong grasp on who they are as a brand or even where to start figuring that out. Branding agencies need to define the core principles and intangible qualities that make those companies stand out from the competition. What makes them unique and special? How can they sell that vision to their audience? Those are the questions a branding agency can answer.
Branding Services That Support Marketing Efforts
A branding agency approaches branding services from many angles, assisting businesses to develop, maintain or expand their brand in the best possible way. In particular, these six services can elevate your marketing strategy with a clear focus on who you are and what you have to offer.
Logo Design
First impressions are significant, and for many potential clients, your logo will provide the first glimpse of your brand. A company logo design is the face of your business, and it tells prospective customers everything they need to know about your organization right up front.
A perfectly-designed logo supports marketing efforts in numerous ways.
Brand Awareness
Think of any consumer brand virtually. What immediately comes into your mind? Most likely, it is their logo. For leading brands, logos cross cultural boundaries and even international borders, becoming easily recognizable around the world. Take Coca-Cola, for example. By all accounts, it is one of the most recognizable brands in the world. It does not matter if the logo is written in English or uses a cursive script that reached high popularity 15 years ago. 90% of people around the globe know it when they see it.
That may be a great example though, but it also shows how necessary a good logo is to catch the eye of customers in crowded marketplaces.
Brand Identity
Logos can tell potential clients a great deal about your company without having to say anything. Spencerian Script of Coca-Cola reflects the company’s long history and a core product that has remained virtually unmodified for more than 100 years. People prefer Coca-Cola because it is a dependable product. Also, they know what they are getting from it.
Sticking with an outdated logo year after year helps convey the message that the product has stood the test of time and there is no need to fix what is not broken.
Brand Messaging
What can your offer clients? How do your branding services and experience compare with the competitors? What do clients get from your company that they can’t get elsewhere?
Your message should consider the questions more. It defines what your business is permeating everything from marketing materials to taglines and product descriptions.
Everything your company says should have a meaning, and it should always reflect your brand messaging.
Working with a top branding company, businesses can receive expert guidance on how to create the right message for their audience and their organization. In some cases, an existing approach may need a slight tweak, while in others, a full-scale rebranding is important.
Brand Positioning
Brand positioning can easily be considered a subset of brand messaging, but it is necessary enough to warrant its own discussion.
In brief, brand positioning is how you make yourself stand out from the competition. What do you bring to the table that is entirely different from others in your market? If you don’t have a clear answer to that question, it is going to be difficult to convince potential clients to choose your business over another one.
A top branding company can help you with that. Through organizational analysis and market research, they can determine what clients want, what your company can realistically offer, and how your offerings compare with the competitors.
Your positioning in the market and in the minds of clients is a proxy for your total brand value. It is also the ROI of being who you are.
Brand Voice
Brands are like people having their own particular way of expressing themselves. Some are aspirational, some are friendly, some are irrelevant, and some are professional. Therefore, creating a brand voice and sticking to it across all touchpoints, marketing campaigns, and client interactions is very important. A strong brand voice strengthens your company’s identity, and any deviation can negatively affect the perception of your business.
However, several companies need help identifying what actually their brand voice should be and how to establish it. Again, branding agencies thoroughly analyze your business, company, culture, and customer base to determine what the right approach should be.
Style Guide
Style guides can lay out your brand messaging, voice, design principles, and more in detail. They instruct your business partners and staff members on what color schemes to incorporate into design layouts, the actual language to use in different scenarios, and how to effectively communicate with your target audience.
In short, it is your branding bible. Branding agencies can help create detailed style guidelines, so there is never any confusion about how to represent your business in the best way.
Social Media Branding
Many businesses struggle with social media branding. They need to discover a way to stay true to their brand messaging, voice and values while taking advantage of social media’s inherent powers. As it is a difficult balancing act, a lot of businesses wind up falling flat on their faces.
Therefore, working with a branding agency can be so helpful. They have an understanding of what content works on various social media networks and how to effectively use those platforms. Their branding services can also help you identify key principles and package those values in a message that resonates with your target audience.