Without a brand, there won't even be a business. A brand is your distinct identity, establishes your company as attention-worthy, and inspires customers to take action. Your brand is your way of building relationships with customers.
When a brand exudes personality, it attracts a valuable audience. It provides your audience with a point of connection and relatability. People personify a brand and relate to what it stands for. When your brand’s voice resonates with the buyer's needs, the chances of winning that sale are increased.
Assuming you're starting from zero with absolutely nothing at hand, a conservative investment to make a brand roughly starts at Au $30,000–$56,000. This estimate includes a brand style guide, branded collateral, website, copy and content. Remember that your actual costs will vary depending on your specific situation.
Once you've established your brand, you'll need to continue investing in marketing and advertising to build brand awareness and visibility. How much you spend on ongoing marketing depends on your industry, competition, and overall marketing strategy.
There are many components to a brand.
Let’s break down the pieces and cost so you can better plan your go-to-market strategy.
Estimate: $1,000- $2,000
Like people, if you want your brand to stand out, it must have a fantastic personality. It has to be unique with a value proposition that’s sure to encompass specific needs. The main objective of a brand identity is to ensure that your brand stands out from the rest by being easily recognisable or positioning your brand in a way that reflects your voice.
When creating your brand identity, ask yourself if you want to “stay in line” or “stand out.”
The choice is obvious.
When looking to stand out, use colours, elements, tones and language your competitor doesn’t use. Do not copy their logo or style for inspiration; instead, use your thought and inspiration when building your brand identity.
Estimate: $4,000- $8,000
A branding guide is a document that outlines your business's branding strategy. It includes your brand messaging, your target audience, your brand voice, and more. A branding guide helps you stay on brand and ensure that your marketing materials work together to create a cohesive brand identity.
A style guide ensures that multiple contributors make clear and cohesive output that reflects the corporate style and ensures brand consistency with everything from design to language.
Your brand guide should include the following:
Colour Palette
Consistent elements across your brand allow consumers to trust your brand and increase your credibility.
Estimate: $4,000- $8,000
Depending on your industry, there are different types of brand collateral.
The brand collateral is any physical or digital material promoting your brand. This could include things like
Business cards
Anything with your brand's name, logo, or identity can be considered part of your brand collateral.
Your brand collateral helps you create a consistent look and feel for the brand. This is important because it makes your brand more recognisable and memorable. It also helps build trust with your audience by making your brand appear more professional and credible.
The brand style guide gives you a roadmap to follow as you create and curate your business's content. It helps you stay on brand and ensure that your marketing materials work together to create a cohesive brand identity.
In other cases, some brands also consider the following as collateral:
Estimate: $8,000- $16,000
Having a website is essential for any business. Customers expect to find information about your business online, and a website is the best way to provide it. In addition, a website can help you build trust with potential and current customers.
A website is a powerful tool that can help you boost your brand in several ways. If you still need a website for your business, this is the time to consider one!
Your website can be updated and upgraded to match the current needs of the business. You'll attract better-quality connections if your website has accurate core messaging for your business. Allow your website to tell your audience who and what your brand stands for. Use your website as a 24/7 sales tool with all the necessary information a potential customer needs.
Estimate: $1,000- $3,000.
Your brand is more than just your logo and your colour palette. It's also the words you use to describe your business and the content you share with your audience. In short, your brand is the total of everything your business says and does.
That's why copy and content are so essential to your brand. The right words can help you communicate what your brand is all about and connect with your audience deeper. In addition, great content can help you build trust and credibility with your audience by correctly communicating your message to your audience.
You think you’re communicating your message well enough?
Think again. Many businesses and brands aren’t huge fans of compelling content and just put out whatever they know without the help of a professional.
This is a huge mistake.
Copy and content are a large part of your brand’s make or break. So don't fall into the trap of ignoring copy and content.
As business owners, we often get caught up in our jargon, acronyms, and inside info without realising how much we've already isolated our customers. Professionally written copy and content ensures that your brand’s voice is heard and delivered in a compelling yet easy-to-understand manner, so your customers don’t get caught in a web of industry slang.
Always include content in your branding mix to focus more on your audience’s needs and less on yours. You’ll find that this reasonable investment adds value to every aspect of your brand.
Commonly, start-up brands include these in their copy and content matrix:
Estimate: $3,000- $6,000
The above cost estimate is a basic starter package where you can have a customer database and a few useful functions. However, if you wish to go for more functions such as app integration, email tracking, etc., a CRM could cost you $6,000+.
A CRM is a powerful tool as a central repository for all your business processes and activities. Watch this short vlog on how a CRM can be helpful to your business to find other reasons why a CRM is a must-have.
Not only will a CRM give you visibility over sales deals and opportunities, but it will also allow you to identify what aspect of your business needs improvement. Get your data and processes organised as a start-up, store data, measure results, and so many more can be done through a CRM.
When a CRM is set up correctly, it creates a great customer experience through automation and integration.
Estimate: $5,000- $10,000 + vendor costs.
Inbound Marketing is any channel that creates a thought leadership market. This can include targeted content and a landing page on social media. The key to inbound marketing (or any strategy) is consistency in everything; messaging and collateral.
It’s great to use a template so that all collaterals and messaging looks the same despite the type of content you release. But, most of all, a reader feels more empowered to take action when he knows that he sees a consistent flow of content and collateral.
Outbound marketing is a type of marketing that involves the use of various marketing channels to reach and engage with potential customers. Unlike inbound marketing, which focuses on attracting customers to your business, outbound marketing is all about actively going out and reaching consumers where they already are.
Some common outbound marketing channels include paid advertising, email marketing, cold-calling, and direct mail. While outbound marketing can be a great way to reach new customers, it's essential to use it in conjunction with inbound marketing to create a holistic marketing strategy.
There are a lot more success metrics for inbound marketing that can be measured. Expert opinion from the industry shows that the above ten are good starting points for business owners to gauge where their marketing efforts are at. It is important to look into the channels that are working best for you. From there you can make changes and adjustments to low-performing channels or stick with the good-performing ones and focus on that.
To help you with more specific and targeted results, you need to tie your website into a good CRM. Ucidity uses Hubspot because of the many possibilities you can do with it. Here are some reasons why Hubspot is our CRM of choice and how it has made things easier and delivered more accurate results for us:
Let’s talk about the best options to gauge your business’s marketing efforts.