What Does the Small Business Branding Package Include?
Branding is more than a beautiful logo or attention-grabbing visual elements. If you’re reading this article, you are probably already aware of that and want more than just a logo. Branding helps build relationships with your audience, which eventually leads to more clients for you. You’ve likely arrived at this page because you’re searching for more information about small business branding packages, and you want to know what’s included in the branding package besides logos. Today I will go over my small business branding package to give you a better idea of what you can expect from a branding package specifically created for small businesses.
What is a small business branding package?
A small business branding package is a group of elements created to reflect your brand vision and establish brand consistency. These elements typically include a logo (and its variants), typography, messaging, graphic elements, a color palette, and a style guide. These elements, when used consistently over time, establish a unique brand style. That style will become associated with your brand and resonate with your ideal clients.
Who would benefit most from this branding package?
Branding is a great investment for a small business. It helps increase recognition, differentiates your brand from the competition, and supports your marketing efforts. Is a branding package perfect for every small business? Depending on the branding agencies and designers, the cost of a branding package varies, but most are a significant investment of time and money for small business owners. Branding packages may also be created for specific business stages.
For example, my branding package is perfect for small businesses that are growing and have a consistent cash flow. By the time a business reaches this stage, the owner has a better understanding of the brand and will have a firm foundation established for the business.
On the other hand, for a business that is just starting out, the owner may not have the time or money to dedicate to a small business branding package. In this situation, it may be better to get a quick start, focus on the processes, and validate the business to see if it’s going to work.
Generally, small business owners who have been running a business for one to two years are at a perfect stage for my full small business branding package.
What’s included in a small business branding package?
Each branding agency and designer has different offerings and processes, so you may want to do some research before deciding to work with them.
I’ll walk you through my small business branding package so you know what’s included.
My custom branding package includes these fundamental visual elements:
• Brand clarity
• Logo design
• Brand Identity
(typography, color palette, patterns, imagery)
• A brand style guide
Depending on your needs, you can add marketing collateral to this package as well.
Brand clarity session
We will spend 45-60 minutes discussing your brand strategy to ensure that I understand your brand vision. Since authenticity is such an important part of branding, I always make sure that I am in a relaxed state for our brand clarity session.
Once I’ve collected all the information from you and simplified the brand strategy, we will set one main concept to focus on.
In preparation for our clarity session, you will be asked to do a little homework to gain some clarity on your brand.
Complete the brand questionnaire form
The form includes questions about your business foundation, competitors, ideal clients, and brand personality.
The following are a few questions included on the questionnaire form:
What is your mission?
Who is your ideal client?
How are you different from your competitors?
What three keywords describe your brand personality?
To get a deeper understanding of your brand, you can also download my brand clarity workbook. This workbook helps to guide you through a process of self-discovery.
Create Pinterest inspiration boards
Sometimes words are not enough. A visual board is a perfect way to express our visual ideas and ensure that we are both heading in the same direction.
You will be asked to gather at least 15-20 images that represent the look and feel of your brand. While you are collecting images and creating inspiration boards in Pinterest, you will start to notice images with similar styles and color tones.
Most of my clients already have a vision of what they want their brand to be like. I listen carefully to understand what they’re trying to express to their audience.
The visual boards help me to identify their brand style, which is an important step in the process of building a logo and brand identity.
The more you can tell me about your brand, the greater our chances of creating a strong brand that connects with your ideal clients.
After our brand clarity call, the next step is to create a mood board based on all the information and images that you provided.
I will carefully select images that are meaningful for your brand and create one or two brand mood board options to choose from.
This process helps to establish your brand look and feel, which is an important step in developing a visual identity.
Logo design
Once we’ve established the look and feel of your brand, I sketch out logo ideas on paper and transfer them to Adobe Illustrator. First, I’ll show you two primary logo ideas. Then when you’ve chosen your favorite, I create a secondary logo and logo mark based on the primary logo design.
Brand identity
Once the logos are completed, I create simple and cohesive visual elements that align with your brand personality and audience preferences.
Color palette
I will put together a color palette for your brand. Generally, essential color palettes consist of five to six fundamental colors that include primary, secondary, neutral, and dark colors.
I usually create a minimal color palette. Why? It’s easy to use and it creates a memorable and impactful brand. Remember, you can always add brand colors as your business grows.
Typography
Selecting the right fonts for your brand image is important. The fonts help to create an emotional connection with your audience. When selecting typefaces, I consider the following items:
A few typefaces (no more than three)
Typefaces that have font families including light, light italic, regular, regular italic, bold, bold italic
Typefaces that are easy to read
Once I create all the visual elements, I put them together on a brand board, so you can experience the overall look and feel of your new brand style.
Brand style guide
When all the design work has been completed and approved, I put all the visual elements together in a 12-15 page document. The brand style guide provides easy-to-use guidelines on how our visual elements, such as our logo, color palette, imagery, and typography, should be used in print materials and digital platforms to maintain a consistent brand image across channels. Remember to refer to the brand style guide often whenever you’re working on your print or digital marketing materials.
Once the project is complete, I deliver all the final files via Dropbox. Initially, you may not know how to use all the files, so we will have a Zoom call to go over the files and to make sure you can use them for creating marketing materials.
What makes my branding package so special?
I use a simple and clean design approach to help your brand stand out and be easy to remember.
The internet is saturated with products and services. Even if you provide a superior quality product, it’s getting harder to stand out from the competition. How do you attract clients? You get their attention with simple and clean design. Simplicity creates clarity, and in a crowded digital landscape, simplicity cuts through the clutter.
I create a professional appearance that increases trust in your brand and allows you to raise your prices with confidence.
A brand with professional, high-quality visuals shows prospective clients that you care enough about your image to put in the time and effort needed to create superior aesthetics. A professional appearance will allow you to feel comfortable raising prices. In my experience working with a wide range of clients—from small businesses to large corporations—your business will prosper with agency-level design quality. You will feel confident and proud of your brand.
I create brand consistency with easy-to-use design assets to make marketing your brand easier.
I have over 15 years of design experience, and I’ve created marketing materials for various brands. First-time clients usually come to me with complicated brand elements, which makes it difficult to create brand consistency. Whether you hire a designer or create your own marketing materials, complicated visuals will cost you a lot of time and money; it will be a frustrating experience for both you and your designer. I do understand that creating visual content can be an overwhelming process, but I can help to simplify that process for you, so you can be at ease.
Are you interested in working together?
Small business branding packages include more than just your logo; they include all of the fundamental visual elements for your brand. Branding is a great investment for small businesses to help increase recognition, differentiate you from your competitors, and support your marketing efforts. Now that you understand the benefits of having a small business branding package, it’s time to get started on your branding.
Are you interested in working together to take your business to the next level with a small business branding package?
Book a free discovery call to see if we are a good fit to work together.
Are you unsure if you’re ready for this step? Contact me directly at info@natsuminishizumi.com with any questions you may have.
