Why You Shouldn’t Rush the Branding Process

Taking the time to build a strong brand foundation is the key to easier marketing and long-term business growth.

On the flip-side, rushing this process can actually make everything harder on you.

Before creating any visuals for your brand, you will want to sit down and get to know your brand on a deeper level. After all, if you don’t understand your brand, how can you expect anyone else to?

In this post, I’ll be going over what a strong brand is not, some things you can do to create a stronger brand and how long the branding process generally takes.

What a Strong Brand is Not:

1. Purchasing a single premade logo for $20 and believing you now have a brand.
2. Marketing to anyone and everyone. 
3. A DIY or cheaply-made website that isn’t mobile-friendly, has broken links, doesn’t load quickly, doesn’t have call-to-actions, has too much text and not enough visuals, uses blurry graphics or images that are not well-lit, doesn’t strategically incorporate SEO, looks like it was made in the 90’s 😉 , etc.
4. Creating a brand that looks just like someone else’s.

How to Create a Stronger Brand:

1. Work with a professional brand designer who takes the TIME to get to know you, your mission, your core values, your target audience, what you do, how you do it, how you want your brand to look and feel, etc.
2. Sit down and figure out who your dream client is. Are they a certain gender or age group? What are their pain points? Where do they hang out? This will help you get a better idea of who you’re talking to, what you can create that will help them, and where to put most of your marketing efforts. 
3. Have your designer create cohesive, professional-looking visuals for your brand based on what you communicate to them about you and your business. These should reflect YOUR unique essence, energy, and vibe. You will want to have multiple logo options designed for you and will want to use the same colors and style in all your graphics so people instantly recognize your content when they see it. All of this will help you feel more confident promoting your brand, help you gain that know, like, trust factor, and help you STAND OUT from other brands that all look and sound the same.
4. Have your designer create a website that FEELS like you, MATCHES the rest of your branding, and works FOR you. There are a lot of factors that go into this – stuff you may not know about if you’re trying to design a website yourself or when you have someone design a quick website for you at a cheap price. I know this might seem like the best option when you’re just starting out and trying to save money, but you’re actually making things more difficult on yourself and leaving a lot of potential money on the table! So work with a designer who knows what they are doing and has helped others get results! It’s worth the return on investment and will help you gain traction right from the beginning.

Related:

• What is Branding and Why is it Important for Growing My Biz?
• Why You May Need More Than One Logo for Your Brand
• The 5 Types of Logo Variations to Consider for Your Brand

How Long Does it Take to Design a Professional Brand + Website?

To be honest, a lot of this depends on you, your particular business, your goals, what you need created, and how quickly you get your designer the things they need to create the things you need. 🙂 This includes things like inspiration (so your designer “gets” your vision), information, website copy, photos you want to use, getting your various business accounts set up, giving your designer timely feedback on design concepts, etc.

This is a collaborative effort with your designer and they will need to communicate with you just as you will need to communicate with your clients and customers on how you help them once your brand is launched. Communication is everything!

As a professional brand and website designer, I will have my clients sign off on each step of the process before moving forward with the next thing on the list of things I need to create (there is a particular order to this, for example, we aren’t going to create the website before the brand identity because that wouldn’t make any sense! You need the foundational elements first!)

Getting the client’s approval each step of the way ensures we are staying on the same page at all times and are always moving forward in the right direction. The last thing I want to do is guess what someone’s business is all about and spend hours or weeks of my time and energy creating a bunch of stuff that doesn’t match what the client was envisioning. This would cause me to have to go back and start all over again, which would cost my client twice as much time and money, and delay the launch of their shiny new brand.

This is why I get to know my clients from the beginning and have them fill out an in-depth brand questionnaire. It saves both of us a lot of time, money, and frustration, plus it helps me capture the essence of them and what they are all about. Then I bring all of that through their visuals and create an optimized website that is infuses together everything they are all about.

So to answer the question, I would say 1-3 weeks on average for the initial brand foundation (brand questionnaire, mood board, design of the logos, and any other marketing graphics they want). Then another 1-3 weeks on average for the website.

I’ve been able to get full brands and websites done and launched within 3 weeks for some clients! 

Feel free to check out my branding and website packages here + view my portfolio here.

Ready to Work with a Professional Designer?

A professional designer can help you create a strong brand and website that aligns with you and what you’re all about. It will help you feel confident to promote and show off because it truly feels like you. Just as your energy is magnetic, your brand will become an extension of you, magnetizing your ideal clients to you and helping you convert more leads into actual business with less effort. This ultimately means you’ll be getting your message out to more people, fulfilling your mission, and creating a bigger impact!

In addition, a strong brand will help you set your intention and give you guidelines to follow instead of being all over the place. A strong brand doesn’t confuse people, it stays grounded in its core values and mission and continues to communicate that through everything you put out there to the world.

Bottom line, a strong brand means less WORK on your end and more connections and conversions on auto-pilot. And good things take time!

If you’re done with the DIY and looking to create a strong brand + online presence, this is what I do!

Feel free to reach out! I get seriously get so excited about new design projects!