[futhey]

Just an FYI to other commenters, Branding/Identity is design work (not just a name or domain name), typically resulting in versatile logo work, writing style guides, a tagline, typefaces, colors, visual language development, business cards, comprehensive print collateral, and a set of branding style guidelines.

The foundations should exist so that you can easily develop this into an application or web style guide as well, and make 90% of your future design decisions from this foundational work.

The typical team (in the US) would charge about $15,000 – $100,000 (depending on the size of the client and scope of work). You're getting 1 person for a few weeks @ $15k, and a small team for 3-6 months on the high end.

You're not really paying for the individual pieces here. What you're really paying for is a lot of research, experimentation, development, and refinement. When you pay $100,000 for a world-class brand/identity, 90% of what you're really paying for is for very talented people to try things, fail, and discard them for something much better.

Funded startups with customers & product-market fit tend to go to the $25k-$50k range. That's not going to get you world-class, but it's going to get you "polished & consistent". You might do this again post- Series-A.

If you don't yet have customers (to research and understand), or product-market fit, invest much less. If you have these things, investing in branding will accelerate your marketing, and reduce the cost of future design. It's definitely worth it, and you're going to pay to have it done eventually, whether you explicitly hire someone to do it, or you let your designers frustratingly "figure it out" as they go.

Not establishing branding and identity work early is like allowing your programmers, as you hire them, to each make their own decisions as to what technologies they want to use. You wouldn't seriously invest in developing a large application without architecting it, and you don't design a large application without foundational branding and identity work to support that.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

[codingdave]

I'd say the design work is Step One in branding, but identity is a bigger picture. Using the standard example of Kleenex as branding so strong that it became a household word, they could redesign everything, but their identity is still solid. That is your final branding and identity goal.

So the design work is an important piece when starting. But it has to be backed up by product, and just as importantly, by service. The three together make up the identity with which people will associate your brand. Don't over-invest in one, while leaving the other two behind.

[double0jimb0]

Meh. You provide a great strategy for keeping professional branding people and agencies in business, but not for growing the product company's sales. You are just confusing people.

$100k invested into improving the product offering to better solve problems for the customer WILL "accelerate your marketing".

[jacquesm]

God forbid other talented professionals charge rates compared to the value they bring to the table. Just imagine!

Better marketing beats better products most of the time so it's hardly wasted money and in fact may be a better way to spend some of your start-ups $ than to spend it just on development.

[double0jimb0]

Stop the presses! My apologies, I thought we were talking about product companies actually making money, not "talented professionals getting paid their 'value'".

The original comment was about "branding", not marketing, as you appear to have misread.

And don't worry, I understand completely well how many talented professionals actually make money. You are illustrating the point nicely.

[jacquesm]

Branding (and Brand Management) is an important part of a marketing strategy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_management

And will - when applied properly - definitely help promote the company's sales (contrary to your original comment).

[futhey]

Just to clarify, I'm not talking about "lol client has $3m in funding, charge them at least $75,000".

When you pay $75k to a reputable agency for a branding package, you're paying their hourly rate * a number of hours dedicated to your project, and it's not unreasonable to spend 500 hours working on a branding project for a startup that can afford it. Realistically that's 3 people working on this as their "main project" for 2 months (comparable to short branding projects I've completed, with a small internal team, at companies from 50-100 people).

Just keep in mind, there are going to be dozens of concepts that are attempted (to a reasonable extent) along the way, and never make the cut. You're not paying them to have exactly one brilliant idea, complete all the supporting work / documentation, and then "turn it in". :)

(Note: I just picked a random number somewhere in the middle of what agencies seem to be charging. You could just as easily find one talented freelancer working part-time for a month for $10k - $15k & end up with a very polished result)