The Branding Process: How long does the branding process take?
You’ve just hired a creative professional to brand your business, and one of the first things you want to know is, the branding process: how long will the branding process take? The branding process varies from business to business. There are many factors to take into consideration before jumping right in.
For example:
- The size of your business
- How many decision makers are in the approval process
- The amount you’re investing in your project
- How many brand touch points are we creating
- The work load of the designer you’re hiring
These are just a few factors to consider. So how long does it really take? This is one of the first questions we get asked right just before a client decides to hire us. The branding process can take anywhere from 4-8 weeks to sometimes 6 months or more.
So let’s dive right on in, and break this down the 8393 Creative way.
Research This process takes about 5 days.
When we start any project, we ensure we take time research the business market and competitors. 8393 Creative usually spend about 5 days doing in-depth research. We treat each business as if it were our own, and research is a very crucial and important part of our process. We need to know your industry inside and out.
What are we researching? We’re looking at the size of your market, what your competitors are currently doing and what they’ve currently done, your opportunities, your challenges, and what makes you different in other words your unique selling point.
At the end of our research, we will have a better understanding of your business, the industry, and your competitors, and this lays the foundation for us to deliver a brand strategy. While creating your brand strategy, we’ll be creating your mission statement, values, defining what your company stands for. We’ll also create personas of people who customers who will use your products. Finally, we’ll be developing your brand language, words that will be associated with your brand, should be used when communicating your message.
Develop Your Logo & Identity- This process takes about 4-5 days
All of our research is complete, and at this point in the process, we know who you are, what you stand for, and who your market is. We’re now ready to put all that into visual form, and create your company’s logo. When we create your company’s logo we go back for more research this time on the visual look itself. We want to be sure we’re not creating a look that is similar or infringing upon any of your competitors or any other business. Take a look at our in-depth logo design process the way the professionals do it.
Once we’ve created a few concepts we send them over to our client for their input and approval of the one they love. This process “the approval process” can sometimes take up to a week depending on the client and any necessary revisions needed.
After a logo has been selected, we can now define your color and font palette that will be used throughout your identity and marketing collateral and we from here we start designing your identity pieces & touch points such as your business cards, letterhead, stationary, marketing collateral. As stated above every client is different and the logo & visual identity process can altogether could take up to 2-3 weeks to complete.
Web Design & Development This process takes about 6-12 weeks to months
We have a brand strategy, a logo, identity, and marketing collateral. It’s now time to start building your company’s website. Building a website is hard work and require the attention of not just the person you hired, but you as a company as well. Before we jump into designing a website, we always gather information about the type of website.
For example
- Is this website for informational purposes only?
- Will you be selling product?
- Do you want the entire site customized?
- Will forms be needed for your website?
- Who will provide content & photos
Our process
Once we’ve gathered the information on the type of website we’ll be designing, we can now get a creative brief filled out. This is done in the form of a questionnaire. The questions we ask are designed to give us a better understanding of your design preferences, your customer, how your customers will be interacting with your website.
After the questionnaire has been completed, we’ll start drafting your home page and building out your website. When we build website, all of them are built on our temporary web host. This gives our clients the opportunity to review it, and approve it before the official launch. This process can take up to 4 weeks depending on the complexity of the web design, and the approval process.
The Final Stages
Finally, upon approval of your web design, we then have to go back through to ensure your website is optimized for search engines. This process normally takes us about 24 hours. Once your website is optimized, we are now ready for launch. During this process, we can now move your site from our temporary host to our live host.
Your web design is complete! It’s time to celebrate and share it with your customers and others via your marketing and promotional strategies.
As you can see, the branding process is not an overnight process, it takes some time and dedication for the designer, and for the client. One thing to remember just because you’ve launched your brand, your work is not done. The branding process is a constant evolution, as you grow, your brand, and your audience does and these things change. It’s always good to do a brand audit here and as things in your industry change.
If you’re in the process of developing your brand, or if you feel your brand is due for an update, give 8393 Creative call. We’ve helped some amazing businesses and maybe yours will be next.
