Think a $400 brand identity is a bargain? It might just cost you your business's future. Time is valuable to a business owner, and naturally, they will maximize their time: you want to get the most out of it, right?
You're shopping for a solution that will represent you as the best in your category of business. You're strategizing like the Nike of your industry. If you give someone $400 to do this, you're creating a massive problem for yourself down the line.
You're deciding on your worth and value for the same price as a Nintendo Switch.
It's not your fault. Platforms like Fiverr and Upwork may entice you, like fast fashion and fast food, to get it done fast and cheap. While that seems like a great deal, it causes greater expenses for you down the line.
I'm going to break down why and how to prevent this.
If you're only receiving a logo from a job, you've only baked half the cake.
Here's what a comprehensive brand identity includes:
The work of the Designer is to use their creative and strategic experience to make something exciting and accurately positioned in the market, and ultimately to help a business thrive.
What's an art project got to do with staying afloat? You need to pay for inventory management, advertising, software, and payroll, right?
But these tasks don't drive your business forward: businesses who give time and budget to brand-building and brand activation experience long-term growth on average. The red metric below represents your Happy Hours and limited-time discounts. Businesses in the blue line aren't bargaining with the customer's wallet, but improving the experience, the overall impression of the business, and they're outperforming red.
By neglecting this, you're neglecting visibility from prospective customers. You're losing the opportunity to get the right eyes on your work.
On average, the logo design package you're getting for $400 is one with limitations. These low prices come from marketplaces that let Designers "bid" for your job posting.
It's common practice on race-to-the-bottom bid structures for Designers to work as fast as possible, with little to no customization, feedback, or refinement. That's how they can make an affordable wage on such low pricing: You're out the door as fast as you came in.
There are financial and reputational risks in a $400 logo.
Half of the clients we receive will come in with a bad experience from a previous Designer who took their money and gave them a poor product. Now their business has to reinvest in the problem all over again, rather than having solved it once and for all.
And in the time they spent with weak branding, they lost the chance to impress and attract any potential customers.
How much of a loss is that, in business terms, when the exact customer you're looking to attract passes by your establishment, or your website, on a daily basis, and ignores you?
At the heart of any good design work is someone who immerses themselves in trends, aesthetics, and creativity to combine art with strategy while listening to you.
Remember that list of branding elements? Those come complementary to the experience. Great design takes your story and your inspirations and infuses them into one symbol.
Okay, you ask, what good is that symbol?
It takes 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression visually. You need a visual identity for that one simple fact! If you're a coffee shop in North Jersey, how do you stand out from a thousand others in less than a second?
It comes down to expertise and experience, and the cost is a sliding scale from $1000 upwards.
Believe it or not, solid design decisions aren't made according to the designer's taste or style. If done correctly, they combine the most appropriate aesthetics and trends to create a unique look for the business.
Exhausting all possibilities is a must if you're going to settle on the single best logo, for example. This process may look like 70 hours of sketching, with biweekly meetings for 2 months, before settling on a logo and moving to wordmark or color stages.
Do It Yourself: Canva is a great platform to take graphic design into your own hands. But without professional help and strategic direction, you're going to look inconsistent and unprofessional over time.
Online Marketplaces: You might get a great deal from a great designer here, but it's a gamble that's not in your favor. Upwork and Fiverr create "Race-to-the-bottom" pricing strategies that sacrifice custom quality for quick and cheap work.
Author's Note: If you spend enough time on Upwork, you can find good Designers. But you have to be careful and spend time vetting them!
Fast, cheap and good… pick two.
Professional Agencies & Designers often have the highest upfront cost, which holds most people back from choosing them. Ask yourself if this is a cost, or an investment into winning customers over.
This is your wholesale solution: Comprehensive services, strategic expertise, and long-term support (they care about their clients!); these are the caliber of designers to help contribute to overall business growth. Treat yourself like a leading brand with longevity.
Did you know that the third pig not only survives, but eats the wolf for dinner?
Here's your dilemma: You can kick this problem down the road for your future self to deal with later, or you can start strong.
Here's my point: Kicking it down the road costs you, and it costs you with interest. You spend time, money, and stress overall by avoiding the larger upfront expense.
Small Businesses that don't budget for brand work are easy victims for the Sunk Cost Fallacy.
People drastically underestimate what they can accomplish in the long term, and overestimate what they can accomplish in the short term. That's a psychological effect that online logo marketplaces- as much as the fast food industry- have played to.
