Building a brand identity from the ground up.

Rebranding established businesses.

Establishing brand positioning and messaging.

Creating a branding strategy.

Designing company logos.

Formulating brand guidelines for design, style and tone.

Mapping out a social media strategy that aligns with the company’s brand identity.

Writing copy for websites and other digital assets that accurately reflect the brand voice.

It’s a lot of ground to cover, and the only way that branding agencies can get the job done is to fully immerse themselves in every aspect of their clients’ brand identities. That includes their core values, mission statements, messaging, voice and more.

Not all businesses have a firm grasp on who they are as a brand, or even where to begin figuring that out. Branding agencies need to define the key principles and intangible qualities that set those companies apart from the competition. What makes them different and special? How can they sell that vision to their target audience? Those are the questions a brand agency can help answer.

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Top branding services that support marketing efforts

Branding agencies approach branding services from numerous angles, helping businesses establish, maintain or expand their brand in every possible way. These six, in particular, can elevate your marketing strategy with a clearer focus on who you are and what you have to offer.

1. Logo design

First impressions are important, and for many potential customers, your logo will provide the initial glimpse of your brand. A company logo is essentially the face of the organization, and it should tell prospective customers everything they need to know about your business right up front.

A well-designed logo supports marketing efforts in a variety of ways:

Brand awareness

Think of virtually any consumer brand – what immediately pops into your mind? Most likely, it’s their logo. For the top brands, logos cross cultural boundaries and international borders, becoming readily recognizable around the globe.

Take Coca-Cola, for instance. By all accounts, it’s one of the most recognizable brands in the world. It doesn’t matter that the logo is written in English – or that it uses a cursive script that reached peak popularity 150 years ago – 90% of people around the world know it when they see it.

That may be an extreme example, but it shows how important a good logo is to catching the eye of customers in crowded markets.

Brand identity

Logos can tell potential customers a great deal about your business without having to say anything. Coca-Cola’s Spencerian Script reflects the company’s long history and a core product that has remained virtually unchanged for more than 100 years. People choose Coca-Cola because it’s a dependable product. They know what they’re getting from it. Past attempts to mess with the formula have become cautionary tales about brand mismanagement.

Sticking with an old-fashioned logo year after year helps sell the message that the product has stood the test of time and that there’s no need to fix what isn’t broken.

FedEx is another good example of a logo that subtly tells customers quite a bit about the brand. The logo famously hides an arrow within its second syllable suggesting speed, accuracy and reliability in delivering packages to their destinations.

Shortening the company’s original name – Federal Express – to simply FedEx was also a deliberate move to appeal more to consumers rather than government agencies and organizations.

Branding agencies can help design logos that do more than just catch someone’s eye – they establish a clear identity and demonstrate core business values. Whether a company wants to stress its historic legacy, cutting-edge and disruptive ideas or no-nonsense professionalism, logo design services can craft a perfect visual representation of those principles.

2. Brand messaging

What can you offer customers? How do your services or brand experience compare with the competition’s? What do customers get from your business that they can’t get anywhere else?

Your brand messaging should account for these questions and more. It defines what your company is, permeating everything from marketing materials to tag lines to product descriptions.

There a lot of factors that are wrapped up in brand messaging, including:

Value proposition.

Key differentiators.

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Brand principles.

Organizational culture.

Target audience.

Product positioning.

Everything your company says should have meaning, and that meaning should always reflect your brand messaging.

Look at Subway. For decades, it ran a fairly popular – if unremarkable – fast-food business. Today, it’s the largest fast-food chain in the country, representing 18.5% of the total market. A big reason for Subway’s success has been its shift in messaging to appeal to health-conscious consumers.

Every branding change and development that has come about over the past couple of decades has stressed fresh food and healthy eating. The brand’s tagline, “Eat fresh,” is an obvious example. Even redefining employees as “sandwich artists” demonstrates a commitment to food quality.