Why Hire a Brand Agency?
Branding is known as the strategic development and management of your company's unique identity. Your company can differentiate itself from your competitors with the help of a brand agency in Singapore.
With the target audience set in mind, branding is a marketing practise of shaping your brand through your company's core values and belief. Through the process of branding, your company, product or service can have a personality of its own.
“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer's decision to choose one product or service over another.” - Seth Godin
What a brand agency does?
People often think that branding a company is simply designing a handful of pretty visual elements such as logo design, colours and font type. In reality, branding involves putting together the values of the company into a single visual identity. This is what a branding agency does.
After the brand agency understands the company's brand strategy, vision and mission, the brand agency will work with a professional design agency to take this information and bring them to realisation. Along the way, the design agency will also suggest improvements to refine the branding strategy.
Branding and rebranding, what are the differences?
Rebranding your company may sound daunting to many business owners. In short, rebranding is an overhaul process to refresh your business look, feel and positioning. On average, businesses will rebrand once every 7 to 10 years.
Regardless of your business is small or medium-sized, there are many advantages when it comes to rebranding your business. Depending on how comprehensive you want to rebrand your business, there is a price tag for every scope of work by the branding agency.
Additionally, as there is a lot of work involved in giving your brand a refresh, a rebrand should always be a strategic move that is carefully thought.
A brand audit is necessary for both brand and rebrand projects for your company. Through brand audit process conducted by the brand agency, the company will need to set clear business objectives, milestones to reach desired goals, take stock of your brand and address the pain points which the company is facing.
Branding checklist: from brand strategy to brand design
Before engaging your brand agency in Singapore, here is a checklist, or touchpoints, to consider before appointing your branding agency:
The brand personality including:
Your brand values
Brand manifesto
The tone of voice guidelines
Brand style guide
The digital branding assets, including:
Domain name
Social media accounts
Digital ads and campaigns
Email templates
Recruitment ads and marketing
SEO and metadata on web pages
Internal document templates like PowerPoint decks
Your app, if you have one
Your offline branding assets, including:
Print marketing material like flyers and posters
Office or retail store decor
Personal stationery and business cards
Product packaging
Vehicle signage
Staff uniforms
Trade show stands and booths
Branding is an investment, not an expense. Working with a brand agency in Singapore is the best way of taking care of your business in Singapore. Branding will produce a fruitful return for your business and here are four key reasons why branding is essential for your business:
Branding will help your business to stand out from your competitors.
Branding will build recognition for your business.
Branding will create a consistent brand experience for your customers
Branding will spark a connection between your business and target audience. In return, your target audience will be your loyal customers.
Strategic Brand and Marketing Development Grant
Branding a business in Singapore can be expensive. Thankfully with the support from the government, the small and medium-sized business can get funding for branding their business. Please read on as you might want to take full advantage of Enterprise Development Grant (EDG) Brand and Marketing Development grant.
Who can apply for EDG's Strategic Brand and Marketing Development grant?
If you are interested in refreshing your company's brand image to generate more awareness and revenue, Enterprise Development Grant (EDG) for Brand and Marketing Development could be the right grant you can utilise for your branding project.
EDG's Strategic Brand and Marketing Development helps local business to redefine their brand values, relook at their marketing strategy so that enterprises can stand out from competitions. This grant also supports partnerships, overseas market research, and product diversification studies.
Is your business eligible?
Companies that wish to apply for the EDG's Strategic Brand and Marketing Development needs to meet the following requirements:
Must be registered and operating in Singapore.
At least 30% of local shares in the business.
Financially ready to start and run the business.
Grant support level
From 1 April 2020 to 31 December 2020,
The grant will support SMEs up to 80% of the qualified branding cost.
The grant will support non-SMEs up to 60% of the qualified branding cost.
For more information about the grant, you can visit here.
The application rules and the procedure:
Before you apply for the grant, you are advised first to approach the SME centre to find out if your project qualifies. Your project will be evaluated for eligibility.
Companies have to submit their application. Enterprise Singapore (ESG) will be assessed and approved your applications. Assessments include Those assessing it will look at the scope of the project, projected outcomes, and the competency levels of those behind it.
How to apply?
You can apply the grant by login into Singapore's Business Grant Portal (BGP) with your CorpPass.
After you have submitted your application, you have to wait for 8 to 10 weeks for your application to be processed. If adjustments have to be made, you will be contacted via the Singapore's Business Grant Portal (BGP).
Letter of Approval
An LOA (Letter of Approval) will be presented to your company once your application has been approved.
Here is what will be indicated in the letter:
The conditions that come with support.
The amount of grant your company will be receiving.
Accept the conditions in the LOA within the specified timeline, and you can start your brand project.
How AM Collective can help your business in digital marketing?
AM Collective is a branding and digital marketing agency born and based in Singapore. We are also a social media agency which also owns a group of digital properties.
Our clients include Huawei, NTUC Enterprise, Grab, Starhub, Junction 8, Capitol Singapore and CHIJMES, among others.
We make every marketing idea into reality for every business.
The article was written by Soon Koon.