How important is design in the modern business world and is it worth investing in? Well, any present-day business is going to require design services. At some point, they will need designs for business cards, flyers, a logo or a smart-looking website. In various researches, it has been observed that good designs do improve the performance of a company in a number of ways. Quality designs help to build a brand identity and they make your brand more identifiable to customers. Together, these make for a more cohesive marketing strategy by improving sales.
Now, it’s not uncommon that many business owners find it hard to determine just what part of their budget should be going to designs. To figure this out, you need to evaluate your circumstances and base your design budget on a few key points.
We have shortlisted some of the chief points you should keep in mind to determine your design budget.
Identify the designs you need
To figure out a budget for your designs, first, you need to determine the types of designs you need or want. Identify whether you need a new logo, brochures, packaging, web designing, brand clothing or something else. Also, take a look at your operation and analyze how you are using designs, what amount you have spent on them and what are the returns. Once all your research is done, make a final list of the designs you want or need. After that, you need to know how much it’s going to cost you to get the designs made.
Know the market rates for the designers you need
To determine how much your design budget should be, it’s important that you know how much you will be paying for designs. Hence, you can set a benchmark so that costs don’t spiral. You can hire a designer for your project either directly or through a crowdsourcing platform like Draftss. When you do that, you want to ensure that you are paying a fair price for the work. One of the many benefits of crowdsourcing on Draftss is the fixed price, which means you stick to your budget. Draftss offers quality designing at fairly reasonable pricing, with no hidden expenses.
Estimate how long your project should take
To ensure you get professionals who will provide quality results, you must set up a fair budget for your design project. The best way to do that would be to consider the hourly rate for the type of designer you need and then multiply that by the estimated number of hours you expect the job to take. The BLS has listed the median hourly rate for a graphic designer at $22.55 per hour and for a web developer at $30.52 per hour. The better the quality of the design, the longer will it take to complete it. Also, if you need multiple versions of your logo, you should probably add in another few hours to your estimate. Then, if you need additional design material, you will have to add in more time for the extra work. This estimated time frame should just work as a guideline to get you started.
Analyze budget
One you have figured out how much it’s going to cost you to get your designs, you can move on to analyzing your budget. You need to keep in mind that design in a part of marketing, i.e., your design costs are going to come out of your marketing budget. In order to make a marketing budget, you need to get the balance sheet and sum up all of your expenses and income. Once you estimate what amount you expect to profit in a year, you can dedicate a portion (10% to 20%) of that money towards marketing. After that, you need to analyze all of the marketing efforts you want to invest in and how much they cost.
Prioritize projects and plan them according to budget constraints
It might not be possible, for your business, to meet all of your design goals at one go. In that case, you need to figure out which design projects are the most important to your company and identify the ones which will yield more profit. Then, you can schedule those designs first, and the rest throughout the year to match your budget. Also, you need to prioritize different marketing tactics, including your designs and allot a percentage of the marketing budget to each tactic. Some company may dedicate 25%, while others, 80%. It is really dependent on the needs of the company as identified by research and planning mentioned previously.
To sum up, do not underestimate the value of design! Designs are capable of fetching your company profits indirectly. So, money spent of design can be really effective when it comes to building your business. To know exactly how much you should be spending on designs, you can start by analyzing what designs you need, estimating the costs, looking at your budget and assigning the needed percentage of marketing budget to have them created. If you have any more point to add, feel free to do so in the comments section below.
