3 Reasons Why 99Designs is Great for a Small Business

When a company is small, sometimes the entire brand is simply a logo.  Creating a logo can be easy, but it really shouldn’t be, and creating a brand identity is far more intensive. 

When a large company decides to brand something (especially their own company), you’re in for weeks of work.  Over the course of several days, many people will be involved.  There will be meetings, workshops, ideation and brainstorming activities, and more.  Then and only then, the marketing and design teams will be able to begin drafting the full brand identity.  As you might guess, this is an expensive process.  When you’re a small business, this is not often something that you want to go through.  (But, if you become successful, you will do this eventually.)

Enter 99Designs…

Literally Save Money from the Start

The internet continues to change all of our lives, and branding/logo design is one of them.  You can get a baseline branding package for pennies on the dollar, compared to what I previously outlined.  It’s a tiny fraction of the cost. 

When visit the 99Designs website, you’re taken through a simple wizard-based process.  They ask you a handful of questions, and in a few moments, you have your job shot out into the world.  Not only is this cheaper than the full process outlined above, but you have saved a ton of your own time as well.

Don’t worry… When your company is ready for the next level, you can always go through the full brand identity process.

You Don’t Need Much to Get Started

You can come to the table with literally nothing more than an idea, but the more information and vision you have, the better the result will be.  Let’s assume you only want a logo and you don’t have one yet.  You’ll want to document the following things as best you can.  A Word document will do just fine.

• Company name
• How your company came to be
• Who your target customer is (be really specific about this)
• Desired brand color(s)
• What your company does

It’s Super Simple to Do

Next, create an account with 99Designs and begin the process.  They’ve done a really great job of making it easy for you.  Anyone can do this.

Bonus:  You Get a Worldwide Talent Pool

When you create your first job on 99Designs, you’ll begin to see samples of what you asked for within hours.  It’s amazing at how fast some designers are, and you could easily end up with more than 100 potential designs to choose from.  These designers are from all over the world and you get to communicate with them.  You can ask them to change elements of the design, or let them know if they’re on target at all.

Another Bonus:  You Can Collaborate with Your Network

That’s right… You’re not alone in this.  99Designs includes the ability for you to share the work you’re having done with anyone you choose.  You choose some of your favorite submissions and then 99Designs will e-mail them on your behalf with a poll to allow them to comment and vote on which designs they like the best.  Super simple!