The true cost of rebranding your tech business: A guide from $8k to $70k+

How much do we charge for a rebrand?

Picture this: You're standing at the edge of transformation for your tech business. You know your solutions are brilliant, but somehow your brand isn't connecting with the right people. You're ready to invest in change, but that nagging question remains—"What's this going to cost me?"

Here's the straight answer: 70% of our rebrand projects fall into the range between $25k to $60k and take 3-4 months. These typically include brand strategy, a visual identity update, a new website, and rollout.

As you can see, this isn't your typical “rebrands cost between $500 to $5mil, but that doesn't reflect our pricing”. This is a full breakdown of how we work out project costs. Why am I doing this? I don't want there to be any surprises during your conversations with me, and when I ask what your project budget is, I want you to be truthful and not be thinking I’m just asking that to fleece you. So here’s how I work out the cost of a rebranding project so you know ahead of us talking.

That being said, I’ve still given you quite a range. We’ve also had projects both below and above these figures. To give you a clearer picture of what your project might cost, let me walk you through how we break it down. Each rebrand consists of the four stages i mentioned.

• Brand strategy - defining who you are and discovering market gaps

• Brand identity systems - all the visual parts of your brand e.g. logo, colours, fonts, imagery

• Website - planning, designing, and building your website

• Brand rollout - supporting your team implement your new brand across all channels

If you want to skip straight to some examples you can click here.

Brand strategy

Think of brand strategy as defining who your business is as if it were a living, breathing person. It's like creating a character profile for your favourite book protagonist, except this character needs to connect with real customers and stand out in your market.

We're treasure hunters here, searching for valuable insights about your customers and the market you operate in. Then we take those golden nuggets, combine them with your brand personality, and find gaps in the market where you can stake out territory that's uniquely yours.

Your brand core

Before we dive into market research or talk to your clients, we need to understand who you are at your core. It's like dating—you need a good understanding of yourself before you start looking for the perfect partner. And just as in relationships, it's unreasonable to expect you to significantly change your core beliefs to fit the market. This stage unfolds through a series of 2-hour workshops.

Purpose
First, let's get to know each other and take a helicopter view of your business from a customer perspective. Imagine we're flying above your business landscape—what landmarks stand out? What paths are your customers taking? Then, we'll examine your long-and short-term goals to understand your direction and what to focus on for the brand. We'll dig deeper into your purpose—why does your business do what it does and why should anyone else care? What brand challenges keep you up at night?

Personality
People naturally connect with other people, not faceless corporations. Think about it—your best customers probably feel like they know you. A key way that people express their core beliefs is through behaviour, tone of voice, and appearance. By treating your brand as a person, we uncover personality traits that will help attract your ideal customers and create deeper connections with them.

People
If you're trying to appeal to everyone, you'll end up appealing to no one. This is where we find your minimal viable audience—the smallest target group that could still offer enough revenue opportunities to grow your business. It's like finding your tribe in a crowded marketplace. Once we know who they are, we can focus our research like a laser beam.

Product
Before talking to the market, we need to understand what you offer. Are you service-based, technology-based, or a mix? What makes your offering special, and why should your target audience care? These insights will help shape the questions we ask during market research, though we don't expect all the answers at this stage—that's what the research is for.

Cost variances

There are few cost variances at this workshop stage. We typically run these sessions remotely. However, if you'd prefer us to facilitate in person at your location, there will be additional costs if we need to travel. Good news if you're in Newcastle, Port Stephens, or Central Coast, NSW—we don't charge extra for in-person sessions in these areas.

Research

This is where the biggest cost variances come in within the brand strategy stage. But if you're struggling to make your brand or marketing connect with customers, this is likely the best area to invest in heavily. Think of it as the foundation of your house—stronger foundations mean a more stable structure.

• Social listening - What information is available publicly? It's like eavesdropping on conversations about your industry on forums, social platforms, and in industry reports.

• Competitor research - Similar to above, this is based on what we can observe. How are your competitors positioning themselves? Do they communicate their offer well? Do they visually stand out? Where are they promoting themselves? We're looking for gaps in the market where you can shine.

• Employee surveys - Create a snapshot of what everyone in your company is thinking. It's like taking your company's temperature—do your team members understand the company's direction? Is there anything about your culture that could be improved?

• Employee interviews - You may not be able to bring everyone to the brand workshops, but some staff members may have valuable insights about your customers and culture.

• Customer Surveys - Get data on why customers choose you in the first place. It's like asking your dinner guests which dishes they enjoyed most. What are you doing well or not doing well? These focus on quantitative data with a small qualitative component.

• Customer interviews - Want to go deep on what your customers think of you? Let's interview them. While surveys give us breadth, interviews give us depth. We act like psychologists, digging beneath surface-level answers to uncover the deeper motivations of your clients.

• Market Surveys - We may not want to rely solely on data from existing customers as they're already past the point of purchase. We want insights from people actively considering solutions like yours. This is where costs can increase considerably as we not only need to set up the survey but also find people and often financially incentivise them.

• Market Interviews - It may be difficult to find enough people to complete a survey, but we may have access to a few potential clients for interviews. This gives us the opportunity to understand what motivates them to buy—like getting a sneak peek into the minds of your future customers.

• Your sales team - Your sales team likely possesses a treasure trove of untapped data buried in emails, reports, or simply in their heads. We'll unearth the questions frequently asked during the sales process and the information they wish people knew before speaking with them.

Cost variances

There are huge cost variances at this stage. If you're already confident about what your customers want, we can adjust the depth and type of research. For example, using publicly available surveys rather than conducting your own market surveys could cut the cost of this stage by 90%.

Brand architecture

What's the most effective way to structure your brand, sub-brands, products, solutions, and integrations? It's like designing the blueprint for your brand house. Should different elements relate to each other, remain entirely separate, or follow a hybrid approach? Do you have a mix of your own products and third-party offerings?

Selecting the ideal structure depends on factors such as company structure, available budget (remember, managing multiple brands costs more), target audience, and the problems you're solving. When done well, it builds trust and helps you run your marketing effectively.

Some examples of brand architecture include:

Branded Family:
All sub-brands are closely related to the master brand and share the same visual identity. They typically follow the same brand guide and website. Think of this as a close-knit family where everyone shares the same surname and family traits.

Family of Brands:
Sub-brands are completely disconnected from the main brand. Each sub-brand operates independently with its own brand guidelines and website. Without checking the fine print, customers wouldn't realise these brands share the same parent. This approach works when your product serves an entirely different market or is highly specialised. It's also common when brands acquire competitors to increase market share.

Endorsed Brands:
Sub-brands have their own look and feel but carry a "by master brand" endorsement. Each brand has its own guidelines and website but also follows the master brand's guidelines. It's like having independent adult children who still acknowledge their family ties.

Hybrid Architecture:
This mixes the above approaches. The master brand may have some sub-brands that share its identity, while others operate independently or with endorsement.

While often considered more relevant for larger companies, tech businesses frequently need to address brand architecture early on. This makes it easier for clients to understand how different parts of your business fit together, or to target specific market segments with focused branding that makes your marketing more effective.

Cost variances

There are no significant cost variances here. This can be addressed in a workshop and depends on your current product offering. What makes a big difference is if you decide on a family of brands or endorsed brands approach. Essentially, each time you do that, it's an entirely new brand that requires repeating the entire rebrand process.

Strategy & positioning

Where are the gaps in the market that you can own? We're looking for the sweet spot where three circles overlap: who you are, who your customers want you to be, and where your competitors aren't. We're searching for blue ocean—market space that isn't already crowded with competition.

The goal is to create a brand that is uniquely and honestly you. You're not trying to attract everyone; you're focusing on your ideal customer and ensuring you meet their specific needs. It's like finding your perfect habitat in a diverse ecosystem.

We'll identify:

• Gaps in your marketing

• Example messaging that resonates

• Customer insights we've uncovered

• Whether your logo needs to change

Cost variances

No major variances at this stage—this is about bringing everything together into a cohesive strategy.

What we typically charge for brand strategy

As a standalone project, we typically charge $10k, which takes 4-6 weeks to complete. This normally includes the three brand foundation workshops, social listening research, competitor research, customer surveys, 2-3 interviews, the brand strategy workshop, final analysis, and strategy report.

While we can easily adjust this stage, for most clients this approach strikes the best balance of cost versus novel customer insights. It provides enough information to find that ideal spot in the market where you can thrive.

Our standard approach isn't always appropriate, though. If you're a small startup wanting to quickly test the market and are happy to rely on publicly available data, the cost decreases. Conversely, if you're an established business looking to add $5 million in annual revenue in a highly competitive B2B space, wider market research may be key to uncovering valuable insights into what your potential customers really want. In such cases, you might want to budget between $20k-$50k for this stage alone.

Could you do this stage yourself? Absolutely, and if you're just starting a new business and want to test it with minimal investment, I'd recommend going through these steps yourself first. You might also have in-house expertise with brand strategy experience, or perhaps you've recently hired an agency for this stage and are confident in the results but want someone else to execute your brand. In any of these scenarios, we can use your current documentation and skip directly to your brand identity systems.

Brand identity systems

This is where we take all the previous information (brand values, personality, market insights, competitor research) and make you visually distinct and attractive to your target market. It's like giving your brand its unique face and wardrobe. Here we work on your logo, colours, typography, image styles, icons, illustration styles, dashboard designs, and any other visual elements. We also develop brand guidelines to detail how to consistently construct your visual identity.

Visual identity development

This is where we "get our crayons out," as our clients say. It's like the magical transformation scene in a makeover show. Internally, we generate numerous ideas and approaches, discard concepts that don't work, and further develop those with potential. At the end of this process, we typically present one fully realised concept.

This stage often creates the biggest "wow" moments, largely because it's our most "black box" process. In most other stages, you have considerable involvement, but here, you set the boundary conditions and we input all the research and insights, with you seeing only the fully developed product.

The complexity depends on what you offer. Logo, colour, and typography development is often straightforward. However, we may need to consider branded sub-brands, ways to visually communicate complex concepts, dashboard development, or responsive icons.

Cost variances

Are you looking for something quick and easy to get started, or are you well-established, wanting to build market trust with multiple sub-brands? The answer dramatically affects costs at this stage.

Brand refinement & guidelines

Once you've signed off on the visual direction, we make any required refinements and add finishing touches—selecting Pantone colours, tweaking the logo, creating additional logo layout versions, and preparing the final brand files.

Brand guidelines ensure consistency across all your marketing materials. This is especially important when multiple people work on them, such as external agencies or print shops. Depending on your situation, we can deliver a range of guideline documents.

The most basic guideline document consists of 4 pages:

• Your colours, each with hex, RGB, and Pantone codes

• Your fonts

• Your logo with exclusion zones

• Examples of how to (and how not to) use your logo

We've also produced guidelines that are 50 pages long, which include all the above plus:

• Image styles

• Iconography

• Photography styles

• Illustration styles

• Typography samples

• Example marketing materials

The complexity of the guide is most influenced by who will use it. If you don't plan to handle anything yourself and intend to use us to manage your brand long-term, we'll suggest a basic guide. If you have an internal graphic design person or team, we'd recommend an in-depth guide from the start so you can fully manage graphic deliverables yourself.

Cost variances

Depending on requirements, brand refinements and guidelines could cost as little as $1,500 or up to $12k for a complex brand identity with comprehensive guidelines.

What we typically charge for brand identity development

As a standalone, this stage could cost as little as $5k for a quick solution to get you out of trouble. A more typical cost when you need well-thought-out image styles, sub-brands, and detailed brand guidelines would be around $15k.

Website

Often, a new website is all clients want when they first approach us. However, as you've seen, considerable understanding and identity development must happen before a website can be truly effective. It's like wanting to build a house without first designing it or preparing the foundation.

Taking the website in isolation (assuming we have all the previous information), a typical website project for one of our clients would range between $10k-$30k.

To give you an idea of what's involved, here's a quick overview of our website process:

1. Site architecture / create the sitemap / determine needed pages

2. Create wireframes that tell the overall story and page layouts

3. Write the content and create graphics

4. Develop the website / code components to match the design

5. Build the website / put all content into the content management system (CMS)

6. Test and launch the website + provide any necessary training

So that's the process, but since this article is about how we charge, here are the main cost factors:

• Core site build / which content management system we're using

• Number and types of pages

• Quantity of animations

• Complexity of integrations

• Ongoing maintenance requirements

Core build

The main differentiator here is the content management system we use. At The Multiverse, we employ two different CMS options depending on the project.

For a quick, easy website with limited customisation, we can use Squarespace. This is typically only for businesses testing a new product idea who want something live within two weeks with a sub-$10k total project budget. It gets the job done but isn't ideal for long-term site management.

Our preferred CMS is StoryBlok—a modern headless CMS that provides the content management interface and stores the content, while we write code to convert that into a website. It's like having a sophisticated engine that needs a custom chassis built around it. As you might imagine, StoryBlok has a higher initial setup cost but provides unlimited flexibility in design and build options, plus a world-class user experience for managing your website.

When billing the core build, we normally bundle standard pages such as home, about, contact, blog layouts, and privacy policies.

How big is your website

This is a major cost factor, and if you want to reduce expenses, this is where to focus. Both the number of pages and types of pages matter.

Sales pages
These are your money makers—main product pages, service pages, integration pages, or unique landing pages. They're designed to take strangers on a journey, helping you connect with them, demonstrate understanding of their pain points, and show how your solution solves their problems.

These pages are often long with 5-8 sections, big hero areas, plenty of imagery, sales-focused copy, and multiple calls to action. Depending on complexity, each costs between $3k-$6k. Not all pages need this level of detail, and sometimes we can repeat sections between sales pages to reduce costs.

If you have many pages in this category, we often create the first few, then our clients use their in-house teams to duplicate and adapt them as needed.

Templated pages
When you need numerous repeated pages but lack the budget or need to make them full sales pages, we can create basic page templates with just a few sections that can be easily adapted to specific topics.

Integration or vendor product pages are good examples. You need to show that you integrate with or use certain products, but these pages aren't on your main sales path. This approach reduces costs significantly. Over time, if a specific page gains increasing traffic, you can expand it.

Other pages
Some pages don't fit neatly into either category—one-off pages requiring effort and understanding but not key sales pages. These might include individual employee profiles, vendor profiles, or simple landing pages. We cost these individually as they arise.

Migration pages
You likely already have substantial content on your existing website—blogs, integrations, products. Not everything needs updating immediately; we recommend revamping only the most valuable pages, especially if time is a concern.

Similar to templated pages, we can migrate content without major changes. If there's no way to automate this process and you have hundreds of pages, you might want to engage your team rather than paying us.

Animations & design

The more static a website, the easier it is to develop and design. Sometimes you might want to animate small elements, which is relatively straightforward. However, if you want a site where all illustrations are animated, project costs can increase dramatically.

Typically, to launch a new website quickly and cost-effectively, we limit animations initially. They can always be added later, like decorating a house after you've moved in.

Integrations

Most integrations we encounter are simple—Google Analytics, social tracking, form embeds. These are expected and don't affect project costs. However, specific integrations like dynamically updating product costs from a separate CRM would need individual costing.

Ongoing maintenance

Most of our builds have minimal maintenance costs. Depending on the support level you need, you'll have a monthly subscription with StoryBlok or Squarespace. With StoryBlok, we should update the website code approximately every six months to stay current, though StoryBlok handles most security concerns.

Every few years, you might need a major code update as technology progresses. You may also want new components or layouts built. While not mandatory, budgeting $1k-$2k annually for updates and maintenance is advisable.

What do we typically charge for a website?

As mentioned earlier, a typical website costs between $10k-$30k, though there's really no upper limit. Hopefully, you now understand where cost variations occur. Remember that this covers only the initial build and launch. While ongoing maintenance is minimal with our approach, it's worth including in your budget.

Brand rollout

Now we're in the home stretch—the exciting moment when your new brand meets the world. I won't delve too deeply into this stage as the possibilities become endless. Some elements will likely bundle into the main project (business card design, social media banners, basic Microsoft templates), while the rest falls into an ongoing service model.

We offer several support options, but a common one is a monthly retainer—perhaps $2k/month for 10 hours of design work. Alternatively, I can join your business as a fractional CMO for two days monthly, helping manage and direct marketing efforts for $5k monthly.

Here are some examples of what we can help with beyond website launch:

• Business cards

• Document/proposal templates

• Guide templates

• Presentation templates

• Signage

• Social media banners

• Launch announcements or events

• Blog articles

• Email sequences

• Lead magnets

• Messaging guides

• New website pages

Rebranding project cost examples

Perhaps the best way to illustrate how this all comes together is with a few different scenarios. Think of these as character profiles from different stages of the business journey:

Startup testing an idea

You're new to the market with an idea you want to test. You have one main product or offering, and speed to market is paramount. You're like a surfer catching a wave—you need to move quickly to ride it.

Project cost range: $8k to $20k

Research: Small - only publicly available information
Brand: Simple brand with minimal brand guide
Website: Small website with only one or two sales pages

Small business looking to build credibility

You're a few years in with good progress and a handful of loyal clients, but you want greater marketplace visibility. You're like a local café that's built a loyal following and is now ready to become a destination.

Project cost range: $15k to $35k

Research: Mid-level - publicly available data plus customer surveys
Brand: Additional depth to the brand, such as more complex image treatments
Website: Larger website, several sales pages, likely considerable migrated content or templated pages, custom design components

Established business looking to grow

You're well-established and seeking serious revenue growth. You likely have several products, solutions, or integrations. You need your brand to occupy its own market space and truly stand out. You have internal marketing resources that will take over brand management after the project. You're like a successful regional business ready to go national.

Project range: $30k to $70k+

Research: High-level - deep research on publicly available information, employee and client surveys, client or market interviews, potentially wider market surveys
Brand: Complex brand seamlessly handling sub-brands, vendor products, and first-party products, responsive illustrations, custom imagery, in-depth brand guidelines
Website: Large website easily managed by your team, featuring multiple sales pages, downloads, and custom design. The focus is on generating sales.

Summary

So what does a rebrand project cost? Well, as you've seen, it depends on your specific needs and goals. Hopefully, you now have a clearer picture of where to allocate budget within your project.

As a general rule, invest more at the beginning—in research and brand foundation. Research provides insights you'd never discover on your own, while a well-structured, expertly executed brand can last a decade or more. It's like investing in quality foundations and architecture for a house that will stand the test of time.

As long as your website has a solid foundation, you can build upon it either with our assistance or using your internal team.

If you want to determine what your business needs for its next transformation, book a call with me. I'll help you design the ideal project to achieve your next goals—one that fits both your vision and your budget.