Every professional speaker should have a brand kit. They define your brand identity and are essential for keeping your marketing efforts consistent, recognizable, and appealing to your audiences and the event managers who hire you.
What you’ll find in this article:
What is a brand kit? Why do I need one?
Your brand identity is the images, colors, voice and overall aesthetic qualities that represent your business. A brand kit defines your brand identity so that it stays consistent over time, across platforms and channels, and no matter who is creating your assets and marketing materials.
A consistent brand identity is crucial for marketing, as well as doing business overall, and a brand kit helps you keep it consistent. When everything your business does and publishes feels like it belongs together, you look professional and trustworthy. Customers or clients remember you more easily, which makes them more likely to book you for public speaking gigs.
A brand kit also:
- Provides a central location to keep track of information about your brand identity
- Helps you and your marketing/PR partners quickly and easily create new content
- Provides guidelines for organizations partnering with you – like a marketing team making a promo image for an event where you’ll be speaking
Do you need a brand kit for marketing or PR?
A brand kit is an important marketing and public relations tool. As a speaker, your brand kit will be the primary reference document for your brand identity – something you return to repeatedly as a resource to inform marketing materials, press releases, swag designs and more. Your brand kit can serve as the basis for your press kit too.
You can do marketing or PR without a brand kit, but beware. You’ll be at risk of inconsistent, off-brand content that undermines your brand. You’ll waste time repeatedly digging up and sending the same instructions about logos and typefaces.
What goes into a brand kit for a public speaker?
At minimum, a speaker brand kit should include the following brand assets:
- Logo
- Color palette
- Typography
- Style and voice guides
- Personas
If you’re making your own brand kit and want more information about what to include – and how to make decisions about fonts, imagery, messaging and more, buy our DIY Brand Kit package, which includes an in-depth branding guide with easy-to-follow instructions for how to create your own and a blank brand kit template for you to fill in.
Should speakers make their own brand kit or hire a professional to create one?
You might be wondering what the easiest and best way to put together a brand kit is. Should you DIY a brand kit from a template, or pay a marketing agency like our sister company Carlton PR & Marketing to build one for you?
It depends on your needs. Carlton offers both options.
DIY brand kit vs. full-service brand kit
| DIY brand kit | Full-service brand kit |
| $50 | $500 (add logo creation for $1,500) |
| Requires basic graphic design skills and ability to use Canva | No design expertise required |
| Create your own brand kit using a branding essentials checklist and brand kit template | Fill out a form with your current brand information and inspirations; experienced professionals create a brand kit for you |
| Basic brand kit | Premium brand kit |
| No add-ons | Social media header, social post, and business card templates using your new branding |
| Revise your own kit as you see fit | Two rounds of revisions based on your feedback |
If you’re confident about your design skills and just need a bit of guidance, you’re well-equipped to DIY your brand kit. On the other hand, if a hex code sounds like something from a witch’s spellbook to you, you can leave the design to the professionals with a full-service brand kit from a marketing agency. A full-service brand kit option is also ideal if you need a high-end brand identity with a lot of polish.
Need a brand kit? Get started today.
