How to choose a branding agency that’s right for you

A branding agency has the expertise, time and creativity to dedicate to your campaign, but how do you find the specialists who are the right fit for your business?

There’s a lot to consider in making this decision, which is why we’ve put together our top three tips on choosing the right partner to get the results you need.

Decide on the branding services you need

Before you begin the search for a branding agency, it’s important to define what you want to do, and how you want to reach your audience. This will allow you to pinpoint the talent you need to draw on. Key factors to consider are:

• Do you have an existing brand identity? If you’re starting from scratch, you may need support in defining the brand’s overall look, feel and tone of voice.
• Are you launching a new product or service? This could need a brand of its own and require consumer research to get it to the right market.
• Do you need support with a specific campaign, or ongoing messages? The level of service needed depends on your overall strategy and in-house resources.
• Are you focusing on digital elements of your brand? If so, you’ll need specialists in web design, digital optimisation, SEO, social strategy, and content.
• What deliverables do you need? Videos, images, photography, blogs, packaging design, logos, printed materials, digital assets… the options are endless, and so it’s important to consider which will gain most ROI in line with the brand strategy.

Understand the costs and how to measure ROI

Branding is vital to a business, but often, its effects aren’t seen overnight. Success can only be measured as return on investment and establishing these KPIs is just as important as defining your requirements or goals.

This starts with a budget.

Going in with an agreed figure will help a branding agency establish how to maximise the budget to achieve the best output. Following the new brand launch, measurement will work hand-in-hand with the objectives. It’s relatively easy to track sales, website hits or growth in social communities, but if you’re working towards overall brand awareness, this can be harder to quantify. Social listening and market research can be effective ways of doing this – but however you choose to measure, continual measurement is a valuable part of a branding service. With a constant eye on performance, you can pinpoint how to adapt the ongoing strategy.

Set clear objectives

Establishing your requirements and budget should lead you to the right branding agency. When you’ve found this partner, they’ll be in a prime position to help you set clear objectives on exactly what you want to achieve – which will help you define how to measure ROI as well. There are likely to be several different aims, particularly for a multi-channel campaign, but it can be helpful to think about your goals within the following areas:

General brand awareness:

If you’re new to market, have re-branded or relaunched, or want to appeal to a new audience, this is likely to be an overall goal. We helped Aqua Pura do this with their national summer campaign, strengthening their identity as a proud Cumbrian brand with a mission to hydrate the nation.

Targeted increases:

Product sales, enquiries, page traffic, blog hits, event sign-up… if you’re looking to improve a particular metric, you’ll need a laser focused campaign. In spring, Lakeland were looking to increase sales of their cleaning range. They did so with a tailored content marketing campaign that resulted in over 3.7 million impressions and 3,000 purchases.

Strengthening online presence:

Objectives can include outranking a competitor on a specific keyword, creating an engaged community, or boosting an organic following – just like Cocoa Cabana did with stunning visual content.

Discussing your objectives collaboratively with your agency can really help to define your goals and help pin-point services that you may not have realised you could benefit from.

Choosing the right branding agency is all about knowing what you need, what you want to achieve, and the investment necessary to make this happen. If you have a project coming up, contact us to have a chat through your ideas.